Rendering ECR in Subtitles: A Case Study of the Traditional Chinese Martial Arts Films

The traditional Chinese martial arts film is a special type of mass media which reflects the Chinese culture, and it comes into vogue due to the popularity of martial arts fiction. For foreign audiences, watching the traditional Chinese martial arts film, they rely heavily on subtitles to understand the plot and the specific Chinese culture. However, it is not easy to produce readable subtitles. Jan Pedersen, defines the specific cultural terms as “Extralinguistic Cultural References (ECR)”, and puts forward a systematic theory. In this paper, the theory of Pedersen is been used to render ECRs in subtitles of the traditional Chinese martial arts films. The purpose of this paper is to attract people’s attention to the studies of translation of ECRs of subtitles, and to contribute a small effort to the “going out” initiative of Chinese culture.