on-different-groups'-subtitles-translation-of-the-first-quarter-of-the-vampire-diaries-from-the-pers.doc

On Different Groups' Subtitles Translation of the First Quarter of the "Vampire Diaries" from the Perspective of Skopos Theory

by
Lu Xiaohong

Under the Supervision of
Xu Xiaomei

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree of Bachelor of Arts

English Department
School of Foreign Languages
Lanzhou Jiaotong University
June 2012

摘要
随着大众传媒技术的不断进步，美剧在中国获得了蓬勃发展并有非常广阔的市场前景。字幕翻译作为一种特殊的翻译形式，是一种有目的的翻译行为。为满足不同人群对美剧的需求，美剧的字幕翻译应达到使中国观众与原电影进行有效沟通的目的。由于英语在中国尚未大范围普及，所以观看美剧的人群主要集中在大学生、高校教师和公司白领中。而对于不懂英语的观众来说，美剧的字幕翻译更要通俗易懂。字幕翻译者要深刻认识到美剧字幕瞬时性、通俗性和空间限制的特点，遵循特定的翻译目的，对美剧字幕采取合理的翻译策略。
在字幕翻译领域已经存在很多学者的研究结果，但大多数在题材的选择上都倾向于电影的题目翻译和单纯的字幕翻译。然而，由于互联网的快速发展,在线电影也迅猛发展，随着字幕翻译的繁荣，这些电影也变得繁荣。因此不同业余电影字幕制作者和那些官方制作的异同点变成了字幕翻译研究的重点，根据研究对比在线作品的结果,发现他们的翻译风格和方法都不相同。本文从他们的异同点来分析得出其基本翻译原则和方法。运用目的论，通过介绍美剧字幕的瞬时性、通俗性和空间限制等特点，列举《吸血鬼日记》中有代表性的对白的汉译，指出美剧字幕翻译者应遵循目的论的目的性原则，采用口语化语言、流行语和简洁语的翻译策略。
结果发现：1. 网上业余字幕组的作品特点具有紧跟潮流、丰富的中国元素、凸显译者个人色彩等诸多特色，与中规中矩的官方制作存在较大的区别；2. 很多网络字幕会根据译者的心情和创作风格附加“知识讲解”“温馨提示”或是“个性评论”等内容，帮助网友更好地理解剧情；3. 官方翻译重视大众传播效果。

关键词：目的论， 美剧字幕翻译， 翻译原则， 翻译策略

Abstract
Along with the development of technology of mass media, the American TV series won its vigorous development and its large market in China. Subtitle translation, as a special form of translation, is a kind of translation behavior which has its purpose. To meet the different needs of people of American play, subtitle translation should get the purpose that the Chinese audience could communicate with the original movie effectively. Because English has not yet become a big range of popularization in China, people who watch American play are mainly concentrated in college students, college teachers and company white-collar. While to those audience who can not understand English, subtitle translation of American play should be more understandable. Subtitle translator should deeply understand the characteristics of American play's subtitle: instantaneity, popularity and subtitles space restrictions; meanwhile, follow specific translation purpose and adopt certain subtitle translation strategies.
There already exist many scholars' research results in subtitle translation field, but most of them tend to the title of film translation and simple subtitle translation in the choice of subjects. However, the wide spread of internet has enhanced the fast development of the transmission of online movies, along with which the translation of subtitles of these movies also becomes prosperous. Therefore my thesis makes a comparison between movie subtitles translated by subtitle translation groups and those translated by official institutions to elaborate on the unique characteristics of subtitle translation of internet movies and draw a conclusion on its basic translating principles and methods. My thesis focuses on the characteristics of the groups' translation works and tries to summarize some commonly accepted principles. Through a comparison between movie subtitles translated online and those translated by official institutions, the unique features of subtitle translation of internet movies can be concluded. And with the use of the skopos theory, through the introduction to characteristics of U.S. play subtitles: instantaneity, popularity and subtitles space restrictions as well as the listing of specific translations of dialogue in Vampire Diaries, the author points out that American play subtitle translators should follow the skopos rule in skopos theory, and take the translation strategies such as using colloquial, vulgar and concise language.
This research is expected to yield the following results: firstly, the online translation groups' work is more acceptable to younger audiences. Their work is more fashionable than the official work. It contains Chinese unique characteristics. And it also contains lots of the translators' own style. Secondly, online translations always add some extra information, such as explained knowledge, kindly reminder, character comments and cultural background information. These will help the audiences understand the original meaning better. Thirdly, the official work emphasizes the mass media dissemination effect.

Key words: the skopos theory, American play subtitle translation, Translation principles, Translation strategies.

Contents
Chapter One Introduction 1
1.1 Significance of the Study 1
1.2 Thesis Structure 3
Chapter Two Literature Review 4
2.1 Studies Abroad 4
2.2 Studies in China 6
Chapter Three Methodology 9
3.1 Subtitling 9
3.1.1 The Definition of Subtitling 9
3.1.2 Features of Subtitle Translation 9
3.2 The Skopos Theory 11
3.2.1 Definition of Skopos Theory 12
3.2.2 Basic Rules of Skopos Theory 12
Chapter Four Analysis and Discussions 15
4.1 Film Subtitle Translation Guided by Skopos Theory 15
4.1.1 Use of Spoken Language 15
4.1.2 Use of Buzzwords 16
4.1.3 Use of Concise Language 17
4.2 Different Aspects of Subtitle Translation 19
4.2.1 Culture 19
4.2.2 Cohesive Devices 20
4.2.3 Humour 21
Chapter Five Conclusion 23
5.1 Major Findings 23
5.2 Implications and Limitations 23
References 25
Acknowledgement 26

兰州交通大学毕业设计（论文）

Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Significance of the Study
Since the implementation of the policy of reform and opening-up at the year of 1978, the Chinese government has been attaching great importance to cultural exchanges. Some famous and popular foreign audiovisual products were imported and then dubbed and captioned by the studios. In the 21st century, with the rapid development of science and technology as well as the diversification of the media, especially the popularity of Internet, more and more high rated foreign audiovisual products become available for the Chinese audience as soon as they were broadcasted in foreign countries. However, it is not an easy thing for massive Chinese audience to enjoy the original audiovisual products without any translation in their mother tongue. Thus, the audiovisual translation, as a unique form of translation, keeps growing in importance and necessity. Additionally, the globalization of communications has resulted in a proliferation of audiovisual media distribution. The increase in transmission capacity and the growing number of broadcasting channels that result from it have led to an increased demand for foreign television programmes to fill the channels' programme schedules.
Audiovisual language transfer means the process that a film or television programme is made comprehensible to the target audience which is unfamiliar with the source language. Among the different forms of audiovisual language transfer, subtitling is gaining growing importance due to several factors. Subtitles are words that printed over a film in a foreign language to translate what the actors are saying. Subtitling, i.e., subtitle translation, is the written translation of the spoken language (the source language) of a television program or a film into the language of viewing audience (the target language); the translated text usually appears in one or two lines at the bottom of the screen simultaneously with the dialogue or narration in the source language. So far, some scholars, especially in Europe, have made considerable contributions to this new area. But there is still a long way to go before it can develop into a full-blown discipline. In China, for one reason or another, the situation is even worse. Chinese scholars focus on traditional literary translation, and seldom pay attention to subtitle translation, for it is generally regarded as entertainment instead of orthodox academic studies. Therefore, subtitle translation in China, on one hand, is lingering out of the translation studies circle; on the other hand, is taken for granted by tens of millions of viewers as indispensable part of mass communication. Subtitle translation is very popular in China, but attracted even less attention from translation studies circle. Consequently, subtitle translation in China greatly depends on translators' individual competence without any guiding instructions in theory, which then result in numerous examples of poor subtitle translation hindering or even misleading audiences.
This paper, under such circumstances, focuses on an analysis of the subtitle translation, aiming to explore the appropriate approaches to this specialized area. Following the analysis, there is a case study for further illustration of the feasibility of the approaches. The skopos theory, which has proved to be appropriate to analyze non-literary translation, is employed here as a theoretical foundation.
The flourish of foreign audiovisual works makes it possible for large amount of Chinese audiences to keep touch with the outside world. However, studies in this field are still hanging behind. Especially the studies on subtitle translation in China are still at the preliminary stage; few of them can absolutely be comprehensive and convincing. Even though there already exist many scholars' research results in subtitle translation field, most of them tend to the title of film translation and simple subtitle translation in the choice of subjects. However, the wide spread of internet has enhanced the fast development of the transmission of online movies, along with which the translation of subtitles of these movies also becomes prosperous. Therefore this thesis makes a comparison between movie subtitles translated by subtitle translation groups and those translated by official institutions to elaborate on the unique characteristics of the subtitle translation of internet movies and draw a conclusion on its basic translating principles and methods. The thesis, on one hand, focuses on the characteristics of the groups' translation works and tries to summarize some commonly accepted principles. Through a comparison between movie subtitles translated online and those translated by official institutions, the unique features of subtitle translation of internet movies can be concluded. On the other hand, it tries to propose some principles and strategies of subtitle translation on the basis of examples from the America TV series—Vampire Diaries. By analyzing a large number of examples under the guidance of Skopostheorie, the author intends to summarize certain rules and generates certain strategies for subtitle translation. These rules and strategies, supported by a large number of examples, will be convincing and acceptable by all means and will possibly be helpful in generating more high-quality subtitles in the future.

1.2 Thesis Structure
The thesis consists of five chapters: chapter one introduces significance of the study and the structure of the whole text. The second chapter is the literature review, and introduces the theoretical basis of the whole text—the skopos theory. Chapter three mainly discusses the characteristics and physical limitations of film subtitles translation which result in the major constraints in film subtitle translation. Chapter four elaborates on relevant strategies of film subtitle translation with many persuasive and specific examples in the American TV series Vampire Diaries. Chapter five is the conclusion which summarizes the whole thesis and provides limitations of this study and further suggestions about the field of film subtitle translation.

Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Studies Abroad
The study on film subtitle translation had an earlier start in the west than in China, and gained much attention in the process of development. From the present viewpoint, western countries definitely have reached certain achievements in subtitling. Therefore, those earliest experts who perform actively in this field are mainly western scholars, especially the Europeans. In the early period—by the end of 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s, the western scholars just made their researches from the simple angle of translation. It is said that Traduction et Cinéma in the journal of Le linguiste/De taalkundige published in 1956 and the special edition of the magazine Bible published in 1960 with the title Cinéma ettraduction are the earliest research on film translation in Europe. Dollerup published an article On Subtitles in Television Programs in Bible made a study on subtitle translation in the year of 1974, which was the first try in the road of its development. In this article, Dollerup made a detailed analysis on all sorts of mistakes when the English TV programs were translated into Danish. The largest contribution that Dollerup makes to subtitle translation was that he is the first person who pointed out the significance of subtitles in teaching field, what's more, he also puts forward that people could learn foreign languages when they watch movies with the help of film subtitles. In 1982, the concept of "constrained translation" first appeared in Titford's article Subtitling Constrained Translation. Titford thought the main problem television translators faced was the limitation by the nature of television, ''Derive essentially from the constraints imposed on the translator by the medium itself'' (Vermeer, Hans J, 2000:173-187). Based on Titford's theory, scholars such as Mayoral Asensio, Kelly and Gallardo applied the concept into the practice of film translation. European Broadcasting Union held a conference on dubbing and subtitling in Stockholm (Sweden) in 1987, and which was the first one held in Europe in the research field. A series of related conferences were held in the influence of this summit one, besides, a lot of correlated publications about film translation emerged timely. As for one of the successes the conference attained, was a proposal of guidelines to facilitate the spread and exchange of TV programs with subtitles in European countries. In the 1990s, film translation started to enter its own age, and the theory of film translation made a breakthrough at the same time. In the early of 1990s, two vital works were published in succession. Lukens collaborated with other four experts on film translation published a book Overcoming Language Barriers in Television: Dubbing and Subtitling for the European Audience in 1991. The book analyzed different translation modes of language exchanging in television programs and listed a large number of data, moreover, it also made a systematic and thorough study of the number of European translated films, the personnel costs and audience preferences. After that, in 1992, Swedish subtitler Ivarsson, published Subtitling for the Media: A Handbook of An Art, which was said to be the first book to analyze comprehensively on subtitle translation in Europe. With the help of Carroll, the author published the second edition of this book in 1998. Added by lots of translation strategies and skills such as digital technology, the book was renamed as Subtitling. The two book