Language Characteristics for Foreign Movie Translation and Its Cultural Images1.doc

影视翻译的语言特点及文化意象的传递language characteristics for foreign movie translation and its cultural imagescontentsabstract1key words1i. introduction2ii. present situation.2iii. introduction to the language characteristics in its translation4 3.1 language characteristics in colloquialism.4 3.2 language characteristics in lip rounding.4 3.3 characters temperament and emotion4 3.4 popularization of the version language.5iv. the loss and gain of conveying cultural images.5 4.1 explanation of the cultural image .5 4.2 recreating of cultural images6 4.2.1 conveying the associative meaning of the cultural image6 4.2.2 conveying the symbolic meaning of the cultural image.8 4.2.3 conveying the relative meaning of the cultural image.9v. incompleteness and omissions in conveying cultural images10 5.1 incompleteness in conveying cultural images.11 5.2 omissions in conveying cultural images.11vi. the translation of puns as special cultural images.12 6.1 chinese examples.12 6.2 english examples.13 vii. conclusion15references.16language characteristics for foreign movie translation and its cultural images摘 要：随着影视文化的发展，影视翻译越来越受到翻译界的关注和重视。影视翻译是翻译大家庭中的一员，由于外国影视作品中的文化和思维方式与中文迥异，影视作品的翻译必然受到跨文化交际的影响。作为大众传媒的一个重要组成部分，影视翻译有其独特的语言特点，比如口语化，口型化，人物性格化，情感化和大众化等。文章通过对外片中译的研究，从语言文化的角度来探讨电影翻译中文化意象传递的一些得与失。另也谈到影视片中经常出现的双关语的翻译，译者需要用译入语进行阐释或重写，使之为观众所理解并接受。关键词：影视翻译；语言特点；跨文化交际；文化意象的传递；双关语翻译abstract: with the development of film culture，film translation has attracted more and more attention. the translation of foreign movies and tv programs is one part of the big family of translation field. because of the quite different presentation between foreign and chinese culture and way of thinking, it will surely be affected by cross-cultural communication. being an important component in mass media，there are some peculiar approaches of language characteristics in its translation, such as colloquialism, lip rounding, characters temperament and emotion as well as popularization. also i try to discuss the loss and gain of conveying cultural images in film translation, from the point of language and culture. for example, the cultural images sometimes have to be rebuilt and are unsuitably omitted. and the associative, symbolic and relative meanings have to be conveyed perfectly, that takes translators efforts. the last part of this paper discusses the translation of puns that often appears in films. it is my experience that puns are virtually not translatable. i think all we can do is just to rewrite english puns into chinese versions that can be understood and hence accepted by chinese audience. key words: foreign movie and tv translation; language characteristics; cross-cultural communication; convey of cultural images; translation of puns i. introductionthe translation of foreign movies and tv programs is one part of the big family of translation field. because of the quite different presentation between foreign and chinese culture and way of thinking, it will surely be affected by cross-cultural communication. being an important component in mass media, there are some peculiar approaches of language characteristics in its translation. through the research on translation of foreign films and tv programs, language characteristics in colloquialism, lip rounding, characters temperament and emotion as well as popularization have been illustrated in my thesis.i will attempt to discuss the translation of film scripts and tv drama scripts from cultural translation perspective and special requirements of the films and tv translation. i will focus on the names, languages and the cultural factors of films and tv translation. translators should make positive use of their creativity in their attempt to achieve cultural function equivalence between target texts and source texts. the target culture is the essential factor in translation. successful translation should be readers-oriented. the receptivity from target readers should be emphasized. harmonious psychological reaction for target audience is always the ultimate criterion of film and tv translation.with the development of film culture, film translation has attracted more and more attention. this article, taking some popular examples, analyzes the characteristics and constraints of film translation from english into chinese. in addition, i will explore translation of english puns as well as chinese ones.ii. present situation movies and tv programs are a comprehensive art with video and audio elements. nowadays, films play an important part in spreading the culture. with the rapid development of information technology, digital tv and multimedia have become part of our lives. the production of films steps into a new stage. we chinese audience have more chances to enjoy foreign movies, but there arent enough people that can understand the original ones, so the translation of them is of vital importance. there was no doubt that chinese has translated many good foreign films since the founding of prc and especially after the policy of reform and opening; and at the same time many roughly subtitled or dubbed films appeared in the market, with lots of mistakes and errors, some of which are even impossible to tolerate. for example, someone translated “you got me there” into “你在那儿找到我了”, that is very ridiculous.another funny example is the translation of the us movie first blood, the title，which actually means “首战告捷”, was put into “第一滴血”. here blood means to give someone their first experience of an activity, esp. a difficult or unpleasant one, in the film that refers to the vietnam veteran, rambos encounter with the local police. then its follow-up first blood ii / iii was jokingly called “第二/三滴血”.at the international conference of dubbing and subtitle translation, prof. qian shaochang (oct, 2002) pointed out that at present the level of film /tv translation is very low, less than enough attention has been paid to this aspect, there are some commonly shared problems, such as low translating quality and rewards and shortage of sense of copyright; “the translation circles care much more about literature than film or tv translation”. indeed, people in the translation circles spend much more time and energy on the research and development of theory, not the applied fields such as film translation .so our novel and poetry enjoy a higher artistic status than films. during the past years, the translation quality of film/tv has been very poor, how to improve it and strengthen the management and supervision are the problems that need to be solved.movie translation is the change of language and it is restricted by many factors such as time pressure, space of the screen and the shifting of the settings, etc. in other words, movie translation specifically refers to translating the language in the original foreign films into the native language, or translating the language of domestic films into a certain foreign language, and make sure the translated version is equivalent to the original one in the culture, style and other aspects, so the subtitle or dub make sure the audience can understand the contents of movies better . during the process of movie translation, the translators build a bridge between two different languages but also different cultures they reconstruct the equivalence of words beyond the limitation of language, and at the same time reflect and transplanted the foreign culture. however, by close observation in the filed of movie translation, we can easily find out that many love literature translation and neglect or look down upon movie translation, they consider movie translation to be kind of adaptation or rewriting, then they excluded it from the field of translation research. the thoughts and deeds of discriminating movie translation is not suitable for its social functions, because of this, prof. qian shaochang pointed out that “more attention needs to be paid to this phenomenon”. according to the statistics of one incomplete survey, the number of people watching films is overwhelmingly more than those reading literature works, so the influence of movie translation to the society cannot be overemphasized.movie and tv are very close to each other. film and tv translation is a kind of literature translation, but at the same time, more than that! (wang danbin.2002)iii. introduction to the language characteristics in its translationin a good dubbed film, the version and the plot should blend into integral wholeness; the audience wont get the feeling that the original one was artificially processed during the translating. so, next, i will elaborate on the language characteristics in its translation 3.1 language characteristics in colloquialismthe chinese version should read smoothly, and conform to chinese idiomatic expressions and real life. for instance, the sentence “she is being friendly to us at the moment” in spoken english, can be put into “她在跟咱们套近乎”. another example, “would you please please please please please please please stop talking”, wed better put it like this “请你请你, 务必请你, 千万请你别说了吧!” .the main part of the movie scripts is in the form of dialogues or conversations, so the version should be simple, direct and vivid and full of informal words. 3.2 language characteristics in lip rounding the version should try to go along with the actor in length, rime, pause and even the opening /closing of lips, and conform to the actors facial expression and speaking tones. if the actor on the screen shakes his head ,we should dub words like “不” ,even if there arent words for this part in the original one, some words should be added for these scenes to make it seem real. for example, princess diana, when interviewed by bbc, said, “no, not at all. i come from a divorced background. i didnt want to go into that one again.” it was put into “不，绝对不是。我来自一个婚姻破碎的家庭，绝不希望重蹈覆辙”. so the dubbing and the subtitles would be satisfying.3.3 characters temperament and emotion translators should understand the accurate meaning of peoples lines in the film, and then make the version sound like what the characters themselves say in daily life. for example, in the american film ghost /人鬼情未了, “molly，new york times is just some frustrated little critic with pimples on his ass who flunked out of art school, so who cares what they think.” in this sentence, “with pimples on his ass”reflects the strong hatred and discontentment. a version goes like this “莫莉，纽约时报上都是被艺校退学的学生写的一些落魄评论文章，谁在乎他们怎么想?” that certainly didnt show the speakers strong feeling, too much genteel. so wed better put it like this: “莫莉，纽约时报上刊登的都是一些被艺校退学的刺头学生写的狗屁评论文章，谁在乎他们怎么想?”3.4 popularization of the version language the version should adopt the plain simple language, close to the real life and should be easy to understand, even for an illiterate man. the ordinary audience can accept film and tv works as part of the mass media spreading culture, only when it uses popularized language. so the film will appeal to all the audiences and suit both refined and popular tastes. iv. the loss and gain of conveying cultural imagesand, the loss and gain of conveying cultural image in film and tv translation can be a good topic from the aspect of language culture.4.1 explanation of the cultural image it is a certain kind of cultural symbols which contains relatively fixed unique cultural meaning, some of them have other abundant associative meanings. speaking of them, people understand what they mean and thus reach an easy communication. (xie tianzhen, 1999) image is made up of two important parts physical image and connotation. image is the carrier of information meaning; its the objective facts that the image is based on. and the connotation is the new meaning as an extension of the physical image in a certain context and situation. because language is part of the culture, the process of language transformation certainly will be affected by some cultural factors, such as custom, habits, religious beliefs, and historical, political influences. these cultural factors lead to different images. the functions of image lie in different contexts, “using concreteness to express abstractness, using something already known or easy to know to inspire or enlighten something unknown or hard to understand.”for example, in his ci poem “qing yuan/青玉案”, he zhu (贺铸) used three disturbing things to express his anxiety and sorrow when he lived in suzhou suburb, away from home, and depressed over his lack of success: “一川烟草，满城风絮，梅子黄时雨”, these three images were combined together to express “试问闲愁都几许”. the aesthetic effects of this image structure, is not simply the adding of images but the distillation of images, and it rises up to a high level. reading this ci poem makes the reader feel the unpleasantness in the rainy season along the middle and lower reaches of the yangtze river the intermittent drizzle, the willow catkins being carried about by the wind, these scenes make the reader not able to deal with his distressing. this ci poem uses the scenery to achieve and set off the feelings and atmosphere, vividly pictured the sadness of the poet, and leaves the reader mixed feelings and also a melancholy mood.and in english language there are also similar words and sentences that carry certain typical images. lets illustrate with examples. “he that lie down with dogs must rise up with fleas”. this english proverb used the two underlined image phrases to vividly show the reader the surface meaning, that is “与狗共眠的人起身后他身上必定会沾上很多跳蚤”. this proverb implies the surrounding conditions can affect or even cultivate ones behavior and habit, and the great effects of certain natural or social circumstances. thus the chinese readers can understand the further deeper meaning “近朱者赤, 近墨者黑” implied by the english saying. thus it can be seen that the cultural images are embodied in the language, either chinese or english, and images contained many profound connotations and intentions.4.2 recreating of cultural imagessometimes in movie translation there will be two problems in the source text: one is the source text written in a simple straightforward way, without being elaborated rhetorically, and cant stimulate the audiences enthusiasm to enjoy the film. the other is there are words carrying specific cultural meaning, these words have the functions of images and profound implied meaning, but, however, the target language audiences are not familiar with these words or even totally dont know, so its hard for them to understand and accept these words. so the translators has to demonstrate his intensiveness, using vivid expressive language to recreate a profound artistic conception in the thinking in terms of images, to make sure the translated text can be better understood by the audience and readers. the skills or techniques of rebuilding cultural images, can be summed up into the following points:4.2.1 conveying the associative meaning of the cultural imageto guarantee the linguistic quality, artistic effect and commercial response (the book office) of the dubbed film, the translators usually bring the audience many associations by using the language and image with which they are very familiar, thus to fully convey the associative meaning.for example, the movie rebecca was named after the late hostess/mistress of the manderley manor. this simple straightforward title was rendered by the translator into an artistic term “蝴蝶梦”, so it conveys some associative meanings, just because the translator used the famous allusion “庄子梦蝶” to mobilize the chinese audiences wild thinking. in daily life, people use a slang “花蝴蝶” to call those charming and sinister social butterflies/party girls. so thinking of this, the audience will try to imagine the story that the film tells, and these thoughts enrich their imagination, also stimulate their desire to watch the film and get to know the movie plot. but this example was also taken to counter-argue the point of using allusions in place of words or phrases explicitly stated. just like zheng shengtao comments in one of his book:curious enough there is yet another kind of word-substitution: to use an allusion in place of a word or a phrase explicitly stated in translating from english to chinese. the substitution takes place more often in the translation of the title.lets take the translation of rebecca, the plain title of a work (and later of a film), for example. the translator uses an allusion to translate it as “蝴蝶梦”（literally means “dream of the butterfly”）rather than a symbol of love, this beautiful term originates from a legend and implicates a disloyalty of the wife to her husband. it is hard to imagine that a simple name of a girl in the original title can turn out in the translation to be so implicit, so complicate an allusion. if most of modern readers have no idea of its deep implication, it is a pity that the translator took all the trouble to change the title in vain. of course, in most cases such a change is more a problem of attracting the reader than a problem of translation. obviously, this kind of implicit method in translation is not to be recommended, at least from the point of view of cultural exchange.here is another example: the american movie waterloo bridge/魂断蓝桥, the titles literal meaning is actually a name of a certain bridge, “滑铁卢桥”. it is well known that britain built the waterloo bridge on the river thames in 1817,and that was to cherish the memory of the waterloo battl