Chapter One Introduction
This introductory chapter will provide a brief description of the practical and theoretical backgrounds, and the objective and methodology of the present study so as to demonstrate its significance, necessity, rationality and feasibility.
1.1 Practical and Theoretical Settings of the Study
With the cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries, foreign films and television dramas, as the essential parts of foreign culture, play an increasing important role in people’s life. Through Internet and other mediums, the domestic audiences have chances to appreciate more foreign films and television dramas, including the popular American and British audiovisual products, which really attract Chinese audiences’ interests.
As many domestic audiences cannot understand the pure English in foreign films and television dramas, audiovisual translation, including dubbing translation and subtitle translation appeared. At the beginning, people tended to use dubbing translation to enjoy foreign films and television dramas. But dubbing translation needs the coordination of mouth shape, speaking speed, language length between source languages and target languages, which is expensive and time-consuming. People also found the voices were almost same in different translated foreign films and television dramas because there are limited professional dubbing translators (Gambier & Gottlieb 2001).
Compared with the defects of dubbing translation, subtitle translation has already become an uprising way to spread foreign films and television dramas (Baker 2003). Subtitle translation are frequently made by some amateurs who are interested in foreign films and television dramas and also made by some fansub groups, whose representatives are YYets (人人影视), YDY (伊甸园), 1000fr (风软), SCG (圣城家园). As soon as the foreign films and television dramas updated, those amateur fans and fansub groups will translate the subtitles quickly and add those translated subtitles into the original subtitles. In this way, the subtitle translation films can provide timely and convenient enjoyment for domestic audiences. As a result, many people decide to enjoy the timely and pure version of foreign films and television dramas with subtitle translation.
1.2 Objectives and Methodology of the Study
Oriented to the current situation of subtitle translation practice and theorization, on the basis of Andre Lefevere’s Rewriting Theory,
especially from its three main environmental perspectives — ideology, poetics and patronage, and through the methodology of theory-based case study, this study will therefore attempt to provide a systematic analysis of the Chinese translation of the subtitles in the imported American sitcom Friends so as to obtain an understanding of the environmental constraints on the process of subtitle translation.
In particular, this study attempts to address the following three interrelated questions:
(1) How does the translator rewrite the original in the translation of subtitles in Friends from the point of view of ideology?
(2) How does the translator rewrite the original in the translation of subtitles in Friends from the point of view of poetics?
(3) How does the translator rewrite the original in the translation of subtitles in Friends s from the point of view of patronage?
In light of the shortcomings and defects in the current theoretical researches and practical case studies, the thesis will choose the famous American sitcom Friends as its object of case study, for it contains various cultural factors and distinctive features. At the same time, the thesis adopted Andre Lefevere’s Rewriting Theory as the theoretical foundation of the thesis, which was used to explore and
analyze how the translator’s subtitle translation in Friends was influenced by ideology, poetics and patronages in the target language.
Chapter Two Literature Review
This chapter will review the previous studies of subtitle translation and studies of American sitcom Friends in China and other countries and identify the achievements and weaknesses of these existing studies.
2.1 Studies of Subtitle Translation in General
Before we come into the studies of subtitle translation of American sitcom Friends, we firstly review the studies of subtitle translation in general.
2.1.1 Studies of Subtitle Translation in China
Compared with the western countries, subtitle translation studies in china started late, and the theory researches are relatively in low level. Cheng Shuren first introduced subtitle translation methods into China when he majored in films as an overseas student in Europe. The popularity of films in China began from the founding of the people’s republic of China. At that time, foreign films and television dramas were popular by using dubbing translation, which was more easily to understand than subtitle translation for people who had low foreign language ability (Giannetti 1993). The real popularity of foreign films and television dramas began after reform and opening up policy in China, especially in the latest 20 years, a great amount of foreign films and television darmas were introduced and broadcasted into China. Thus the subtitle translation studies have developed quickly. Here are some accomplished scholars in China.
Qian Shaochang can be regarded as the leader in the audiovisual translation field in China. Professor Qian has made great achievements in audiovisual translation theory.
He (2000a) published “Audio-Visual Translation: A More Important Part in Translation Field”, in which he pointed out the importance of subtitle translation, analyzed the differences between films and literatures and summarized the features of languages in films and TV programs: listening, comprehensive, instantaneous, colloquial and unsigned. Furthermore, he (2000b) put forward seven experiences of audiovisual translation in “Translation in Puns in Films”, of which the most important one is to achieve the rule of “faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance”. He engaged in audio-visual translation and has translated many works, which have great influence in China, such as the popular American television dramas Growing Pains, Grand Hotel and the Thorn Birds.
2.2 Studies of American Sitcom Friends
This section will conduct a brief introduction of Friends and the previous studies on it and its subtitle translation.
2.2.1 An Introduction of Friends and Its Translators
This thesis presents a case study of the translation of subtitles in American sitcom Friends based on framework of Rewriting Theory. American sitcom Friends first appeared on NBC in 1994 and lasted for 10 years, which described six Friends’ daily life for ten years. No one can imagine its brilliant success. The whole sitcom has 10 seasons and 238 episodes, which is popular in more than 120 countries and has been translated into more than 20 languages with more than 60 million fans all around the world. It has been achieved a higher rating of 53 million audiences in single episode in 1996. And it has been nominated by Emmy Awards for 62 times and won the award of most popular comedy for 5 years, which is a milestone of sitcom. In 2007, Friends was appraised as the Top.1 American television drama. Besides, some universities take it as the materials in listening classes and some learn foreign culture through it.
Why does Friends so successful? On the one hand, accompanied by laugh and humor, we can see people’s conflicts between their principles, interests and status. Meanwhile, the affection between families and Friends is sublimated. It virtually becomes people’s mirror of daily life and allows us to learn the truth of life. On the other hand, the reason why this sitcom is so wonderful is that it derived from contemporary American daily life, which is the epitome of American culture. The dialogues and fascinating stories all reflected the American culture, social life, thinking ways and national habits, which attract many fansub groups’ subtitle translation.
Chapter Three Rewriting in the Subtitle Translation of Friends from the Perspective of Ideology................... 18
3.1 Ideology........................ 18
3.1.1 Official Ideology.................. 19
Chapter Four Rewriting in the Subtitle Translation of Friends from the Perspective of Poetics ........................ 32
4.1 Poetics................... 32
Chapter Five Rewriting in the Subtitle Translation of Friends from the Perspective of Patronage...................... 43
5.1 Patronage ..................... 43
Chapter Five Rewriting in the Subtitle Translation of Friends from the Perspective of Patronage
This chapter will carry out an analysis of the rewriting in the translation of subtitles in American sitcom Friends from the perspective of patronage.
5.1 Patronage
Patronage has different implications in English, including customers, protectors, groups, religious organizations, social brackets, political parties, courts and many other meanings. In Chinese and other countries’ translation history, it is easy to see the patronage, for example, the translation of the Bibles and the translation of Buddhist scriptures in Han and Tang dynasties were all effected by the patronage of some organizations.
Lefevere discovered the patronage factor in rewriting process and defined translation as the powerful person and organizations to promote or prevent the literate reading, creation and rewriting. Specifically, patronage refers to powerful people and organizations that promote or prevent the reading, writing and rewriting of literature, such as individuals, groups, political organizations, parties, social brackets, courts, publishing companies, newspapers, magazines, televisions and other mediums (Lefevere 2006). If professionals in literal system are the restraining factors within literal translation, patronage is the external factors of literal translation, which affected translation from three aspects: ideological component, status component, and economics component.
Chapter Six Conclusion
This final chapter will summarize the entire study and its main findings, and point out the implications and limitations of the study.
6.1 Summary of the Study and its Major Findings
With the importation of increasingly more foreign films and television dramas, the practice of subtitle translation is thriving and has constituted an important section in the field of translation. Due to the negligence of the relationship between translation and environmental factors, however, subtitle translation on the whole is still suffering from certain inadequacies on the part of the translator and misunderstandings on the part of the audiences. With the flourishing of subtitle translation practice, the study of subtitle translation has also made much progress in the understanding of the principle and methods for subtitle translation. Subtitle translation studies so far, however, are still weakened by its limitation to too many prescriptive studies instead of descriptive studies, resulting in the proposal of various principles and strategies but a lack of fundamental understanding of the nature and features of subtitle translation.
Oriented to the current situation of subtitle translation practice and theorization, on the basis of Andre Lefevere’s Rewriting Theory, especially from its three main environmental perspectives — ideology, poetics and patronage, and through the methodology of theory-based case study, this study attempts to provide a systematic analysis of the Chinese translation of the subtitles in the imported American sitcom Friends so as to obtain an understanding of the environmental constraints on the process of subtitle translation. Through the analysis, the study arrives at the following understandings: (1) From the perspective of ideology, as Friends represents the capitalist ideology in western countries and includes some contents inconsistent with the socialist ideology in China, the erotic and obscure subtitles in it are thus rewritten to some extent in the translation process to pass the censorship or to adapt to the requirements of official and mass ideology in China.
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