A Study of Dialect Films Subtitle Translation Strategies Guided by the Theory of Functional Equivalence — Taking the Dialect Film "A Cool Fish" as an Example

Abstract

Subtitle translation is a field of translation where the subtitles of films or TV series are translated simultaneously. With the development of China's film and television industry and the inflow of outstanding foreign films and TV dramas, subtitle translation for film and television is flourishing.Due to the constraints of space and time, film and television subtitles are generally characterised by the following features: synchronicity, brevity and clarity, accessibility, colloquialism and a high degree of aesthetics. In recent years, the Chinese film and television industry has gradually begun to tell the stories of marginal characters, who are mostly told in dialect. In the vast expanse of China, according to incomplete statistics, there are about seventy dialects, which are officially divided into ten broad categories. Replacing Mandarin with dialects in film and television dramas not only reflects the regional characteristics and makes the audience feel more immersed, but dialect films are also highly aesthetic works of art with a cultural load. In this paper, we will analyse the dialect subtitle translation in the famous 2018 dialect film A COOL FISH from the perspective of the theory of functional equivalence, providing a detailed analysis of which for dialect words, sentences and rhetoric.