On the Subtitle Translation in Zootopia from the Perspective of Skopos Theory

Abstract

As cultural exchanges become more and more frequent, film has become a new type of cultural communication tool, that is, viewers need to read subtitles to understand contents of films. Subtitles usually translated by translators who need to rely on some translation theories, but traditional translation theories can no longer better meet people’s needs. The differences between various versions of subtitle translation do not achieve the desired effect, and it is difficult to create emotional resonance between the audience of the source language and the audience of the target language. The success of a film does not lie in the wonderful contents but in whether the translation of the film content can meet its expected requirements and whether the audience can truly understand it, and the German Vermeer’s translation purpose theory provides new ideas for subtitle translation, based on a purpose that can produce certain expected effects. To study the film further and create emotional resonance among different audiences, this paper adopted Skopos theory to analyze the film: Zootopia. In the paper, the contents include three principles of Skopos theory, translation strategies and other translation methods.