Study on Subtitle Translation in Empresses in the Palace from Audience Aspect开题报告

To some extend, subtitle translation can determine the quality of the promulgation of the videos. In the course of culture transmission, audience must enjoy the supreme priority and all what we do is to serve them. When it comes to the foreign videos, subtitle translation will always be an imperative because we cannot even understand what is going on with just the pictures shown in the videos if we are not professional bilinguals or multilinguals. What is certainly obvious and undoubtedly is that Chinese culture has profound and salient features to an incomparable and unparalleled degree, among which the traditional Chinese culture is relatively more complicated, intricate and obscure. In 2012, Empresses in the Palace has made a hit since its debut, establishing its astonishing reputation both inside and outside China. Two years later, it was finally released in the United States in an audacious cut down version, abridging a substantial number of content of its original version. This strongly condensed version inevitably leaves many plots unexplained and intrigue unintelligible, which in turn asks for a better thoughtful subtitle translation. Set in ancient China, this work attracts a lot people’s interest who have a fascination with Chinese history and imperial life. To better satiate the foreign audience’s needs in the future, we need to evaluate our translation practice of some representative works like Empresses in the Palace from audience aspect.

Focusing on the subtitle translation in Empresses in the Palace, this paper intends to study it from the audience aspect and analyse the difficulties that audience may have to comprehensively and thoroughly understand the plot and culture based on the Skopos Theory and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory.

Films and videos nowadays always have subtitles displayed at the bottom of their screens that transcribe the dialogue or narrative so that the audience could refer to for better understanding. Because of the different languages that audience and the characters in the videos speak, subtitle translation is more and more frequently needed and used in the international promotion of films and videos and it has becoming a necessity in recent years.

For subtitle translation, immediacy is of its prime feature. The audience have the only one chance to read the subtitle translation if they don’t pause and go back, which asks for the accuracy and brevity of the translation. Concerning about the limited space and time, the translation need to match the image and sound in the videos. What’s more, the target language had better be similar to the source language in the length of words, which is an unspoken extra requirement of subtitle translation for its visual beauty. In the traditional Chinese TV series, there are many contents unique to China like idioms and allusions. How to translate and transfer these peculiar words and meanings is a big problem.

Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Research Background

1.2 Research Objectives

1.3 Research Significance

1.4 Thesis Structure

Chapter 2 Literature Review

2.1 Researches on subtitle translation of traditional Chinese TV series

2.1.1Brief introduction to subtitle translation

2.1.2 Difficulties in traditional Chinese TV series subtitle translation

2.2 Researches on Empresses in the Palace

Chapter 3 Theoretical Framework

3.1 International Publicity Translation

3.2 Three Rules of Skopos Theory and Feasibility on Subtitle Translation

3.2.1 Three Rules of Skopos Theory

3.2.2 Feasibility of Three Rules on Subtitle Translation

3.3 Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Chapter 4 Source Subtitle Text Analysis and Audience Analysis

4.1 Source Subtitle Text Analysis

4.1.1 Linguistics Feature of Source Subtitle Text

4.1.2 Cultural Feature of Source Subtitle Text

4.1.3 Constraints to Source Subtitle Text Translation

4.1.4 Implications of Source Subtitle Text on Translation

4.2 Audience Analysis

4.2.1 Classification of Audiences

4.2.2 Needs of Audiences

4.2.3 Implications of Audiences’ Needs on Translation

Chapter 5 Case Analysis from Audiences Aspect

5.1 Translation Analysis for Ordinary Audiences’ Primary Needs

5.2 Translation Analysis for Special Audiences’ Intermediate Needs

5.3 Translation Analysis for Expert Audiences’ Advanced Needs

Chapter 6 Conclusion

6.1 Summary of Findings

6.2 Implications

6.3 Limitations and Suggestions

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