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2.2 Study of Subtitle Translation at Home
Compared with translation in other fields, subtitle translation is not that ordinary and important. There is no professional press publishing subtitle translation edition with copyrights. However, in the field of translation, experts are calling on more attention to subtitle translation.
Professor Sun Yinfeng(孙艺凤,2002:92)from Lingnan University Hong Kong defines humor as social phenomena. Humor often concerns with religious belief, social idea, political system, cultural custom and other related aspects. Every joke happens with the interaction between the one who tells jokes and the one who listens. Jokes make people laugh, so laugh is also the ultimate goal of humor translation. So Professor Sun Yifeng concludes that it is the cultural elements of the target language that should be paid attention to. Translators should be more considerate about the target audiences’ values, cultural orientation and so on.
Professor Qian Shaochang(钱绍昌,2000:61)from Shanghai International Studies University considers subtitle translation as a field of growing importance. In his paper “Film Translation—A Translation Field of Growing Importance”, he summaries five features of film language: 1. Listening. We enjoy films and TV programs through listening, rather than reading. Subtitle translation is a process of transforming sound signals into words, so that audiences will not misunderstand due to similar pronunciations. 2. Comprehensiveness. A show contains various elements, including scenes, settings, lights, background music, etc. and all these elements need to be taken into consideration before translating is conducted. Translators should employ any applicable translation strategy to convey the abstract information to target audiences. 3. Instance. If a person misses information when reading a book, he can turn pages back to pick up the information, but if he misses information in a TV show, scenes cannot be turned back. This feature requires subtitle translation concise and precise. 4. Commonness. TV programs face a large group of audiences of all ages. Thus the language is required to be the most ordinary one, so that people of all levels of age and education can understand the show. 5. Limitation. When coming across culture difficulties, readers can turn to notes for reference. However, it is impossible for film viewers to refer to notes when watching films, because putting notes on the bottom of the screen may cause distractions. This sets more difficulty for translators.
Professor Li Yunxing(李运兴,2001:38) from Tianjin Normal University demonstrates two features of subtitle translation in his paper “Strategies for Subtitle Translation”. One is that the information that audiences get from the translated version may interact with what they get from the audio version. There is much information involved in the source language text, including images, sounds, music, and other related elements. Though subtitle translation is supposed to carry as much information as possible, something that cannot be translated accurately still exists. Thus, subtitle translation itself is not adequate; under this circumstance, audience can get supplementary information from the performance of actors and the atmosphere of the spot. Compared with other types of literature translation, this is the advantage subtitle translation has over the others. The other feature of subtitle translation is that audiences can clearly hear the pronunciation of the source language while enjoying the play. Audiences, especially educated ones, may unconsciously adopt a critical attitude toward the translation version of the subtitle. So subtitle translation requires an extremely high quality to meet the demand of target audiences.
2.3 Study of Subtitle Translation Abroad
As audio-visual culture emerges earlier abroad than in China, the study of subtitle translation also starts earlier abroad, thus it also develops faster abroad.