Subtitling as a genre of AV translation is essentially an art of simplification. The constraints on subtitling are threefold: (1) time and space, (2) culture bound content from SL into TL, the translation of which must be immediately understood and (3) the medium shift from spoken to written language. One of the advantages of employing Chinese set phrases (CSPs) (idioms, slang, catchy phrases, established ways of speaking in a fixed-character formation) in translation for films and television is their conciseness or the desired economy that they yield. Because of their condensed meaning and popular usage, applied with insight and creativity, they can be comprehensible at first glance to the audience with the minimum loss of meaning.
This paper will look at the application of CSPs as a translation strategy in subtitling from a perspective of cognitive pragmatics, that is, relevance theory, which argues that using CSPs appropriately in subtitling can contribute to achieving the positive contextual effect, which produces maximal comprehension and appreciation at minimal processing effort without damaging the original style of SL. The examples for analysis and comparison have been selected from a personal database of subtitled products which cater for the Chinese cinema in DVD format, English-language television channels and webTV programmes, including American movies and television series, formal speeches, presidential debates, forums and interviews. They were produced by professionals and the fansubber, which represents a force of socialisation of the orthodox code of practice to a changing subtitling norm in China today.

James LI is currently a university lecturer and has been a freelance translator-cum-interpreter for over 25 years since early 1982, working in places such as China, Australia, Canada and Taiwan. He completed a PhD thesis in Australia in 1999 with the title “Film Dialogue Translation and the Intonation Unit: Towards Equivalent Effect in English and Chinese”. At present, he is teaching translation, subtitling and interpretation courses to BA and MA students at the University of Macau. Specialised areas include screen translation and linguistics-informed translation studies.