2.3 Introduction of the Film Great Expectations

Charles Dickens is a great critical realist novelists and writers in the 19th. Besides, he is also a very popular writer of all time and has created many best-known characters in literature of English. He lived in Portsmouth, a city of England. His family was so poor. His dad was just a clerk with the navy. So, he just attended to school for a time; however, Charles left school when he was twelve because of t family situation. As the time going on, his dad was arrested. Charles had to support the beloved family. He worked in a shoe factory as a reporter, a law firm and a newspaper office. Despite all this, he became a writer through studying by himself. Dickens had got much experience of lives and people around him. Many thoughts about environment were around him. And then, all of mature thought consist the book Great Expectations.

The story Great Expectations chose Britain as a set in the early 19th century; the hero Pip is a poor orphan who lives together with her sister and the blacksmith's brother-in-law. Pip tried his best to be a “gentleman” and want to many with a girl. But finally he alienated his real friends. Finally, his poor friend brother-in-law recued him in the critical moment after that he received the bad man’s wealthy. Pip found his nature at last; expectations of the future will become a fantasy.

3. A Survey of Subtitle

3.1 Definition of Subtitle Translation

Subtitle is a flash in the text on the screen，it is different from the words on the books for readers referring. Movie audiences can get clear information through the coherence of subtitles. It has two characteristics which are important. First, Subtitle language information and visual information all closely cooperate with auditory information. The second is Subtitle language information is rendered into types. In recent years, the number about subtitle translation is growing.

Film subtitle is “a printed statement or fragment of dialogue appearing on the screen between the scenes of a silent motion picture or appearing as a translation at the bottom of the screen during the scenes of a motion picture or television show in a foreign language.”（Zhang C.B.,2004:182-192）. In a word, film subtitles supplement much useful information during the scene when we can’t understand.

Film subtitle can consider being vertical, when the target language is not less than the source language, and diagonal, when the target and the source language are different (Gottlieb & Henrik, 1998:15). Interlingua film subtitling was discussed in this thesis.

3.2 Features and Functions 

Film subtitle must have something in common with general literature because it is a part of literature translation. So, it has to follow the general rule of literary translation. However, most subtitle translation is affected by the particularity of art itself. Film as a comprehensive art is a blend of the language, painting, drama, etc. Therefore, in the translation of movie subtitles will aim to demonstrate the style of these. In terms of film subtitles, immediacy and popularity also makes the movie subtitles differ from general literature text. It‘s transient on the screen requires the movie subtitles more popular and easy to understand. Film is considered to be a comprehensive art, which is for the audience to appreciate with the cultural level of the movie lines in accordance with the general audience. So, to sum up, we can summarize several features of subtitling：