Abstract

In recent years, many foreign films and TV series have been brought into our market, and gradually loved by our Chinese audience, while the subtitle translation of foreign films and TV series has not attracted so much attention in the translation field. To make a standard on the rendition between the source language and target language, Nida put forward the famous “dynamic equivalence” translation theory, i.e. “functional equivalence”, which is in accordance with the nature of translation. Taking the most popular American drama Desperate Housewives as an example, this paper analyzes linguistic features of films and TV series, the nature of subtitle translation and translation strategies under the guidance of Nida’s functional eqivalence theory, aiming to explore how to achieve functional equivalence in the subtitle translation of films and TV series.

Keywords:  Desperate Housewives  subtitle translation  functional equivalence theory

摘要

近年来，许多外国影视作品进入中国市场，越来越受到我国观众的喜爱，然而外国影视作品的字幕翻译却未能引起翻译领域的足够重视。为使原语和译入语之间的转换有一个标准，根据翻译的本质，奈达提出了著名的“动态对等”翻译理论，即“功能对等”。本文将以奈达的功能对等理论为指导，以当下最受欢迎的美剧《绝望的主妇》为例，对影视作品的语言特征，字幕翻译的本质及翻译策略进行分析，探求影视作品字幕翻译如何达到功能对等。

关键词：绝望的主妇；字幕翻译；功能对等理论

Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Purpose and Significance of the Study
With the globalization of the world, international communication has become more and more frequent in recent years. Hence, foreign films and TV series have been brought into our country, and aroused great interest among Chinese audience, esp. those from the USA. Being a mass media carrier, these foreign films and TV series bring in life styles, traditions, and customs in western cultures which enable Chinese audience and English learners have the opportunity to learn English through entertainment. As a result, the subtitle translation plays an important role.
This paper aims at studying subtitle translation of American films and TV series from the perspective of functional equivalence theory. As the subtitle is culturally bound and its appreciation depends on the audience’s understanding, functional equivalence theory can better explain how to transfer it to maintain its effect in the target culture, for Nida argues that the receptors’ response to the target language message should be practically the same as the source language receptors to the original message. Consequently, functional equivalence theory is our best choice in translating subtitles.