（英语语言文学专业论文）英语剧情片电影的语义及交际翻译方法研究.pdf

ma thesis ningbo university 英语剧情片电影的语义及交际翻译方法研究英语剧情片电影的语义及交际翻译方法研究 摘摘 要要 电影是一种娱乐形式，是继音乐、诗歌、舞蹈、建筑、绘画和雕塑之后的第七类艺 术。英语剧情片电影（主要通过配音翻译）在我国现代社会中有着广泛的应用和巨大的 影响, 但我国翻译界对英语电影翻译的研究与其它类型的翻译研究相比相对不足。本文 旨在通过回顾国内外相关文献，对在我国电影市场占主导地位的英语剧情片电影的配音 （非字幕）翻译进行探讨性的研究。 文章具体分析了英语剧情片电影的语言特点以及适用于该领域的翻译方法。通过对 皮特纽马克(1981；2001)提出的交际翻译和语义翻译概念的分析和论述，我们提出： 根据电影语言的具体特点（包括其语言特点和超语言特点） ，交际翻译和语义翻译的有 效结合适于英语剧情片电影的配音翻译。文章结尾论述了翻译中不可避免的文化障碍问 题。同样，我们将该点也统一于交际翻译和语义翻译的适用范围之内，以期使文化差异 的问题得到较好的解决。总之，我们在本文中论证的交际翻译和语义翻译相结合的方法 将对英语剧情片电影配音翻译的理论研究及其实践起到指导性作用。 文章主要由五章组成。第一章提出本文研究的内容和范围。第二章回顾我国及国外 （主要是英语国家）电影翻译的理论背景和总体情况，把握当前电影翻译研究的方向。 第三章结合经典例子分析英语剧情片电影的语言和超语言特点。在此基础上，第四章提 出适应英语剧情片电影翻译的方法，即语义和交际翻译相结合的方法。第五章为全文的 结论，该章提及了本文的研究意义和不足之处。 关键词：电影翻译；关键词：电影翻译； 配音；配音； 语言特点；语义和交际翻译语言特点；语义和交际翻译 ma thesis ningbo university a semantic and communicative approach to the translation of the english feature films into chinese abstract film is an art that is categorized as the seventh art after music, poetry, dancing, architecture, painting and sculpture. compared with the case in other strands of translation studies, relatively little research has been conducted in the theoretical and applicational studies of translation of english feature films across china despite the tremendous amount of practice of dubbing of large numbers of imported english feature films and the profound influence the imported feature films make on our society. with reference to the literature in translation studies in general, this thesis is a tentative discussion on the principles and methods of the dubbing of english feature films since the dubbing mode turns to be the predominant mode in china against subtitling nowadays. with an analysis of the language characteristics of english feature films and with reference to the notions of translation methodology from peter newmark (1982; 2001), this thesis attempts to justify the adoption of an integrated approach that combines the communicative and semantic methods to the practice of film translation. to serve this purpose, the functions, language characteristics in the linguistic and paralinguistic dimensions of english feature films are analyzed and together with this analysis the concrete process of dubbing in the light of the combined approach of both semantic and communicative translation methods are expounded. the thesis finally addresses the cultural barriers, an inseparable aspect in translation under the umbrella of the approach in the same way. it is expected that the guiding principles and methods testified in the thesis will be of interest to the practice and studies of film dubbing translation. the thesis consists of five major chapters. chapter one introduces the delimitation of research scope. chapter two is a theoretical review of the translation studies of the feature films, in which translation criteria and practice for this specific genre both in china and english-speaking countries have been surveyed from a panoramic perspective. chapter three analyzes english feature films in terms of the linguistic and paralinguistic scopes, all ma thesis ningbo university furnished with authentic examples meanwhile. based on the analysis of chapter three, chapter four presents a detailed discussion on the applications of the approach. finally the concluding chapter locates both achievements and drawbacks of the research conducted herein in addition to a summary of the whole thesis. keywords： film translation; dubbing; language characteristics; semantic and communicative translations 独独 创创 性性 声声 明明 本人郑重声明：所呈交的论文是我个人在导师指导下进行的研究工 作及取得的研究成果。尽我所知，除了文中特别加以标注和致谢的地方 外，论文中不包含其他人已经发表或撰写的研究成果，也不包含为获得 宁波大学或其他教育机构的学位或证书所使用过的材料。与我一同工作 的同志对本研究所做的任何贡献均已在论文中做了明确的说明并表示了 谢意。 签名：_ 日期：_ 关于论文使用授权的声明关于论文使用授权的声明 本人完全了解宁波大学有关保留、使用学位论文的规定，即：学校 有权保留送交论文的复印件，允许论文被查阅和借阅；学校可以公布论 文的全部或部分内容，可以采用影印、缩印或其他复制手段保存论文。 （保密的论文在解密后应遵循此规定）（保密的论文在解密后应遵循此规定） 签名：_ 导师签名：_ 日期：_ ma thesis ningbo university -1- 1. introduction 1.1 introduction of the topic incorporating space and time dimensions, film is a form of entertainment that enacts a story by a sequence of images giving the illusion of continuous movement.1 the film art has witnessed a prosperous development ever since its first appearance. initially films were disseminated through moving pictures with no sound track; hence for a time translation was irrelevant to this art form. with the arrival of the talkies in the late 1920s, there was an upsurge in the need of translation of films (schwarz 2003). thanks to the participation of film translation, the scope of the actual practice of media translation has been broadened. in the global sector, large volumes of films distribution and circulation facilitate cultural communication among different nations, besides their entertainment function to satisfy the audience both at home and abroad. foreign films serve as a kind of communication bridge, through which people could learn about exotic cultures and history of other nations. in china, the distribution of the american films has witnessed a lions share in recent years, especially after china adapted the reform and opening policy in the late 1970s. among these english films imported from america, hollywood has nearly become synonymous with the american film industry with its large amount in production. nowadays in the universal circumstance of economic and cultural globalization, chinese audience takes advantage of a more convenient access to english films. meanwhile, it could not be ignored that the widely spread english films have exerted a subtle influence on the life of the chinese people. in this connection, the english films should be given more consideration in view of their innate values and popularity received. in the receptors dimension (actually the audience in the film appreciation), the people in china who can appreciate the original english films are generally educated elite and few in number，while other audiences who have little knowledge of english can not comprehend the original ones. therefore, for the major part of chinese audience, imported english films need to be translated into chinese. with the high speed of the english films importation and the domestic audiences demand for appreciating the translated films of high quality, there is a 1 the definition is quoted from /cgi-bin/webwn. ma thesis ningbo university -2- necessity of a more meticulous research of english films translation. the strategy of film translation, therefore, exhibits as a factor of rising importance in todays translation sector. however, compared with other translation forms (especially literary translation), film translation is rather a novel branch. in fact, only a little research has been conducted in this area and the concerned papers available are to some extent confined to the experiential conclusion and the mechanical application of the previous theories of translation. foreign films are normally translated in two approaches, dubbing and subtitling. the translation of english films in china follows these two approaches in the practice. subtitling was initially utilized in the translation of english films. from the late 1970s to the beginning of the 21st century, dubbing gradually outnumbered subtitling along with a grand quantity of imported films (duan hongxin 段鸿欣 2001: 45). nowadays, traditional dubbing has to meet more challenges posed by the arrival of the net-age and the rising importance of english learning in china, in a timely and economical way. generally speaking, dubbing at present still serves as the major translation practice in china, for the concern of the audiences preference and overall english comprehension. and dubbing, for its higher standards and more strict requirements for synchronization, is an art of translation in its true sense and prevalent practice. english feature films (mostly narrative films or so-called mainstream type) are the focus of our research, because these films not only constitute the largest percent of english film manufacturing, but also display concrete realistic qualities that contribute to the solid foundation of our research. in addition, concerning the representative techniques and fundamental elements, feature films are closer to the real life than other arts, especially the arts of animation and supernatural science fiction. in sum, english feature films constitute good objects of our research inquiry. in this thesis, the primary data of our research are selected from the following feature films: gone with the wind, krammer vs.krammer, sabrina, titanic, forrest gump and pearl harbor, etc. these films range from love themes to historical topics and most of them are classic ones. the rationale for the above data restriction mainly lies in the wide agreement upon the high quality of translation of these films, and in consequence the analysis of their translated versions is expected to generate to an extent some good examples of my thesis. in the data analysis, quite a number of original texts and dubbed versions are quoted from related references (published books and scripts). for the sake of realizing sufficient ma thesis ningbo university -3- comparison and profound demonstration, some translated versions are personally produced by the author. on some specific occasions, a few translated versions are directly ripped and excerpted from the screens. 1.2 significance of the research there is an obvious discrepancy between the apparent importance and prevalence of film translation and comparatively limited attention that this translation form has so far received. in china, some pilot scholars and researchers have been addressing film translation and making a number of revealing results. however, research is still in its embryo stage, lacking widely accepted operational models. concerning the films values and popularity in our society, my thesis attempts to firstly set up a retrospective presentation of the approaches to the film translation. on the basis of exhibiting the language functions and distinguished characteristics in the film presentation, my thesis advocates a descriptive-explanatory study of an applicable approach of semantic and communicative translations in the english feature films translation. viewing translation as an instance of language use, we agree that translation is an act of communication (blum-kulka 2000: 305). although in the process of film translation, the translator has no actual contacts with other people, he has prepared to adapt himself to a reservoir of choice for the characters in the source film (xu xiaofei 许晓菲 2001: 35). in the perspective of acquiring successful communication between the original films and the audience through translators effort, the author hopes to shed new light on film translation studies, and to help achieve the effective translation of the audiovisual media to the chinese audience. 1.3 organization of the thesis the thesis consists of five major chapters. chapter one introduces the delimitation of research scope. chapter two is a theoretical review of the translation studies of the feature films, in which translation criteria and practice for this specific genre both in china and english-speaking countries have been surveyed from a panoramic perspective. in the remaining part of this chapter, current theoretical studies of film translation are examined in ma thesis ningbo university -4- specific aspects. chapter three analyzes english feature films in terms of the linguistic and paralinguistic scopes, all furnished with authentic examples meanwhile. based on the analysis of chapter three, chapter four presents a detailed discussion on the applications of the approach, i. e., an integrated view of semantic and communicative translations. finally the concluding chapter locates both achievements and drawbacks of the research conducted herein in addition to a summary of the whole thesis. ma thesis ningbo university -5- 2 theoretical background 2.1 introduction dubbing and subtitling are the two prevalent forms of the adaptation for film translation. possessing respective advantages and disadvantages, these two approaches may consequently satisfy the requests of different audiences. before we engage in the theoretical discussion of the topic, a brief introduction of these two approaches of film translation will help our future demonstration. the audiences who have little knowledge of foreign language are not likely to comprehend the fascination in a foreign film. instead, they would turn to a dubbing film, which ensures them to be shielded from the exotic tongue. in dubbing, audiences are liberated from laboring effort bouncing the eyeballs constantly up and down from picture to subtitle (matthews 2001). however, lip synchronization acts as the major constraint of this translation practice. it should be perfect in dubbing and the verbal clues should match the non-verbal clues and mannerisms on screen. in contrast, subtitling keeps the original audio channel with a written target language version of the dialogue appearing on screen. in subtitling, there must be some agreement between the subtitles, the spoken source language dialogue and the corresponding image (baker 1997:115). in other words, the audiences speed of sight-reading should keep the pace with the actors spoken language and the image performance. the cooperation between these three channels is the bottom line of subtitling practice. however, a complete transcription of the film dialogue is not possible on most occasions, as schwarz (2003) argues that both the physical limitation of space on the screen and the pace of the spoken word require a reduction of the text. as a whole, audience are asked to do a lot of extra work by reading subtitles while coping with all the other visual and oral channels of the film, which will more or less erode the pleasure margin of film appreciation. in brief, the dubbing practice ensures visual integrity of the frame and provides more information to the audience through audio and visual channels. furthermore, in the light of the preference of the major amount of audience and the overall english status in china, the thesis concerns the dubbing practice of english feature films. ma thesis ningbo university -6- 2.2 translation criteria translation criteria come from practice, serve practice and are tested by practice. it is known that the ideal translation practice pursues the equivalence to the largest extent, though the complete equivalence is fairly hard to achieve. around the circle of this maximum target, many translators have proposed a collection of relevant criteria to pursue the aim. in this part of literature review, translation criteria are mentioned with the dynamic combination of specific times and concretely applied fields. when we negotiate with ourselves over our theoretic position for the study of translation criteria, we would rather view translation criteria as a developing system which is possessed of various focuses in different branches. in this principle, the thesis makes the inquiry into some classical translation theories both in china and english-speaking countries, with the aim of testifying their applicability in our research scope. 2.2.1 translation theories in english-speaking countries the authenticable fruit of american celebrated researcher eugene a. nida is his concept of “functional equivalence”. “functional equivalence” is essentially stated primarily into “a comparison of the way in which the original receptors understood and appreciated the text and the way in which receptors of the translated text understand and appreciate the translated text” (nida 1993: 16). by establishing a pair of effects between the original receptors and the receptors of the translated text, nida advances a novel point of view to evaluate the efficiency or adequacy of translation. in his manifestation, since no translation is ever completely equivalent, “functional equivalence is in terms of a range of adequacy” (ibid: 117). in this case “equivalence can be understood in terms of proximity, i.e. on the basis of degrees of closeness to functional identity ”(ibid). nida further brings forward a group of concepts, minimal equivalence and maximal equivalence, to embody “functional equivalence”. minimal equivalence claims that target readers “can conceive of how the original readers of the text must have understood and appreciated it” (ibid: 118), while in maximal equivalence, “in essentially the same manner as the original readers did should be the terminal target” (ibid). in this regard, minimal rather seems realistic while the latter is rarely achieved. the well-established theory of “functional equivalence” is classical and could be adhered to as the dynamic guideline in translation practices. however, film translation involves far ma thesis ningbo university -7- more constraints than text translation which is only manifested in the dimension of written or printed words. in real practice, “functional equivalence” theory seems a bit general to be applied into the particular branch of the film translation. talking about equivalence effect, peter newmark (2001b1988: 48) states that “it has sometimes been said that the overriding purpose of any translation should be to achieve equivalent effect, i.e. to produce the same effect (or one as close as possible) on the readership of the translation as was obtained on the readership of the original. as i see it, equivalent effect is the desirable result, rather than the aim of any t