摘 要

接受美学，作为一种文学理论，将文学作品的研究重心从以往的作者层面转移到了读者层面。接受美学的产生为字幕翻译提供了一个新的研究视角，将读者中心论与字幕翻译相结合，强调译者翻译字幕的时候应该更加关注观众本身包括他们的文化、教育以及社会背景，实现观众与电影或者电视剧的视域融合。本文将接受美学中的主要观点：读者中心、期待视野以及文本空白和未定点与字幕翻译的策略相结合，对《唐顿庄园》字幕翻译进行研究，探索接受美学理论对于字幕翻译研究的适用性。

关键词：字幕翻译；接受美学；翻译策略

Contents

1. Introduction 1
2. Demonstration 1
   1. An Overview of Subtitling Translation 1
      1. The Definition of Subtitling 2
      2. The Constraints and Characteristics of Subtitling 2
   2. Reception Aesthetics Theory 3
      1. An introduction of Reception Aesthetic Theory 3
      2. The Core Concepts of Reception Aesthetic Theory 3
         1. The Reader-oriented view 3
         2. The Horizon of Expectation in Aesthetic Theory 4
         3. The Indeterminacy of the Text and Vacancy of Meaning 4
   3. A Case Study of Subtitle Translation in Downton Abbey VI 5
      1. Literal Translation to Fill in the Vacancy 5
      2. Domestication Strategy to Fulfill the Directed Expectation 6
         1. The Employment of Chinese Four-character Expression View 6
         2. The Employment of Common words loaded with Local Culture 7
      3. Foreignization Strategy to Fulfill the Creative Expectation 8
      4. Addition to define the Indeterminacy 9
3. Conclusion 10

A Study on the Subtitle Translation in Downton Abbey VI from the Perspective of Reception Aesthetics Theory

Introduction

In company with further advancement of reform and opening up, foreign films and TV series are abundantly introduced into China, which spurs the boom of subtitle translation. Hence, Chinese scholars start to concentrate on the study of subtitle translation and they have attempted to study subtitle translation from various perspectives including relevance theory, eco-translatology, functional equivalence and so on, but few of them from the perspective of Reception Aesthetics.

Recently, the development of Reception Aesthetics Theory(RA) has provided a new perspective to explore the connection between audience(readers) and writers, writers and translators. Emergence of RA has shifted the author-oriented version standing for a long time in translation into the reader-oriented version, which requires translators to pay more attention to the readers and to maximally consider readers’ life experiences, existing knowledge and so on. The requirements for subtitle translation are consistent with the core concepts of Reception Aesthetics Theory, both of which focusing on targeted receptors.

This paper aims to see how translators achieve the fusion of horizon between the TV program and targeted audience through the study of subtitle translation in the case of Downton Abbey VI from the perspective of Reception Aesthetics Theory.

Demonstration

• 1. An Overview of Subtitling Translation

Generally speaking, film translation could be divided into dubbing and subtitling. Dubbing acts as an auditory complement of source language, while subtitling serves as a visual complement to information of original film and TV programs. In this paper, the author focuses on the study of subtitling translation.

• • 1. The Definition of Subtitling

Up till now, there is no authoritative definition to answer what subtitling is. The author selects three definitions for reference.

Definition 1: “Subtitling, a particular type of language transfer, which is a written, condensed translation of a predominantly spoken original” (Nedegaard-Larsen, 1993:212).