4.2 Substitution 9

4.3 Free translation 10

4.4 Adding 11

Conclusion 13

Acknowledgements 14

Bibliography 15

1 Introduction

The movie is a kind of mass entertainment that people familiar with. With the connection to the world and the further strengthening of cultural exchanges, more and more western films appear in Chinese people's entertainments. Although film translation is an important part of cultural communication, it is not taken seriously. We start researching later than western countries in film translation; it is still at the initial stage. People engaged in the research are few, and the articles published in academic journals are extremely limited. The research perspective is too narrow compared with the western. There is also some research direction that is not involved in, therefore further research is necessary. This paper suggests that the final purpose of subtitle translation is to help the audience enjoy the film, and that the translators should try to make the language concise, clear, fluent, and let the audience get more information at the cost of relatively minimal cognitive efforts at the same time. The paper discusses the characteristics of film subtitles and restriction factors from the perspective of linguistics. According to the restriction and the characteristics of film translation, the paper puts forward the corresponding solution strategies. 

1.1 Background of English Film Translation

Nowadays, with the development of economy, the film industry is facing a global market. More and more foreign films are being introduced into China. Therefore, audiovisual translation starts playing an increasingly important role in translation field. Audiovisual translation comprises dubbing translation and subtitle translation. In the beginning, there were more films had been dubbed. That was because the audiences' level of foreign language was very low and if there was no dubbed film, the audiences could not understand the film, and say nothing of enjoying the film. However, subtitle is becoming more and more popular. In addition, so many cinemas are using “imported blockbusters with original sound-track” as their advertisement, which can attract so many audience to the cinema. 

1.2 Previous Studies on English Film Translation

In China, however, audiovisual translation in the media is a new genre. It has not been largely explored in the field of translation studies. We are still on the stage of summarizing strategies and experiences and seldom touch the point of theory.

Profess Qian Shaochang in Shanghai International Studies University was the leader of the field of audiovisual translation in China. He engaged in domestic studies, such as, American TV-play Growing Pains, the Thorn Birds, and movie Grand Hotel, and so on. He also had success on audiovisual translation theory. In 2000, he published a film translation-A More and More Important Branch in the Audiovisual Translation Field. Qian Shaochang appealed the field of translation to pay more attention to audiovisual translation. He pointed out the importance of audiovisual translation and concluded the five features of audiovisual translation. Moreover, in his opinion, during the audiovisual translation, fluency was the most important part in the rules of fidelity, accuracy, and elegance.

Professor Ma Zhengqi in Communication University of China mainly researched on translation and the propagation of cross-cultural. He had nearly 30 years of practical experiences of audiovisual translation. He translated movies more than 50, TV-plays and TV-series more than 600 for International Cinema of the program Chiatai theatre, among which, Misery of the Missing, Madame Curie, also had won national outstanding dubbed at the Flying Goddess Award. He published his monograph in 2005 and the title was Introduction of Film Dubbing. From the perspective of essentialism, he defined the concept of dubbed and discussed about the essence, the attribute, and the importance of dubbed.