ABSTRACT

Having imported a large number of overseas movies and TV programs, China has actively introduced domestic television programs into overseas markets for these years. Since it was released in 2012, Zhenhuanzhuan became very popular among Chinese audience and an American version Empresses in the Palace came out in 2015. It was the first successful attempt for overseas dissemination of Chinese audiovisual products. Few researches about it have been done till now even though a large number of cultural phenomena and translation examples in it are worth an in-depth study. Taking E. A. Nida’s functional equivalence theory as its theoretical framework, this article starts with elaborating on the subtitle linguistic and cultural features of Empresses in the Palace and analyzes how its subtitle translation achieves functional equivalence by adopting different strategies such as omission, rewriting, loan translation and other methods, with the purpose of making the target audience share the same feeling as Chinese audience. This paper is intended to find what Chinese translators should learn from American peers so as to be inspiring for Chinese audiovisual translation studies.

Key words: Empresses in the Palace; functional equivalence theory; subtitle translation

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABSTRACT

摘要

Chapter One INTRODUCTION.1

Chapter Two LITERATURE REVIEW.3

2.1 Previous Studies on Subtitle Translation3

2.2 Previous Studies on Empresses in the Palace5

Chapter Three INTRODUCTION TO EMPRESS IN THE PALACE6

3.1 A Brief Introduction to Empresses in the Palace.6

3.1.1 Linguistic Features of Empresses in the Palace6

3.2 Untranslatability of Empresses in the Palace.7

3.2.1 Linguistic untranslatability.7

3.2.2 Cultural untranslatability8

Chapter Four FUNCTIONAL EQUIVALENCE THEORY10

4.1 A Brief History of Functional Equivalence Theory10

4.2 Main Content of Functional Equivalence.10

4.3 Significance of Functional Equivalence Theory.11

Chapter Five FUNCTIONAL EQUIVALENCE IN THE TRANSLATION OF EMPRESSES IN THE PALACE.13

5.1 Using Loan translation to Achieve Functional Equivalence.13

5.2 Using Omission to Achieve Functional Equivalence14 

5.3 Using Rewriting to Achieve Functional Equivalence.15 

5.4 Using Free Translation to Achieve Functional Equivalence.16

Chapter Six CONCLUSION.18

WORKS CITED.19