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Studies on the subtitle translation of movies began in the 1980s. Experts and scholars at home have done some researches on it from different perspectives. Qiang Shaochang and Li Yunxing studied subtitle translation of movies from the perspective of Skopostheorie with the help of Relevance Theory(25). Nida studied subtitle translation of movies from the perspective of Equivalance Theory(16). However, these studies are not comprehensive enough.
The paper, by taking If You Are the One as a case study, attempts to study subtitle translation strategies from the perspective of Skopostheorie. It is pided into five parts. The first part introduces the significance of this study research issues of this study and the framework of the paper. The second chapter is about the definition and linguistic feature of subtitle translation. The third chapter expounds Skopostheorie—theoretical foundation of the paper. The fourth chapter proposes some specific subtitle translation strategies in light of Skopostheorie. The fifth part is a conclusion of the whole paper.
II.Definition and Linguistic Features of Film Subtitle
2.1 The Definition of film Subtitle
Quite a few scholars have given definitions to subtitling. According to Jakobson, subtitling is interpretation of verbal sign by means of some other language(Jakobson 233). Birgit Nedergard-Larsen defines subtitle as a special type of language transfer: a written, condensed translation of a predominantly spoken original (Jedergaard-Larsen 212). In Dictionary of Translation Studies Shuttle Worth and Cowie describe subtitling as the process of providing synchronized captions for film and television dialogue .A leading authority on subtitling proposes a definition that may be the most exhaustive one :subtitling is a (1) written (2) additive (3) immediate (4) synchronous (5) polymedia translation.
Subtitles can be categorized into three types according to their positions in the film. Those appearing at the beginning of the film include the film title, director, leading actor(s) or actor(ess), major production members, and they are called open credit titles; those appearing after the main feature film include detailed cast and production members, sponsors and many other production information are usually called “end credit titles”; the rest of subtitles cover the main feature Skopostheorie and they are called the main subtitle. According to their specific functions, main subtitles can be further categorized into spoken subtitles (dialogues subtitled), film subtitles with music, graphical subtitles, etc. As far as the linguistic medium is concerned, subtitles can be categorized into intra-lingual subtitles and inter-lingual subtitling. The main concern of this paper is on the spoken inter-lingual film subtitles.
2.2 The Linguistic features of Film Subtitle
2.2.1 Brevity
Brevity is the most important characteristic of film language. Films are presented in a continuous flow, subtitles vanish immediately after the end of the speeches. As Clara Ceron says, “Each subtitle is a clean slate, as it erases totally what came before” (174). As a result, under normal circumstance，when watching subtitled stuffs，viewers cannot go back and read again what they have not understood. Since the storage capacities of human brain are limited，viewers can only keep in mind a fleeting memory of the previous subtitles. Film subtitles should be brief and condensed.
2.2.2 Colloquialism
Colloquialism refers to the language mainly through the voice to show a speaker's feeling. It is not so compact, serious and well-knitted as written words. Colloquialism has the following characteristic: 1) Abundance: it can adopt the content of talking widely from many sources of language. 2) Vividness: it uses those of vivid words and sentences, and meanwhile it can apply the change of speech sounds and intonation to show the complicate function of language. 3) Flexibility: colloquial words can be flexible in choosing words and making sentences. 4) Roughness: because the process of speaking is so short and the words are uttered with the changing of minds, as well as it can be said with the help of expression, posture and motion, colloquial words can be expressed incoherently, In films, the language should be colloquial in that film is mainly the reflection of people’s life. In daily life people don't always think the words over before they speak. Words may appear to be illogical and the language may not be appropriate to the grammar. However, that is the sense of colloquialism.Language is the representation of a person’s feeling, idea, values, and character. That is to say, subtitles in the film should be in accordance with his or her background, experience, age, occupation, status, levels of education and ways of thinking. “The main purpose of translating is normally to have it performed successfully”( Jewmark 172). This is also the case of movie subtitling. Movies are a coordinated artistic work among various actors and actresses who are inpidually characterized and who belong to different social strata. Therefore the lines of different characters, accordingly, present various language styles. When the subtitling works on a movie translation, he or she must have a careful think-over on these persified idiolects and try to assign them personalized renderings in accordance with their styles.