I. Introduction
Film production has been developing in leaps and bounds ever since and gradually boom as one of the most profitable industries of the world nowadays. As a dominant role in the world, film industries sell their film products all over the world. The Hollywood film industry----the engine of the world film industry is definitely the best evidence．According to the statistics，in the 1930s and 1940s，Hollywood films produced nearly 75% of the film market share in china. Never before have we seen so many foreign films flooding the domestic market and never before have we seen so many Chinese films going abroad. These films were generally dubbed into Chinese because few Chinese audiences understood English at that time. Therefore, film subtitle translation can not present real meanings to the viewers except for the translation of some inter-titles.
The significances of the present research are reflected in the following aspects. Since the thesis attempts to combine both film subtitle translation and skopos theory together, it might be conductive to the enrichment of both fields, beneficial to the practice of film subtitle translation as well as the promotion of our understanding of general translation theory.
II. Definition of film subtitling
A. Subtitle
According to George-Michael Luyken(1991), “subtitles are condensed written
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translations of original dialogue which appears as line of text, usually positioned towards the foot of the screen, subtitles appear and disappear to coincide in time with corresponding portion of the original dialogue and are almost always added to the screen image at a later date as a post-production activity”(335).
B. Definition of film subtitling
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” (Merriam 1175). In short，film subtitles are supplements，in the sense that they supply information unavailable from the phonetic dialogue and visual picture.
Film subtitles are different from “displays” or “captions”. “Displays” are “fragments of text recorded by the camera-letters, newspapers, headlines, banners etc” (Gottlieb l01-121). “Captions” (or “top titles”) are pieces of “textual information usually inserted by the program maker to identify names，places or dates relevant to the story line”(Luyken). This distinction is maintained here and “subtitles” do not include displays or captions, unless otherwise stated.
Film subtitle can be both “intralingual” (and “vertical”), when the target language is the same as the source language, and “intralingual” (or “diagonal”), when the target language is different from the source language (Gottlieb 249-258). “Film subtitle” in this thesis is used to refer to interlingual
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film subtitle, unless otherwise stated．
Film subtitle can be “open”, when the target text constitutes a physical part of the translated film and is transmitted together with the film sound and image，or “closed”, when the target text is stored in a digital/teletext format which is transmitted in as well as accessed via a separately coded channel at the discretion of the viewers(Gottlieb 247). In this thesis, “film subtitle”, refers to open film subtitle, unless otherwise stated.
III. A brief introduction to skopostheorie
A. The process of skopos
Skopos is the Greek word for “aim” or “purpose” and was induced into translation theory in the 1970s by Hans J. Vermeer as a technical term for the purpose of a translation and of the action of translating skopos focuses on the purpose of the translation, which determines the translation methods and strategies that are to be employed in order to produce a functionally adequate result, the target text (TT), called the translatum by Vermeer (20-23). Therefore，in skopos theory，knowing why an source text (ST) is to be translated and what the function of the TT will be are crucial for the translator.
In the 1970s there appeared a school in translation studies in Germany functionalism. Katharina Reiss firstly pointed out in his work Translation Criticism (2004). The representatives are Katharina Reiss, Hans J. Vermeer and Christiane
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Nord. They hold that translation is a kind of action with a purpose. This theory is first presented by Reiss and Vermeer in their book Grundlegung einer allgemeinen Translationstheorie (1984) (General Foundations of Translation Theory).
Since 1978, German translation theorist H. J. Venneer, who breaks through the traditional equivalence-based the theory that centers on source text，creates the skopostheories with the translation purpose or function of a translation as a general principle on the basis of theory of action(23-24). It is generally agreed now that translation is a type of human action. According to Vermeer, human action is intentional and purposeful behavior that takes place in a given situation, which modifies the situation at the same time (205-210). Skopos argues that the shape of target text should above all be determined by the function or “Skopos” that it is intended to fulfill in the target context.
Vermeer believes that the purpose of a target text determines the translation strategies. In his opinion, the purpose of a target text, which is so important, is great extent decided by target readers, cultural background. In Hans J Vemeer’s
Skopos and Commission in Translational Action(1989), Vemmer puts the
Skopostheorie in this way：“Any form of translation action, including therefore translation itself, maybe conceived as an action, as the name implies. Any action has an aim, a purpose. The word Skopos, then, is a technical term for the aim or purpose of a translation.” In her book Translating as a Purposeful Activity: Functionalist Approaches Explained (2001), Christiane Nord defines the
skopostheorie that “Skopos is a Greek word for purpose”(13-14). According to skopostheorie (the theory that applies the notion of Skopos to translation), the
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prime principle determining any translation process is the purpose (skopos) of the overall translational action. This fits in with intentionality being part of the very definition of any action.
B. Three rules of the Skopostheorie
Skopos theory involves three rules, i. e. skopos rule, coherence rule and fidelity rule, which will be discussed as follows.
1. Skopos rule
Vermeer postulates that as a general rule it must be the intended purpose of the target text that determines translation methods and strategies. From this postulate, he derives the skopos rule: Human action(and its subcategory：translation) is determined by its purpose(Skopos), and therefore it is a function of its purpose(Baker 236).
Vermeer explains the Skopos rule in the following way,
“Each text is produced for a given purpose and should serve this purpose. The skopos rule thus reads as follows: translate／interpret／speak／write in a way that enables your text／translation to function in the situation in which it is used and with the people who want to use it and precisely in the way they want it to function” (29).
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It is also pointed out that most translational actions allow a variety of skopos, which may be related to each other in a hierarchical order, and the translator should be able to justify their choice of a particular skopos in a given translational situation in translation, i.e., the skopos must be decided separately in each specific case．
Skopos rule helps the translator solve the eternal dilemmas of free vs. faithful translation, dynamic vs. formal equivalence, and so on. Nord points out that the skopos of a particular translation task may require a “free” or a “faithful” translation, or anything between these two extremes, depending on the purpose for which the translation is needed. (29).
2. The coherence rule
Two further general rules are the coherence rule and the fidelity rule. The coherence rule stipulates that the target text must be sufficiently coherent to allow the intended users to comprehend it, given their assumed background knowledge and situational circumstances.
The coherence rule, or in Vermeer’s terms, the standard of “intra-textual coherence” means “the receiver should be able to understand it: it should make sense in the communicative situation and culture in which it is received” (Nord 32). The coherence rule specifies that “a translation should be acceptable in a sense that it is coherent with the receivers’ situation” (Nord 32).
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That is to say, the translator’s task is to produce a text that is at least likely to be meaningful to target-culture receivers, namely, to be coherent with the receivers’ situation and thus to be understood by the receivers. Only when the receivers understand it as being sufficiently coherent with their situation, can this communicative interaction be regarded as successful.
3. The fidelity rule
However, just being coherent with the target situation is not enough. A translation is an offer of information about a preceding offer of information; therefore there is a relationship between the translation and the source text. Vermeer calls this relationship “inter-textual coherence or “fidelity”. This is postulated as a further principle, referred to as the “fidelity rule” (Nord 32)
“Inter-textual coherence should exist between source and target text, while the form it takes depends both on the translator’s interpretation of the source text and on the translation skopos” (Nord 1-32). For example, one possible kind of inter-textual coherence could be a maximally faithful imitation of the source text.
We know that the source text is intended for the source culture receivers instead of translation，therefore when it is translated for the different target-culture recipients, maybe the function of the target text or the purpose of the translation is different from that of the source text. In this case，the “fidelity rule” should give way to the skopos rule. However, the translator should aim for
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any possible compatibility between the skopos and inter-textual coherence.
The three basic rules of the skopostheorie are designed to govern the translator’s activities in the whole translation process. In most cases, due to the reason that the skopos of the translation is frequently likely to deviate from the intention of the corresponding source language text, a translation cannot satisfy the three rules at the same time．
IV. Film subtitle translation of If You Are the One from the perspective of skopostheorie
In subtitle translation of If You Are the One, in particular, its skopos is determined by the intention of its director as the initiator and the expectation of the English speaking viewers as the receivers of the English subtitles; its shape is determined by its skopos and the subtitler. This part is to analyze how the factors mentioned above determine the skopos and shape of translated subtitles in If You Are the One, and how strategies are employed to fulfill its skopos.
A. Brief review of the film If You Are the One The film for 2008, If You Are the One, stars Feng’s longtime collaborator, Ge You, as a man in his 40s, newly rich, looking to settle down and start a family. Having made an instant fortune through his sale of the Conflict Resolution Terminal 2008, middle-aged entrepreneur Qin Fen (Ge You) turns his attention to finding a wife. Using all online personals service, he auditions potential spouses,
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but few make a lasting impression. Qin Fen’s stalwart personality is partly to blame；he’s intent on finding a suitable match，and is willing to walk away from even an absolute goddess if there’s a hint of incompatibility. So it goes with comely flight attendant Smiley Liang (Shu Qi), who Qin Fen initially recognizes as a poor match. Regardless, the two commiserate over drinks, where the melancholy Smiley reveals that she’s dating a married man (Alex Fong). The two parts intends never to meet again, with each returning to their own pursuit of love.
But as fate and the screenwriters would have it, Qin Fen and Smiley meet again on all airline flight，with Smiley working, Qin Fen traveling, and Smiley’s boyfriend and wife also present. The coincidence draws Qin Fen and Smiley back together, propelling them on the road to friendship and perhaps more, with occasional stops at fine luxury entertainment locations, where they sip expensive drinks while verbally sparring over their views on love. Qin Fen aims for a home run with his potential mate, while Smiley seems willing to settle if she can’t have her idealized，unattainable love. In response, Qin Fen tries to convince her otherwise while attempting not to appear as he’s trying to. It’s the story of one man’s tough love, except with a picturesque tour of fabulous locations that only people with money can visit. Somewhere in there, Qin Fen’s loyalty and stalwart affection is supposed to comfort Smiley’s wounded heart or something like that.
B. An analysis of subtitle translation of If You Are the One based on skopos
In subtitle translation of If You Are the One, in particular, its skopos is determined by the intention of its director Feng Xiaogang as the initiator and the
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expectation of the English-speaking viewers as the receivers of the English subtitles; its shape is determined by its skopos and the subtitler. This part is to analyze how the factors mentioned above determine the skopos and shape of translated subtitles in If You Are the One and how the strategies are employed to fulfill its skopos.
1. Feng Xiaogang’s intention
Feng never denies his wish to defeat the Hollywood films at the box office by adapting Hollywood’s game rules (Rosen 336).
Feng discloses that the Associate President of Columbia Pictures, Mr.Geris once said to him, “Your films have never been shown in overseas countries and thus you are not known to the viewers outside your country．Big Shot’s Funeral serves as an advertisement to publicize you and I hope it can provide the foundation for your second and third film in the overseas market” (Feng 187). From Mr. Geris’s wish, we can also find Feng’s ambition to gain the market share in foreign countries. And the film If You Are the One has proved to be well received in the North American market.
Feng recalls in his book that on a seminar about the making of Big Shot’s Funeral，some people asked him whether the production strategy of the film
should be considered as Hollywood’s cultural invasion into Chinese film industry. He replies that “it is a win-win deal and a two-edged sword” and that this kind of cooperation is cost-efficient because it “still makes Chinese films，but faces the
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global market” (Feng 187). As for Feng Xiaogang, the way to revive domestic market and march into international market is to cooperate with foreign film production companies and internationalize domestic film success.
From above，we can see that the director’s intention is to bridge the gap between
Chinese and foreign cultures and gain market share in foreign countries，which is the major part of translation brief.
2. Skopos analysis
To define the skopos, we should verify the translation brief. Although it is said that a brief should be given by the clients, more often than not, it is not the case. Then a translator should have the ability to verify it by himself. The translation brief of the present case could be specified as follows：
a. The intended text functions: the main function of the TT is referential. If You Are the One is more a commercial movie than art，the intended text function is first
of all referential, to provide information about what is going on the screen. Then it may come the expressive function to relay the sender’s attitude and feelings. The translator must weigh against different functions and decide on the main one. In the present case，it is the referential function that wins the upper hand. Translator has to make a choice according to the skopos of the translation of film subtitle. Feng’s film subtitle translation aims to win the target market so that translator
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has to produce clear and concise subtitled film dialogues bridging the cultural gaps and make the narrative easily accessible for the audience. Thus, the target audience will find it easier to accept and understand the translated subtitles. Here are some examples.
(1)秦奋 ：不算老实但天生胆小
I'm no angel
杀人不犯法我也下不去手
Just too cowardly to do wrong
The west and east have different religious beliefs. In Christianity, Angel is a good spirit who is kind, lovely and innocent. Here, Qin Fen describes himself as a man who is not well-behaved．So he is not like an angel.
(2)别猫哭耗子了
Spare me the alligator tears
In China, there is a proverb“猫哭耗子假慈悲”. This means the cat pretends to be sympathetic to the death of the mouse because she can have it as a meal. In western culture, people think that while having meals, usually an animal, an alligator will shed tears. So alligator tears implies disguised sympathy.
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(3)有的人是情人眼里才是西施
Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder
不过分的说, 仇人眼里你都是西施
But no exaggeration, even to a foe，you’d be beautiful
The above underlined words or proverbs are all culture-loaded. Domestication is adopted to make the western audience fully understand the film.
b. The addressees:It is self-evident that the TT addressees in subtitle translation are the foreign audience, probably adults, who share a different culture background and who are lay of Chinese. To be specific, they are common people who watch it for entertainment and film festival juries who view it with a discerning eye, eg.
秦奋：那咱俩要是结婚了
So，if we get married
非得倒插门我去你们那儿吗
I have to go to live with your family?
In China, in most cases，after marriage, the wife lives with the husband’s
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family.
“倒插门”means the husband lives with wife’s family. In this sentence, it is deleted since it expresses the same meaning as “我去你们那儿”.
c. The time and place of text reception: The time and space of reception is less controversial，which vary in different cases. In this case, the time is up to now from 2008 when it was released to the public and the place is at the very beginning cinema and later on amounts to a wide range of places thanks to the development of technologies such as DVD.
So far, the skopos of the translation can be defined as to supplement the film by providing the optimal information for the audience in written form within a limited time and space.
V. Film subtitle translation of Curse of the Golden Flower from the perspective of skopostheorie
In this part, the subtitle translation of Curse of the Golden Flower is analyzed with the background of the skopos theory.
A. Background of Curse of the Golden Flower
Curse of the Golden Flower is derived from the story Thunderstorm, one of the
best-known masterpieces by the most famous Chinese playwright Cao Yu. But the
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adaptation doesn’t stay too faithful to the original. The film is a historical drama directed by Zhang Yimou who also co-wrote the screenplay in Chinese. The screen version is established in the 10th century during the short-1ived Late Tang Dynasty, about a thousand years ago.
For today’s viewers，it is a story about court intrigues and deceptions. Moreover there are several pivotal factors within the plot, among which, traditional Chinese medicine is the foremost one since the Emperor in the film is gradually poisoning his wife, the Empress, by adding a deadly fungus to her medicine. Zhang Yimou the director gives his explanation of the arrangement that “as for the Emperor’s personality, well, he’d love to stay in the royal pharmacy all the time. He’s a drug freak. That’s how his character is developed and expanded upon. He’s just so into the drug”.
B. An analysis of subtitle translation of Curse of the Golden Flower based on skopos
The title of the movie，which is literally translated as “The Whole City is Clothed in Golden Armor”, is the last line taken from a Tang Dynasty poem---Do
not Endow with Chrysanthemum Behind written by Huang Chao who rose in rebellion in 875 and died 9 years later.
After changing the title several times, the screenwriters as well as the director finally settle on the poem for the reason that it indicates the rebellion taken by the Prince against the Emperor in the movie. The Chinese audience may easily
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understand the cultural connotation while the English-speaking audience who are not familiar with the background of the poem, due to the great disparity in terms of cultural background, may not comprehend the implicit aspects of the title without the explanatory message or footnote. Consequently, this kind of culturally loaded expressions will put a lot of processing efforts on the target audience. In addition, with the constraints of time and space, if they focus on the reading of the subtitle, they will lose some of the visual and audio information．
To solve this problem, the subtitler discards the Chinese title and adapts a new one with the image of the golden flower taken as a symbol to reveal the palace intrigue and the machination of power play to the target audience. The golden flower is designed to function as the symbol of rebellion, which is the same as the title. Hence its images appearing in the film once and again will, in another form, retrieve the loss of the culturally loaded information caused by the substitution since film is a multidimensional art involving visual images, sound, colors and so on. Let’s see some examples:
(1)辰时的药煎好了
Your Majesty’s medicine for the hour is ready
(2)执令官统领后宫羽林军
The Imperial Guards protect our private palaces
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It is no easy job to translate cultural elements in subtitle translating. The underlined parts of the source text are omitted in the target text since these cultural elements do not deliver adequate information and there is no time to explain all details. Their function can be retrieved by the image and the subtitler is careful enough not to omit information that could at a later stage be essential for the understanding of the story.
According to adequacy and equivalence theory, the translator can not offer the same amount and kind of information as the source-text producer. What the translator does is to offer another kind of information in another form (Reiss & Vermeer 123). Located in a broader ecological culture, the subtitling succeeds in producing a communicative interaction in the target text. We may find another example in this film：
(3)当年你只是一个小小的都尉
At that time，you were only a lowly captain.
“都尉”here refers to the low-ranking officer in Tang Dynasty. If a simple transliteration as “Duwei” is adopted, it is completely meaningless to the English-speaking audience and fails to achieve intra-textual coherence. Whether to translate the complete meaning of “Duwei”, on the other hand, makes no difference to the comprehension of the plot for the source text producer just means that the Emperor mounts the throne from the bottom. Therefore the subtitler, by chunking it up, translates it into “a lowly captain” to establish
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inter-textual coherence as well as intra-textual coherence in the target text.
(4)儿臣为了母后从此不再服药
You will never drink the poison again.
In the film, what the Empress drinks is a kind of Chinese medicine containing the ingredient that will cause a person to lose his or her entire mental faculty. According to traditional Chinese medicine, any medicine has 30% poison ingredients. Therefore some ingredients are useful as well as poisonous. Their curative value is restricted to certain diseases and certain dosage based on the theory of using poison to cure poison. These ingredients belong to the category of medicine despite of their toxicity. By chunking down the medicine into poison, the subtitler defines the meaning in the narrowest sense and makes the implicit information explicit to accomplish intra-textual coherence in the target text．
VI. Conclusion
A. Contribution
Skopostheorie provides translators with a whole new perspective into translation action. This paper conducts a systematic analysis of crucial factors that influence the strategies of subtitle translation, in which skopostheorie is adopted to guide the descriptive and explanatory analysis.
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On the basis of the above analysis, this paper gets some enlightenment of skopostheorie on subtitle translation. The enlightenment of “intra-textual coherence” on subtitle translating is that the target receiver should be able to understand the translated version of subtitle. And the translated version should make sense in the communicative situation and culture in which it is received. The subtitler should always keep the target viewers in mind. After exploring the main components of skopostheorie and analyzing the specific constraints in film subtitle translation, the author tries to find out some enlightenment of skopostheorie on subtitle translation. In order to find out the enlightenment, this paper analyzes Feng Xiaogang’s film in light of skopostheorie. The film If You Are the One proves to be successful in its target market. Therefore, this paper tries to
find out influencing factors that affect the subtitler’s choice of strategies.
The author gives focus to the skopos of subtitle translation, the more influencing role of the film director in subtitle translation and the importance of target audience. With reference to skopostheorie，subtitle translating is a purposeful activity and the purpose of the whole translational action is the prime principle that determines the translation process. The basic purpose or skopos of subtitle translation is to aid the viewers with a translated film dialogue, to provide them with the most relevant information in the most effective way within its specific constraints，to help them in understanding what’s happening on the screen with ease.
B. Limitations
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Owing to the limitations of time and space，the source data collected for the thesis is limited. Meanwhile because of the knowledge limitations this paper can not deeply analyzes the translation of Chinese film subtitles into English ones from the perspective of skopostheorie. It is the author’s sincere wish that if possible, in the future, further research can be done on comparative study on Chinese-English translation and English-Chinese translalion of film subtitles.
Work Cited
Baker, Mona. Routledge Encyclopeata of Translation Studies. Shanghai：Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press(2004)：Baker,
Christiane, Nord. Translating as a Purposeful Activity: Functional Approaches Explained. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2001.
Feng, X. G[冯小刚] 我把青春献给你 武汉：长江文艺出版社 2003: 187
Gottlieb, H. Teaching Translation and Interpreting. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1998
Gottlieb, H. Media Translation. Amsterdam／Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2001
Gottlieb, H. Subtitfing: Diagonal translation In C. Dollerup et al. (eds), Perspectives Studies in Translatology. Copenhagen: University of Cpenhagen, 1994
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l01-121．
Gottlieb, H. Anglicisms and TV Subtitles in an Anglified World: [A] Gambier Yves, 249-258
Gottlieb, H. Subtitling-a new university discipline in Teaching Translating and Interpreting. (eds) Dollerup, Cay＆A. Loddegaard.70-161. Amsterdam: John Benjamin. 1998: 247
Katharina, Reiss. Translation Criticism: The Potentials＆Limitations. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2004.
Katharina, Reiss and Hans J. Vermeer. Grundlegung einer allgemeinen Translationstheorie. Tubingen：Niemeyer, 1984
Luyken.George,Michael. Overcoming Language Barriers in Television. [M] Manchester: European Institute for the Media 1991. Luyken,George-Michael. Overcoming Language Barriers in Television. [M] Manchester: European Institute for the Media 1991. Merriam-Webster. Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. 1997：1175
Rosen，S．(2002)．狼来了：好莱坞与中国电影市场,. 全球化与中国影视的命运 336-360. (S. Y Sun, Trans.). Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press. 1994-2000
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Vermeer, Hans J. Skopos and Commission in Translational Action in Chesterman(ed). 1989, 20-233.
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