This thesis seeks to examine the translation of selected foreign film-titles in Hong Kong and Taiwan from 1990 to 2002. Lawrence Venuti’s theory on “domesticating translation” and “foreignizing translation” will be taken as the conceptual framework for the study. Building on Friedrich Schleiermacher’s perspective on translation and on his observations about the Anglo-American publishing industry, Venuti asserts that “foreignizing translation”, being a strategy to bring the target-text audience toward the original text, should be preferred over “domesticating translation” as the former would guarantee difference by introducing foreign elements to the text recipients. By doing so, people will have more chances to be exposed to cultures other than their own and thus a heterogeneous society will be formed and maintained. Since Venuti’s study has not touched upon the Asian region situated in the periphery of global culture as opposed to the Anglo-American one, his suggestion for “foreignizing translation” might not be feasible globally. Selected film-titles will be examined in this thesis. Data show that most of the translated titles in Hong Kong are domesticated. The same can be said of Taiwan in recent years, though to a lesser extent. Unlike other text types, film-titles are normally translated or adapted by the local film distributors rather than professionally or academically trained translators. With box-office sales as the major concern of the movie business, the adoption of the domesticating strategy can easily be rationalized, if not justified. Equally notable is the fact that, as recent trend in Taiwan demonstrates, domesticating strategy also reflects a stronger sense of local identity.

My identity as a white woman ESL teacher has been structured partly through movies I saw in my youth. More recently in the late 1990s, a film with ESL, The King and I (1956), was on Japanese television two years in a row while I was teaching there. I found that very interesting and began asking questions regarding the influences that popular film may have on real ESL teachers and students. The study questions how films contribute to ESL in terms of teacher and student identities and desires. To explore this question, I collected three forms of data: 24 films with ESL; post-secondary ESL teacher and student responses to watching two films with ESL; and memories of films from my youth. A framework of critical and feminist pedagogy, including work in identity and ESL, and postcolonial, cultural, and feminist studies informed the analysis. I analyzed the data in relation to discourses of desire and the body as a socially constructed site of racial and gender identification. From the film data, I made the case that particular tropes, initiations, and signs construct reel ESL, such as white female teachers as upholders of particular colonial identities. From the teacher and student data, I found that readers engage with cinematic meanings in a space of liminality, that is, not quite in the movie but not quite in themselves. Readers by-pass their race, gender, age, and occupation to access the cinematic body as politically engaged and disrupting the status quo. From the memory data, I argued that through the seemingly innocent practice of watching movies, a world of racialized and gendered desire was settling in and making itself comfortable. The study is positioned in a critical feminist pedagogy of multiliteracies. Here, diverse sites of meaning-making strengthen and disrupt the desires and identities of ESL. / Education, Faculty of / Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of / Graduate

本論文主要是對一九九○年代過後所攝製的七部敘事背景有關中國文化大革命（簡稱文革）的電影進行分析，探討這些電影裡頭對中國文革的刻畫，更試著勾勒出這些文革的再現與當代中國的文化情境的關聯性。中國自文革後一九八○年代以來，它的文化情境已經產生了頗多變化。這些文化情境，筆者主要是分成三個階段或者部份來闡述。首先是文革過後「新時期」的「文化反思」和「歷史反思」思潮。第二階段是一九九○年代中國高速邁進全球化和市場經濟化的「後新時期」。最後筆者試圖將討論放在邁入兩千年新世紀中國在政治和經濟上崛起的脈絡上。 筆者發現，由三位「第五代」導演田壯壯、陳凱歌和張藝謀所執導的的《藍風箏》、《霸王別姬》和《活著》，其實是受一九八○年代「文化反思」和「歷史反思」的影響，再加上這三位導演年輕時期的生活曾籠罩在文革時候的革命話語中，使到他們的作品散發出濃厚的「文化反思」和「歷史反思」意識。在這些作品中，中國的歷史尤其是文革，成為了他們反思中國民族文化的梏結的寓言敘事策略，更成為了他們尋求為民族國家的文化、政治與經濟上的定位的言說工具。這些在電影中所描繪的個人經歷，都被投射在集體民族的經歷中，折射出對民族集體歷史命運的反思和批判，所呼喚的是一種對社會拯救的理想，一種為國家民族建立一個嶄新文化主體的實踐。 然而，筆者卻發現，另外三部電影，即《陽光燦爛的日子》、《巴爾札克與小裁縫》以及《美人草》卻遠離一九七○、八○年代中國「新時期」「文化反思」和「歷史反思」思潮下的「啟蒙」、「救贖」等的人道傳統話語。這三部電影並沒有呈現出文革的殘酷的一面，反而注重在年輕主人公們朝氣勃勃，充滿激情奔放的青春成長經歷上。同時，《陽光燦爛的日子》通過刻畫人類記憶的建構性和不確定性，來表示我們無法通過記憶來重構一種「絕對的」和「整體的」的文革歷史圖像。而這種現象，是一九九○年代大眾文化在中國的出現與消費社會的成形不無關係。 本論文的最後一個部份，是針對《太陽照常升起》進行分析。筆者發現，這部電影是在「國族寓言」與「反國族寓言」的元素中滑動。首先，它通過絢爛艷麗色彩的攝影，再加上獨特的場面調度，把它的時空背景處理得充滿夢幻色彩，更創造了一個如夢如幻的文革時代。其次，這部電影也通過對文革樣板戲中的女性形象的戲仿，搗毀了女性扮演「國族寓言」的文化角色。然而，這部電影裡頭卻增添了從國外回歸「祖國」的兩個華僑角色。他們在文革時候的遭遇，卻又可以化身為寓意中國現今處境的國族寓言，而這國族寓言跟一九八○年代的文化反思和歷史反思思潮下的國族寓言以及第五代導演的寓言策略有所不同。這部電影中的國族寓言所寓意的，更是和二十一世紀的中國在全球政治和經濟上的崛起有關。而中國在政治經濟上的崛起，卻又和「大中華」的文化認同息息相關。 / This essay focus on analyzing the portraits of China’s Cultural Revolution in seven Chinese Language films made during and after the 1990s. This essay points out that three films made by the “fifth generation” directors namely Blue Kite, Farewell My Concubine and To Live, tend to treat the history of Cultural Revolution as a “national allegory”. These “fifth generation” directors are trying to articulate their narrations of Cultural Revolution to the “cultural reflection” ideological trend of the New Era in the late 1970s and 1980s which searched for the “enlightenment” and “salvation” for the Chinese culture. But this essay also points out that the other three films namely In the Heat of the Sun, Balzac Et La Petite Tailleuse Chinoise and The Foliage, didn’t display the harsher aspects of the Cultural Revolution. Instead they focus on the vigorous and enthusiastic adolescence life of the young protagonists. In the Heat of the Sun also displays the construction and the uncertainty of the human memory, to express that we can’t recapture an “absolute” and a “total” historical image of Cultural Revolution. The portraits of Cultural Revolution in these three films also distance themselves away from the “enlightenment” and “salvation” cultural discourse during the New Era in the late 1970s and 1980s. Lastly, this essay focuses on the film The Sun Also Rises directed by China’s famous actor-cum-director JIANG Wen. This film slides between elements of “national allegory” and “anti-national allegory” for China. Firstly, this film through its brightly colorful cinematography and unique mise en scene, created a film space that is full of fantasy and a dreamlike historical events of Cultural Revolution. Secondly, this film through its parody of the revolutionary model theater of women images, destroys the role of the women in performing the national allegory. But this film added two characters of overseas Chinese returned to China. Their unpleasant experiences during the time of Cultural Revolution can be read as the national allegory of China. Lastly, this film through its unique narrative structure put the ethnic consciousness of “Chineseness” and the concept of “Greater China” into a process of continuing deconstruction and reconstruction.