功能对等理论视域下的以中国元素为主的英文电影字幕翻译——以《功夫熊猫》为例.pdfVIP

合肥工业大学 硕士学位论文 功能对等理论视域下的以中国元素为主的英文电影字幕翻译- 以功夫熊猫为例 姓名：张涛 申请学位级别：硕士 专业：英语语言文学 指导教师：胡作友 2011-04 摘摘 要要 中国与世界多元文化交流日益频繁， 其中影视作为现代生活中不可或缺的大众传播 艺术，正如潮水般涌入中国，其文化载体的功能越来越突出，然而影视翻译的质量却急 需提高。 近年来， 好莱坞电影公司多次拍摄制作中国题材的电影， 如著名的 上海正午 、 功夫熊猫 、 功夫之王 、 花木兰 、 花木兰 、 黄石的孩子等等。以中国元素 为题材的英文电影其形式和内容为中国观众所熟知，中国观众较易接受。此类电影的翻 译能够较好地忠实于原作，但在体现深厚的中国文化底蕴方面尚略有欠缺。 电影功夫熊猫在国内深受欢迎，好评不断。中国观众对这部电影中的中国元素 亦非常熟悉。本文将以近年来著名的以中国元素为主、富含浓郁中国文化的英文电影为 素材，以奈达的“功能对等”理论为指导，重点对电影功夫熊猫影片中的字幕汉译进 行功能对等分析，进一步探究功能对等理论在此类电影的字幕汉译中的应用。 关键词关键词: 字幕翻译；功能对等理论；中国元素； 功夫熊猫 ；读者反应 abstract multi-cultural exchanges between china and the world have become increasingly frequent, among which film and television, as an indispensable mass media art to modern life, is flooding into china. the function of film and television as a carrier of culture is becoming more and more prominent, but meanwhile there is also an urgent need to improve the quality of screen translation. in recent years, several hollywood film companies shot films with chinese elements, such as the famous shanghai noon, kung fu panda, the forbidden kingdom, mulan, mulan, the children of huangshi and so on. the form and content of the english films with chinese themes are familiar to chinese audience .therefore; these films are more acceptable among chinese audience. the translation of these films are rather faithful to the originals, but they still slightly lack in reflecting the profound chinese cultural deposits. the film kung fu panda is popular in china and is appraised highly. chinese audiences are also quite familiar with the chinese elements in the films. based on the well-known english films with chinese elements in recent years, this paper will make an analysis of the functional equivalence in the movie under the guidance of eugene nidas theory, trying to explore the application of the functional equivalence theory in this type of english films. key words: subtitle translation; functional equivalence theory; chinese elements; kungfu panda; receptor s response 1 chapter i introduction the development of technology and the globalization result in great need in culture exchanges. film, as an important culture form, is playing a more and more important role in culture exchanges, as well as language transference. alvares said: globally, this is the age of mass communications, of multimedia experiences and a world where audiences demand the right to share the latest text, be it film, song, or book simultaneously across cultures (alvarez, 1996, p1). the film translation is important for the communication between different countries. chapter one mainly serves to introduce the research background, research issues, research methodology and the thesis structure. 1.1 research background multi-cultural exchanges between china and other countries have become increasingly frequent. film, a mass media art indispensable to modern life, is flooding into china and its feature as a culture transmitter is becoming more and more prominent. film was born in the west and has also got considerable development in china. since the reform and opening up, china and many other countries have built cultural exchanges. in these exchanges, the film and television exchange accounts for a large proportion. therefore, a new field of translation film translation, also came into being despite the quality of film translation urgently needs to be improved. with the gradual deepening of reform and opening up, sino-foreign cultural exchanges are strengthening continuously. foreign films appear on our countrys screen more and more, and thus its translation scale is also growing. in recent years, with chinas rising national strength and economic prosperity, film with chinese elements is also becoming popular in the west. the u.s. film companies have shot a lot of these films, such as kungfu panda（2008）, the forbidden kingdom （2009） , mulan （1998） and so on, all full of rich chinese elements. owing to various historical and practical reasons, chinas exploration of film translation theory lags behind relatively. the unsatisfying situation has attracted professionals attention 2 in our countrys translation circle and thus they have explored in this area in the past 20 years and have achieved certain results. however, referring to the current film translation in china, the exploration is still in an embarrassing situation for its small amount and low quality. although the works on translation theory are numerous, just a few of them are related to the film translation in some individual sections; some articles to explore the film translation are occasionally found in a number of academic publications (ma zhengqi, 2005, p3). so the results of the exploration fail to establish a complete theoretical translation system. the current film translation is staying in a stage of experience and savvy and film translation practice still lacks of effective guidance and supervision. therefore, the in-depth research on english film translation theory, strategies and methods, especially on those films characterized by chinese elements is of great significance. 1.2 significance of study on subtitle translation the study by domestic and foreign scholars provides us a better understanding of subtitle; however, it is not enough because of the complexity of the subtitle translation. the theoretical study for subtitle translation is still very urgent. comparing with other countries, the subtitle translation in china lags far behind. in the face of this situation, the domestic subtitle translation is urgently needed on theoretical research. study on film subtitle translation is necessary. first of all, systematic studies provide guidance for subtitle translation. subtitle translation, same as literary translation, requires theoretical guidance. second, subtitle translation research is helpful to the development of the film industry. a good movie needs a good subtitle. in addition, research on subtitle translation will promote the development of translation discipline and translation cause. studies on subtitle translation of english movies with chinese elements will help chinese people understand chinese cultures current situation and status quo in the world, so that chinese translators can better understand the english expressions for chinese elements. therefore, it will become easier to publicize chinese movies and disseminate chinese culture (li heqing karamitroglou, 2000, p5) in addition, since peoples pronunciation varies widely in different region and they may not correctly understand the dialogue in the films, the subtitle in written texts can help people understand more. therefore, subtitle is very important for film. for a long time, there are two ways to translate films: dubbing and subtitling. both ways have advantages and disadvantages. with a large number of foreign-language films flooding in recent years, film dubbing gradually turned to a secondary way for film translation because of the complicated processes and high cost. in comparison, subtitle translation is easy to operate for its low cost and becoming the main form of film translation. besides, with the improvement of audiences foreign language ability, more and more people are more inclined to listen to the original audio. dubbing is adopted in only a few films. therefore, this thesis focuses on the research of kungfu pandas subtitle, which is characterized by chinese elements. film subtitle text and its translation have their own characteristics as follows: 6 2.1.1 attachment subtitles can not exist independently. in plot-based films, the plot is expressed mainly by the interaction between characters. the scenes change frequently and the characters are numerous. only with subtitles and without picture and sound, it is impossible to accurately convey all the information in the film. subtitles are the additional parts comparing with audio-visual information. the process of the audience appreciating the film includes three parts: watching picture, listening to the dialogue and reading subtitles (ma zhengqi, 2005, p92). the audiences can fully appreciate the visual arts by combination of verbal and non-linguistic information. 2.1.2 limitedness the characteristics of film itself put subtitle translators operation under various constraints. mayoral, kelly and gallardo divided the film dubbing and subtitling constraints into six categories: time, space, music, image, phonetics, spoken language (diaz-cintas, 1999, p14). time and space are the two specific constraints for the subtitle translation. on the one hand, it can not stay stationary in one place for a long time like the text on the books. each subtitle is followed by a picture and sound. with disappearance of the picture and sound consistent with the context, it also bounds to disappear and be replaced by next line. on the other hand, the room for subtitle is also restricted. the premise that subtitle can exist is that subtitle shouldnt cause greater damage to overall visual effects. subtitle font should neither too big to affect the normal screen nor too small to lead to identification problems. and the length of each line is also limited. as the changes between pictures are too quick, subtitle lines stay shortly, often for only two or three seconds or less, and thus the words of subtitle should not be too much in case that the audiences cant read smoothly. in addition, some details must be considered such as whether to add punctuation, which punctuation can be omitted and which can not. 2.1.3 transience 7 the subtitles are the texts flashed on the screen, which disappear quickly. the characteristic of films or other video program themselves brings up the transience nature of subtitle translation. the picture and sound inside the video are all transient in accordance with the plot. the language of general literature, such as essays, novels and so on, is written on paper and thus readers can read them over and over again. but it is in a completely different situation watching the film. the audiences have no the same chance to read the subtitle text again as reading literature works. if the audiences do not understand the film language, they have to skip it. taking time to digest will affect the appreciation of the rest contents (ma zhengqi, 2005, p92). 2.1.4 popularity the characteristic of transience requires that subtitle translation must be succinct and easy to make people understand at a glance. the wording should not be paid great attention just as literary works, which are more elegant and obscure and make the audience have time to understand the deep meaning. subtitles must be concise and readable in order to focus the audiences attention on the screen. generally speaking, in the subtitle translation, the translator should adopt the standard language and avoid slang and dialects with poor readability in order to make the translation to be accessible to understand (li yunxing, 2001, chinese translation, vol.12.4) 2.2 studies on subtitle translation in and out of china “the electronic media explosion of the 1990s and its implications for the processes of globalization highlighted issues of intercultural communication“ (bassnett, 2004, p1). since subtitle translation is a very important tool for communication, it has become a common activity nowadays. the following part retrospects the previous study on subtitle translation home and abroad. 2.2.1 studies on subtitle translation in china the domestic research on film subtitling is limited on the experience level and has not 8 risen to the theoretical and systematic level. from the perspective of the research content, the majority of these articles are mainly to explore the principles, methods and techniques on the film translation, i.e., how to use different research methods to translate subtitles. the current studies focus on the following aspects: 2.2.1.1 research with various theories as guidance quite a few scholars research the principles, methods, and techniques on film translation by using various theories as translation guidance. long qianhong (2006) analyzed domestication translating strategies of film translation by citing nidas communicative translation theory. su yifan and liu chunling (2008) pointed out the lack of nidas equivalence theory and proposed that more translation theory such as deconstruction translation theory and skopos theory be applied to the film translation studies. li heqing and bo zhenjie (2005) explored the film translation with tourys normative theories especially operating norm theory and thus concluded that the best film translation is not only constrained by language text norms and formal norms, but also pursue the highest state of translators invisibility. 2.2.1.2 research according to film language features some scholars explore translation principles, methods and techniques according to film language features. ma zhengqi (1997) proposed five basic principles for film translation in on the basic principles for film and television translation: oral-orientation, character-orientation, emotion-orientation, lip-rounding and the popularization. he insisted that translators should keep a balance among these 5 principles. in some other articles, ma zhengqi (2003) re-emphasized these five principles and got supported by a large number of examples. zhang chunbo advocated that the film translation should mainly follow the principle of paraphrase and reserve the original flavor meanwhile in his work the primary exploration of file and television translation (1998). zhou lili (1997) and tong xiaomei (2008) consider that there are three characteristics of film translation, namely, the constraints of lip-rounding, the different language form and the different receivers. in view of these, film translation is characterized by its own special skills. bi wencheng put up an overview of the special features of film translation in language the special natures of film and television translation (2003): popularity, transience, integration, simplicity, and component omission. 9 2.2.1.3 research on cultural differences chai meiping (2001) pointed out that cultural differences between east and west has led to some cultures inequality and thus proposed cultural reconstruction, embellishment and conversion are needed in film translation. xing lijuan (2005) suggested that cross-cultural factors need particular consideration in international film translation. translators should pay attention to differences of syntactic structure, semantics and rhetoric. zhao ning (2005) pointed that, in light of space and time limitations, appropriate translation strategies should be used to avoid information loss resulting from cultural differences and successfully realize the cultural conversion in translation in order to create effects welcomed by movie audiences. 2.2.1.4 research from various perspectives li yunxing (2001) analyzed the characteristics of film translation and the corresponding translation strategies and illustrated them by practical translation cases from the three aspects of time and space constraints, information function and cultural factors. zhao chunmei (2002) analyzed four pairs of contradiction in the film and television translation which translators would most commonly encounter: lip-rounding and content, word order and the screen, domestication and foreignization and transliteration and paraphrase. she put forward four solutions supplemented by examples respectively. guoping, taking the dialogue translation in the film gone with the wind as examples, analyzed the characteristics and constraints of english film translation and explored the conversion for language and culture and the transfer for film style in her on the films english-chinese translation (2004). 2.2.2 studies on subtitle translation out of china in other countries, subtitle translation or film translation is an emerging discipline, developing rapidly in recent years. a large number of papers have been published to discuss the discipline at different levels. some translation magazines such as translation journal, meta and babel have special volumes. a number of research institutes have been established to specialize in film translation. and scholars in many european and american countries have written a large number of academic papers to study the area. generally speaking, they 10 researched subtitling translation from the following aspects. 2.2.2.1 research on multimedia translation yves gambier，professor of translation at the university of turku, points that multimedia translation is a new field in translation studies in his work (multi) media translation, concepts, practices, and research (1998). in another work screen translation: perception and reception (2003), gambier analyses the use of multimodal transcription for the analysis of audiovisual data. patrick cattrysse claims translation studies have evolved from linguistic and literary translation into multimedia translation and summarizes peculiarities of multimedia translation in his work multimedia besides, the similarities of deep structure are more obvious than that of surface structure. therefore, inter-language conversion through the deep structure in translation can ensure a faithful translation to the maximum extent. meanwhile, since the free expression of surface structure results from the conversion of deep structure, the fluency of a translation can be ensured as much as possible. both faithful and fluent translation creates necessary conditions for the readers equivalent response, which makes functional equivalence possible (he shanfen, 2002, p81). at the second phase, functional equivalence theory was based on information theories. nida believes that translation is a kind of information conversion from one language into another language, i.e. encode source information into target information. the purpose of translation is to play a communicat