A Study on the Movie Subtitle Translation of Dying to Survive Under Communicative Translation Theory

The movie Dying to Survive received rave reviews from the public after releasing. It is about human morality, struggle against unfair reality, and more importantly, the objective reality of high-priced cancer drugs may resonate with audiences. The international spreading of this movie enables the construction of China’s positive image as a responsible government, which intends to relieve the burden of its people. Peter Newmark’s communicative translation theory attaches importance to readers’ feelings. Compared with the content, it focuses more on the feelings generated by the target language audience, and is in line with the easy understanding of target audience pursued by movie subtitle translation. It is found in this paper that free translation is the major adopted translation method under communicative translation theory. This theory and the four translation methods, namely, literal translation, free translation, addition, omission, and cases selected in this paper have effectively achieved the communicative effect, taking into account the target audience’s expression habits and immediate understanding, hoping to provide some personal references for Chinese movie subtitle translation to enhance its influence overseas.

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