3.1　lntroduction

In previous chapters,practitioners discovered that audio-visual translation (AVT) is a new area of study within Translation Studies.My review of the available literature was undertaken in order to understand the full range of theoretical work that has taken place regarding translation,as well as considering AVT in historical and cultural terms.Furthermore,I have already noted that scholars from Western countries were the first to undertake theoretical work regarding translation.This,in turn,has had a particular impact on the development of translation strategies; namely,that they are focused on working with cognate languages,e.g.,English and most European languages all belong to the Indo-European family of languages.In this chapter,I reflect on the literature in order to identify a more appropriate approach towards answering research questions that are concerned with effective AVT strategies from English into Chinese.Although Henrik Gottlieb offers my study a typology of 10 translation strategies,I note that his theoretical work is from the perspective of linguistics.As such,this typology cannot be said to automatically apply in full,or in part,to AVT.Therefore,my view is that the proper testing of the feasibility of these strategies in relation to AVT — particularly where the languages concerned are not cognate — is critical to my project.As well as linguistic issues,I also intend to consider the main intercultural factors that ought to be relevant to popular animation films that have been translated (E-C).

In order to examine the feasibility of each strategy within Gottlieb’s typology,I analyse the subtitling techniques used in a sample film,Despicable Me.Moreover,given that films can be regarded as commercial products within the international entertainment market,globalization and localization as two new strategic features of film subtitling are also analysed.Other film examples are used to identify suitable strategies in E-C subtitling as well as the frequency of Chinese culturally loaded words within this context.(https://www.daowen.com)

In conclusion,the purpose of this chapter is to create a theoretical framework that is bespoke,robust and appropriate to the needs of my case study of 15 popular English language animation films translated into Chinese.