Abstract

The Last Emperor, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, is a 1987 historical biographical movie filmed jointly by Mainland China, Italy and Britain. The story of the movie takes place in modern China, while the language of the film is English. The movie cannot gain the favour of western audiences without its presentation of Chinese culture with an outstanding translation.

     This paper aims at discussing the two strategies, domestication and foreignization used in the movie, listing and summarising the excellence of its translation as well as some to be improved, and finding out the reason for the popularity in the respect of translation.

     The paper firstly introduces the background, significance and objective of film translation studies, followed by a brief introduction of domestication and foreignization with literature review. Then a case study is carried out to discuss different translation strategies used in the film and their importance and techniques. The last part concludes the thesis.

Keywords: Domestication; Foreignization; Translation; Subtitle

Contents

Abstract

摘要

1 Introduction-1

1.1 Research Background-1

1.1.1 The Last Emperor-1

1.1.2 Subtitle Translation-1

1.2 Significance of the Study-2

2 Literature Review-2

2.1 Subtitle Translation-2

2.1.1 Studies abroad-3

2.1.2 Domestic Studies-4

2.2 Domestication and Foreignization-5

2.2.1 Studies Abroad-5

2.2.2 Domestic Studies-6

3 Methodology-7

3.1 Research Questions-7

3.2 Theoretical Framework-7

3.2.1 Definitions of Domestication and Foreignization-7

3.2.2 The Relation Between the Two Strategies-8

3.2.3 Factors Affecting the Tendency of the Two Strategies-8

4 Case Study of Subtitle Translation in The Last Emperor-9

4.1 Domestication-9

4.2 Foreignization-11

5 Conclusion-12

Bibliography-14

Acknowledgments-15