Subtitling English-Language Films for a Chinese Audience: Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Cultural Transfer

Abstract

This thesis explores the complex and intricate linguistic and cultural negotiations which take place when Anglophone films are officially subtitled for a Chinese audience. Different from the fansubbed ones, the authorised subtitles offer a stable body of work. They also underline an extra layer of cultural intervention in keeping with André Lefevere's (2002, p. 14) writing on the cultural institutions which shape the process of translation. The subtitles in question have not only been filtered through the Chinese translator's perspective, they have also been mediated by the government office which oversees the films chosen for subtitling and the way in which they are subtitled.

The thesis works on case studies from the genres of five films including children’s films, political films, chick flicks, historical films and comedy seeking to break new ground by offering the first study of subtitling in relation to thematically heterogeneous genres of films and different disciplines. This contemporary phenomenon of subtitling from English into Chinese thus provides a valuable case study for the discipline of Translation Studies. Moreover, the project marries translation theory, literary criticism, political analysis and cultural criticism to unpick and analyse the translation strategies at play in the case study films. A dynamic theoretical framework is generated to argue that subtitles need to be evaluated as the intersection between multiple competing constraints and via the prism of multiple theoretical and scholarly disciplines.

Building on Venuti’s binary argument in relation to foreignisation and domestication, this dissertation extends it to complex translational processes which sit at the confluence of linguistic, cultural, historical, political and commercial considerations. It adopts Jerry Griswold's (2006, pp.: 1-2) four themes in the construction of children’s literature to capture and mediate the source film targeting children. When it comes to the translation of political film, Jonathan Charteris-Black (2005) and Meifang Zhang’s (2016) work on political rhetoric and analysis is applied. To respond to the challenge that translators faced in specific historical context, examples drawn from the subtitles are grouped under Eva Wai-Yee Hung’s (1980: 122) suggested aspects to unveil the historical specificities in early Dickens’s Victorian era. The chick flick case study will apply Bronislaw Malinowski’s (1994, p. 6) term “context of situation” to group examples with a clear attempt to broaden the scope of context. Lastly, in order to examine the complexities of humour in subtitling, Delia Chiaro’s (2010) notion of Verbally Expressed Humour (VEH) and four types of humour proposed by Patrick Zabalbeascoa (1996) will be considered to test the suitability of the classification of the comedic case-study film.

In order to examine the complex and intriguing subtitling relationship between the Anglophone source films and their Chinese subtitled versions, three main research questions are raised:

1. How do the five case studies cast light on the complexities and specificities of the subtitling process between Anglophone source films and the Chinese contexts for which they are destined when subtitled?

2. How do the case study films mediate the British culture and language of their source for the Chinese culture of their target audience?

3. Do specific film genres trigger the use of specific subtitling strategies in specific film genres or is the process of subtitling more fluid and dynamic?

The dissertation proved that the Chinese subtitles re-evaluate the complexities and specificities of British culture linked to the varied films and posit Chinese cultural values to shape the multidirectional facet of translation as much as the original source shapes its own. The study, thus, suggests that the hybrid dynamics of transformation occur as a result of the various forms of transfer and the interaction between them: linguistic, cultural, political, historical, ideological transfer and the transfer of gender, sexuality, and humour. Through this transformation, the Chinese subtitling process allows for elements of British heritage to permeate the Chinese culture with the ultimate goal of enhancing China’s own cultural values.