Abstract

With the blending of the global culture and rapid development of film industry, a great number of English films flood into China’s market. Chinese audiences have enjoyed a wide range of foreign cultures and customs, and subtitle translation is very important in the transmission of different countries’ cultural information. 

In the 1970s, Vermeer and other scholars proposed Skopostheorie. According to Skopostherie, film subtitle translation is a kind of activity with certain purpose; here the “purpose” refers to the communicative goal of target text. The purpose of subtitle translation is to transmit the relevant information to the addressees and help them understand the film in the most effective way within the limitation of time and space. This paper introduces some previous theories related to Skopostheorie and explains the content of it in detail. Then it applies Skopostheorie into subtitle translation from the perspective of the basic rules—skopos rule, coherence rule, fidelity rule and cultural-specificity, making a detailed analysis of film subtitle translation of Kungfu Panda.

Keywords: film subtitle translation; Skopostheorie; basic rules; Kungfu Panda

Contents

Abstract

摘要

1. Introduction-1

2. Literature Review-1

2.1 Previous Study on Film Subtitle Translation-1

2.2 Introduction to Film Subtitle Translation-3

3. Theoretical Framework-5

3.1 An Overview of Skopostheorie-5

3.2 Four Rules of Skopostheorie-6

4. An Analysis of Subtitle Translation of Kungfu Panda-7

4.1 A Brief Introduction to Kungfu Panda-7

4.2 The Application of Skopos Rule-8

4.3 The Application of Coherence Rule-9

4.4 The Application of Fidelity Rule-11

4.5 The Application of Cultural-specificity-12

5. Conclusion-13

Works Cited-15