Abstract

With numerous foreign films pouring into China, film subtitle translation has been attached with great importance, for its equality can affect the audience’s emotional reaction directly. The author attempts to analyze the film subtitle translation from the perspective of Eugene Nida’s functional equivalence theory. By means of a case study of the popular American film Frozen, the thesis probes into the functional equivalence at semantic, stylistic and cultural levels, analyzing how the translation version of the film attains its goal by using such strategies as addition, reduction, transliteration and domestication. While the significance of Nida’s theory is evident, precautions of its limitations should be taken in the practice of film subtitle translation. 

key words: subtitle translation, functional equivalence, translation strategy

Contents

Abstract

中文摘要

1 Introduction-1

1.1 Definition of film subtitle translation-2

1.2 Characteristics of film subtitle translation-2

1.3 Literature review-3

2.1 Eugene Nida-6

2.2 Functional equivalence theory-6

2.3 Application to film subtitle translation-8

3 A Case study on subtitle translation in frozen-9

3.1 The plot of the film-9

3.2 Semantic equivalence-10

3.3 Stylistic equivalence-11

3.4 Cultural equivalence-12

4 Limitations in practice-14

4.1 Cultural difference between source language and target language-14

4.2 Lexical gaps and semantic zeros-15

4.3 Limitations on cultural transmission-15

5 Conclusion-15

References-17