2.4.1　Early Period of Studies

Western scholars began studying film translation in the late 1950s and into the early 1960s from the perspective of translation studies.“Tradition et cinema”,the first academic article on this topic,was published in 1956 in the periodical Le Linguiste/De Taalkundige.This was followed in 1960 with the publication of an article entitled “Cinéma et traduction” in a special edition of Babel,a well-known academic journal dedicated to translation studies.These papers were generally considered as Western scholars’ first attempt at opening up a new concept in the field of translation studies,namely,AVT studies.

In 1974,the first article that particularly focused on subtitling was written by Dollerup and published in Babel.Entitled “On subtitles in television programs”,this article analysed and defined the error types the translators did and that arise in the course of subtitle translation of TV programmes from English into Danish: 1) mishearing;2) misread or overlooked a word or part of a message; 3) dyslexic reading error; 4)construed the meaning of an English word from the translator’s knowledge of other English words; 5) the meaning from the extralinguistic context; 6) failure to identify and understand neologisms,idiosyncrasies and,possibly,ad hoc formations;7) mistranslating the idioms; 8) failure to get the gist of the meaning revealed in translations; 9) did not use common sense to translate the original text; 10) a few words and terms were “translated” into nonexistent Danish ones; 11) the failure to choose the correct equivalent when one word in the source language covers (or splits up into) two or more in the target language (1974: 200-202).Although these mistakes talked up by Dollerup occur in the context of English-Danish translation,they can be found in E-C translation as well.Moreover,Dollerup was not only the first person who particularly discussed the above research issue,but was also the first to establish the importance of subtitling in the context of foreign language learning and teaching.Film subtitles as a means of foreign language pedagogy have attracted the interest of scholars such as Danan (1991),Gottlieb (1992) and Xiao (2010; 2012).All of them have discussed effective ways of using AVT products in classroom teaching and learning.Studying from the perspective of foreign language pedagogy,however,is still in its infancy within film translation study; as such,more systematic and specific research is needed.In 1976,Fodor published his book,Film Dubbing: Phonetic,Semiotic,Esthetic and Psychological Aspects.In it,Fodor discussed the idea of “synchronization” in voice,characterization and performance in the process of film translation,suggesting that this technique might help the translated film appear more natural and result in higher audience satisfaction.He also argued that it was impossible to make film translation perfect in every aspect given variable factors such as how body language changes with different cultural backgrounds,customs and languages,etc.(1976: 82) Furthermore,Fodor explained the different meanings behind certain kinds of body language in various cultures and discussed the variety of visual effects that were produced by different angles in film shooting.Although Fodor’s approach focused on dubbing rather than subtitling in film translation,his contribution is still worthy of consideration in the study of film subtitle translation,because subtitling also relates to the abovementioned factors and elements in its nature.Overall,Fodor was the first to study film dubbing translation from diversified perspectives such as psychology,linguistics,semiology and aesthetics.His allround study offered a foundation to the subsequent construction of film translation theories in the West.The research points discussed by Fodor prompt me to consider subtitle translation as a multicomponent task,which involves the receptor’s language preference,effective strategies and intercultural factors.These elements may determine whether the translation is linguistically correct and culturally acceptable.(https://www.daowen.com)

In his (1982) article,“Les sous-titres...un mal necessaire”,Marleau largely discussed the techniques of subtitle type-setting as well as analysing the issues in film subtitle translation from its technological,linguistic,psychological and artistic angles.He stated that the problems relate to composition,as well as being the first to draw attention to the economic factors in film subtitle translation,along with emphasizing the importance of teamwork when producing highquality translated films.In his study,the mechanical limits,economic factor and social value are all components that the translator should be aware of in the process of subtitling.Like Fodor,he noticed the subtitle translation is not isolated or simplistic in nature; it should involve the concerns of subtitle drafting skills,linguistic knowledge,the receptor’s language preference and the ability to accept the source culture,as well as the recognition of social surroundings and knowledge of performing arts.Since it is imperative that all the necessary techniques are used and knowledge applied,Marleau suggested that translating a film needs a group of people to work together.In my opinion,the subtitle translator should have a certain level of skill and knowledge in order produce readable translated subtitles,which can meet the basic mechanical requirement (for example,to decide the number of lines in each frame or; to make the effective length of translated subtitles),as well as the overarching requirement of translation (for example,to make the translated subtitles correct in terms of language and acceptable in terms of culture).In turn,the translator should pass his draft work to other teamworkers to modify the composition of translated subtitles,align the subtitles with the corresponding frames,or setting or embellishing the frames.

In the same year,Titford,in his book Subtitling: Constrained Translation,introduced his celebrated idea of “constrained translation” by considering film as a means of constrained media.For him,subtitling was “constrained” because it needs to meet the requirement of “synchronization” with dubbing and moving pictures.Subsequent to Titford’s theory,scholars such as Asensio,Kelly and Gallardo located the concept of “constrained translation” within their later practice of film subtitle translation.As a researcher of subtitling,I agree with Titford’s consideration,because subtitling unavoidably encounters limitations along the lines of the aforementioned unique character of audiovisual materials.In this research,the limits of the mechanical arts in translating Chinese subtitles and original English subtitles are also mentioned.Considerations of the proper length of translated Chinese subtitles and original subtitles are reflected in the first hypothesis.Before starting to compare the length difference between each pair of translated subtitles and its corresponding original text,I conducted two interviews and read relative literature to identify the acceptable numbers of words in each line of a subtitle in both Chinese and English.