Today, economic globalization has penetrated into all areas of our economic, social and cultural life. Film is a universal and popular form of art, which plays an increasingly important role in the cultural communication of countries. Due to the introduction of numerous foreign films, film translation has received more and more attention. Film can disseminate information, express feelings, and reflect people’s lives, in can also make the audience receive artistic enjoyment. Film translation is very significant in the cultural exchange and dissemination of different nations. However, the overall quality of film translation in China needs to be strengthened. Although there are many excellent films being introduced, insufficient attention has been given to the translation. Film language and themes embody the nationally traditional culture, which is reflected by characteristics of the characters in the films, and they promote the development of film plot.
With the rise of film industry in the world, China also follows the world trend, introducing a large number of high-quality films. In recent years, numerous English films in China have gained remarkable development, and record ed high at the box office, which is closely related to translators’ translation of English film. According to Eugene A. Nida’s opinion, “Since the translator himself is the focal element in translating, and thus there cannot be any completely impersonal objectivity in his work—since he is a part of the cultural context in which he lives—his role is central to the basic principles and procedures of
translating.” (N ida 145)Chinese film translation career has traversed a course of more than half a century. In this period, film translators have offered the audience a good number of dubbed films, and let us know different foreign customs and culture. Spectators not only knew these different foreign customs, but also felt the sweat and efforts of the translators.
“The task of translation is to realize the inter- lingual meaning conversion as perfect as possible under the condition of exerting social function of translation, and seek to the correspondent meaning as accurate as possible.”(Liu 52) Translation of film language and that of literary works have similarities, but also uniqueness. As a special form of artistic expression, film is different from the purely literary and photographic work. Film translation needs translators to figure out the persity of language, movie character, culture and history of the film. It should not only reflect the emotion, mood, and artistic conception, but also need higher demands on the translator’s abilities. Therefore, in the process of handling the film language, it should be different when we treat the general literature. We should translate with the combination of the particularity of film language. There are a lot of cultural differences between China and the West, which bring great challenges to translators. How to translate English film into these contents that our Chinese audience are familiar with becomes a big problem.
2. Literature Review
2.1 Overseas studies of film translation
Many scholars have studied this topic in the past years. Here are two examples: The first one is Michael Cronin, an academic specialist in culture of Ireland. He said in his book Translation Goes to the Movies that: “In the context of the globalizing mission of cinema, it is hardly surprising that the question of language difference and translation should be largely ignored in the study of cinema itself.”(Cronin xix)来.自>优:尔论`文/网www.youerw.com
The second example comes from the book The Theory and Practice of Translation, “Basically there are two different systems for translating. The first consist in setting up a series of rules which are intended to be applied strictly in order and are designed to specify 英语电影翻译方法的归类与策略研究(2):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_80415.html