Abstract

With the booming of Chinese film industry, manufacturers of Chinese films are eager to win the global market all around the world. So Chinese films always provide foreign audiences English subtitles. However, it is impossible to dissociate culture from language. The culture vacancy between different languages becomes the main barrier for the target audience to appreciate the elements with Chinese characteristics in the films, especially in the comedy films. Therefore, subtitle translators are important in eliminating culture barriers and helping Chinese films to reach out to the world. However, scholars have not paid enough attention to the researches on subtitle translation yet and there are not any mature theories guide the subtitle translation practice, which leaves plenty of space for further study. This paper attempts to analyze some examples chosen from the Personal Tailor to explain the culture vacancy in subtitle translation and conclude the translation strategies such as domestication and foreignization adopted in translating culture vacancy to help the target audience get the same appreciate experience as the local audience to a large extent.

Keywords: subtitle translation; culture vacancy; Personal Tailor

摘要

随着中国电影业的高速发展，中国电影制片者为了赢得国际电影市场，通常提供给国外观影者英文版电影字幕。语言与文化共生，因为中西方文化空缺的存在，中国电影尤其是中国喜剧电影中很多中国特有的文化因素很难被西方观众理解，因此，电影字幕翻译者在消除两种文化交流之间存在的障碍以及帮助中国电影走向世界的过程中起着重要的作用。然而，有关学者并未对字幕翻译给予太多重视，指导字幕翻译的理论至今尚未成熟，仍有很大的研究空间。因而，本文旨在以电影《私人定制》为例，通过对该电影字幕翻译中译例的分析，总结译者如何使用如归化、异化等翻译策略处理电影字幕翻译中的文化空缺，令观影者最大程度上获得与本土观众相似的观影感受。

关键词：字幕翻译；文化空缺；私人定制