《西部世界》第一季中文字幕研究

论文总字数：33309字

摘 要

根据奈达总结的翻译理论，翻译的充分性应该由与源文本的功能对等性来判断，其中包括词汇对等，句法对等和篇章对等和文体对等。 本论文从功能对等的角度出发，旨在比较西部世界第一季（2016年）的英文字幕与FIX字幕侠字幕组（业余字幕组）翻译的中文字幕。 本论文重点介绍了FIX字幕侠字幕组在西部世界的中文字幕翻译中的四个主要特点。

关键词：《西部世界》，FIX字幕组的字幕，功能对等

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements................................................................................................i

English Abstract....................................................................................................ii

Chinese Abstract....................................................................................................iii

Table of Contents...................................................................................................iv

Chapter One Introduction.....................................................................................1

1.1 Research background….......................................................................................1

1.2 Data .................................................................................................................................1

1.2.1 Westworld, Season 1....................................................................................1

1.2.2 FIX’s subtitles ..........................................................................................................2

1.3 Research objective and research questions....................................................................3

Chapter Two Literature review..............................................................................4

2.1 Functional Equivalence ......................................................................................4

2.2 Subtitling.............................................................................................................6

Chapter Three An Analysis of Chinese subtitles for Westworld, Season 1........9

3.1 Cultural settings for Westworld, Season 1.....................................................................9

3.2 Features of FIX’s Chinese subtitles for Westworld, Season 1...................................11

3.3 Problems of FIX’s Chinese subtitles..............................................................................16

Chapter Four Conclusion...................................................................................................17

References................................................................................................................................18

Chapter One Introduction

1.1Research background

According to the researches on English-Chinese translations, it’s easy to find that most translations focus on literature, for example, Shakespeare’s plays or Shelly’s poems. All of these original texts and translations trend to use literary terms. Under such a study direction, there are more and more bilingual literature materials and relevant translation skills being born on the market. With so abundant resources, it’s no doubt that English learners also prefer to choose study the literature translations. So, in translation area, the study on literature and it’s skills have a mature achievement till today.

However, with the development of Internet and the economic globalization, the approach of cultural communication is various and eclectic. Recent years, plenty of foreign TV series have been introduced to public in China through Internet. Compared with literature, TV series have more vitality and attraction. For example, the Great Gatsby is known by most Chinese for the film of the same name. That is to say, the click rate of TV series is much higher than the reading quantity. As a result, the requirement of the subtitle translation has increased a lot over these years. But at the same time, unlike literature translation, subtitle translation is easier to be ignored because of the lack of professional knowledge and specific studies.

1.2 Data

1.2.1 Westworld, Season 1

Westworld is a new science fiction TV series which is released by Home Box Office in 2016. The TV series are adapted from the movie of same name. In the current American and English film and television making companies, the works about science fiction are not too much. Compared with science fiction, Chinese audience is more familiar with comedy and crime theme of US TV series, such as Friends, Big Bang and criminal psychology and so on. As a science fiction series, Westworld’s subjects are new, and its characters’ dialogue language is different from the sitcom and crime drama that the Chinese audience is more familiar with, which could be more professional and more serious.

Westworld itself is about the world that in the future, people use robots to create an adult paradise whose setting is the west part of American, where visitors indulge themselves, lose human nature, while the robots gradually produce consciousness in the program updates.

Through the Westworld, we can see the writer’s deep thoughts about the development of artificial intelligence. We can also see the two central issues of the writer's attention-- human lose the human nature, while the robots explore the human nature. In addition, this work also involves a large number of American Western culture, which makes the characters’ dialogue very unique.

The director of the Westworld is Jonathan Nolan. He has served as the scriptwriter of Person of Interest. Jonathan Nolan majored in English language in the university. When he directed the film, Memento, as a scriptwriter for the first time, it was adapted from the novel written by himself. Being good at good science fiction theme, having strong language skills and a wealth of scriptwriter experience make the language of Jonathan Nolan's works is simple but valuable.

1.2.2 FIX’s subtitles

FIX subtitles were newly established in early January 2015 whose works types mainly includes suspense, science fiction and modern life. The meaning of FIX is that this group prefer to fix the shortages of subtitle translation field. The fix learns a lot from the advantages of the existing subtitles group, and also corrects a lot of shortcomings. The members of this subtitle translation group all insist the basic principle: Faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance. It aims to deliver the original meaning of the English subtitles and tries its best not to add personal feelings or thoughts. So the FIX’s language is simple and authentic, but have different levels that need audience to think about the deep meaning. The methodology mainly used by the FIX are Functional equivalence theory and Skopostheory. It strives to make the Chinese audience can receive the most acceptable subtitles and the most original meaning of TV series.

1.3 Research objective and research questions

Artificial intelligence, technology and human nature have become the main topics of heated discussion in the present era. The theme and subjects of the Westworld match this these topics very much. However, according to the experience of other subtitle translation groups, many western film and television works would face the subtitle translation problems in the introduction process, which might cause the mistakes or misunderstandings of the idea delivery, even make audience hard to understand the foreign works. Worst of all, it would be harmful to cultural communication. Therefore, the study of such a new theme of the film and television works subtitles translation will provide helps and suggestions to translation of science fiction in the future .

Chapter Two Literature review

2.1 Functional Equivalence

The main contradiction of translation is the differences between Form Correspondence and Functional Equivalence. The most obvious feature of Form Correspondence is verbatim translation on the basis of the original word, which would cause strong translationese, and it would cause that the expression cannot convey the original ideas. In fact, This form of translation is very common in the early introduced Western dramas. While The features of the Functional Equivalence is the appropriate and natural language expressions. Besides, the word will be chosen carefully and flexibly based on different themes and subjects. This method of translation could express the meanings and feelings to the greatest extent of the original author wants to convey. As a result, there will be some differences between the translation used Functional Equivalence and the original works. For example, in terms of form, the original works may use one complex long sentence, while it may just use several simple short sentence in the translation to express the same meaning.

The content of Functional Equivalence includes four aspects:

1. Vocabulary equivalence

To achieve vocabulary equivalence, we must understand the meaning of vocabulary first. The correct meaning of the vocabulary should be the most relevant to the context, so the correct understanding of the vocabulary must be based on context, rather than just see the meaning of words out of context and in the dictionary alone. In addition, in a context, one vocabulary usually only has one meaning, but there are exceptions, sometimes there are two different meanings of one vocabulary in a same context. this phenomenon is called pun. Last but not the least, it is important to notice that the meaning of the vocabulary may change. When a vocabulary expresses the general meaning, it can be replaced by the similar word. But in a special context, the meaning will change, it could play a symbol in the content, so it may expresses the meaning of the words which is related to the symbol.

Then the method used for the vocabulary translation in the translation process can be identified as followings: First, determine the range of selected vocabulary. Second, according to the different meaning of the vocabulary, determine the several existence of semantics. Third, contrast range of other terms in the same context. Finally, Determine the characteristics of the current context, and figure out whether there is a special meaning of the vocabulary. After completing the above four steps, It is really can achieve vocabulary equivalence.

1. Syntactic equivalence

Syntactic equivalence also includes three main aspects: First, the differences between English and Chinese in terms of the singular and plural. English nouns are singular and plural, meanwhile, the corresponding predicate verb has to agree with its subject in number. While the singular and plural also exist in Chinese. Some nouns have plural form, but the predicate verb does not have the form change completely. Second, the consistency of the tense. In English, the sentence has a variety of different tenses. For example, sentences may use past tense in a story happened in the last century. In contrast, Chinese language does not have the tense change, so in the translation process, it need translators to add some symbols or sign language in translation to keep the consistency of the tense. Third, the order and combination of sentences. English sentences are divided into simple sentences and compound sentences, but in Chinese, sentences are basically simple. During the translation, it need translators to pay attention to the split of the sentence. For example, a compound sentence may be decomposed into several simple short sentences. In addition, a major feature of English is that it used to putting the attributive which plays the role of modification in the end of the sentence, while Chinese prefers to put it in the front of the sentence. During the translation process, in order to achieve functional equivalence and express the original meaning at the greatest degree, we need to adjust the word.

1. Chapter equivalence

The Chapter equivalence refers to identify the function and meaning of the language in the specific context. It also includes three aspects: cultural background, situational context, immediate context. First, the cultural context refers to cultural background, historical, traditions, social psychology and so on which affect the use of language. Translation is a kind of intercultural language communication. The content of the translation is not only the transform of the linguistic symbols, but also the transform of the culture which carried by the linguistic symbols. The diversity of cultural content and form , which is the origin of cultural differences, cause the translation barriers. Second, situational context refers to the specific characters and events involved in the context, especially the interaction between the participants and their psychological emotions. It’s hard to identify a character’s language style without the situational context. So translator has to determine its exact meaning through people in communication and the language use of events. Third, immediate context refers to to judge the meaning of the language in the original text according the language of last chapter or next chapter.

1. Stylistic equivalence.

Different stylistic works have different language features. For example, the language of science fiction works might be simple and serious, while the language of poem may be lyric and emotional. So if translator wants to delivery the original stylistic feature, it’s very necessary for him to be proficient in the use of two languages. Besides, it also need more translation skills to make audience understand the stylistic feature of original works.

In these four aspects, the most important thing is the meaning of the works, then is the form. Therefore, in translation, according to Functional Equivalence theory, the translator should follow the four aspects of Functional Equivalence as the principle of translation to reproduce the foreign culture exactly in the introduced works.

2.2 Subtitling

Through the information collected by China National Knowledge Internet, the academic study of subtitle translation seems to develop rapidly recently. In fact, the study of subtitle translation in China first appeared in 1952. But due to the limitation of technology development and culture communication, the relevant researches did not continued developing. Until the 21st century, with the development and popularization of the Internet, foreign outstanding film and television works have been introduced to Chinese market. Thus the relevant researches come to blooming. Around 2014, it got to the top. only in this year, it published 295 relevant academic articles in Chinese, 15 articles in foreign language.

More than three-quarters of the published academic researches on subtitle translation focus on foreign language and culture. This shows that subtitle translation in the film and television works is a considerable part that learners’ concern. In addition, on the translation of subtitles, the translation strategy has been favored by the majority of scholars. So its academic results take up the biggest proportion of all researches, such as Li Yunxing (2001) in his subtitle translation strategy mentioned that reducing vocabulary in the subtitle translation and the different skills of translation due to cultural differences. Meanwhile, in the theoretical researches, the domestication and alienation, teleology, adaptation theory and relevance theory are also the most popular studies of translation theory. For example, Li Yu (2012) focuses on the theory of domestication and alienation in the study of subtitle translation and discusses in details about how to be better in the film subtitle translation practice in his study film subtitle translation in the view of Domestication and Alienation. his study also mentioned how to combine domestication with alienation to deal with the relationship between original culture language and target culture language, in order to reduce the contradiction in subtitle translation between two different languages. Yin Zhicheng (2015) in his study analysis on subtitle translation based on teleology focuses on the study of the three principles of the teleology - purpose, coherence and faithiness, to make it a guiding strategy for subtitle translation. Chen Rongrong (2013) argues that subtitle translation needs to meet the needs of current communication and synthesize various contexts, so that the target audience can receive the same results as the original audience, which is consistent with the theory of adaptation.

However, with regard to the popular research direction of translation strategies, these scholars focus only on translation methods and strategies. Their results tend to explain to learners how to provide more relevant translations in limited dialogue time and limited picture space. The characteristics and constraints of subtitle translation are not studied in details. This is one of the reasons why the subtitle translation is not perfect at present. If the characteristics and constraints of the subtitle translation can not be explored deeply, there are some limitations in the translation methods and strategies which is hard to overcome. In addition, in the theoretical study, most scholars tend to use the Domestication and Alienation. Since 2007 to 2016, the number of related researches up to more than 500 copies (data from China National Knowledge Internet), while researches of Nida's Functional Equivalence theory are not much, it published only about 20 articles over ten years. Actually, this theory is also very valuable.

Chapter Three An Analysis of Chinese subtitles for Westworld, Season 1

3.1 Cultural settings for Westworld, Season 1

According to the chapter equivalence of Functional Equivalence, we must sort out the cultural background and situational context of this work before we study the western film and television works thoroughly. Here, I mainly analyze the historical and cultural background and character communication.

The theme of Westworld is the awakening of human nature and the development of artificial intelligence, so the time of the whole story should be set in the future world. The robots in Westworld are all made by using 3D printing technology, the entire Westworld built by the artificial intelligence program is written in the robots’ eyes, and the control of the program depends on administrators’ consciousness. All of these are very difficult to achieve at present with current science and technology. In addition, in the Westworld people are no longer addicted to the virtual network, but keen to adult paradise, to experience more real killing and desire indulgence. Although these are different from the modern society, but it can not deny that this is the trend of modern public psychology development, so this setting is actually a warning for contemporary people.

On the other hand, the paradise's background is an era of the western American cowboy, so the paradise's time is in the nineteenth century thirty or forty decades. So the dialogue and communication of characters would show the characteristics of the times in the language.

In terms of the character communication, there are three kinds of people in the Westworld, one is the real human, one is the controlled robots, another one is the robots with the awakening awareness. When these people are in the paradise at the same time, it is very difficult to distinguish them. In the film and television works, there is little narration to help the audience to distinguish these similar characters. However, in this work the screenwriter is extremely clever to make advantage of the different language styles to help audience distinguish these three kinds of characters.

3.2 Features of FIX’s Chinese subtitles for Westworld, Season 1

As mentioned above, the FIX’s Chinese subtitle group's translation follows the theory Functional Equivalence, so the most distinctive feature of its subtitles is good comprehension. Unlike other groups translate subtitles word by word, who cannot delivery the metaphor or the meaning of the symbol the original language want to express, which often let the domestic audience confused, incomprehensible, the FIX’s Chinese subtitle group prefers to translate the real meaning of the symbol directly.

Example 1:

Original subtitles: now, the first time I played it white hat.

FIX’s subtitles: 我第一次来的时候，还是个老实人

at the beginning of the TV series, William said “now, the first time I played it white hat.” Here, “white hat ” is translated into “honest man”. As we all know, “white hat ” refers to the color of a hat in daily conversation without any special meaning, but in the story, all visitors of the paradise can choose a hat from white and black. As a main character, William chose the white hat to show his honest quality. And what’s more, it’s a contrast of later his change. In the later plot, William kills a lot of people, but because of his face has changed and identification has been hidden, it’s hard for audience to guess who is he. But this man wears a black hat, which is connected with William’s white hat. So we can infer that the white hat means honest man, the black hat means killing and merciless heat. Actually, it’s the screenwriter’s arrangement. In a way, It follows the principle Vocabulary equivalence.

Example 2

Original subtitles: whispering,"There's sonething more."

FIX’s subtitles: 低语着，“外面的天地更宽广”

The sentence is said by Dolores. When Teddy “comes back” from outside, she expresses her desire for freedom. And when they talk, they walk on the lawn, so the space is open and wide. Under that background, there’s something more is translated into its deep meaning. The translation is also form a contrast with the environment in that time. On this point, I think the FIX’s subtitles do a good job. Without the correct translation’s help, I think it’s hard for audience to understand the meanings of the hat which is the symbol of identification.

FIX’s subtitle group has another feature--strong cultural foundation. It cites many saying from Shakespeare’s plays and even some plot are adapted from the Bible.

Example 3

Original subtitles: When we are born, we cry we are come to this great stage of f-f-fools.

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