A Data-based Comparative Study On Operational Norms In Open Course Subtitling

As a newly-emerged and popular audiovisual type,open course,has on the one hand triggered innovative changes in the field of education,making knowledge widely accessible,and on the other hand,brought the issue of non-standard subtitling,with subtitle versions of varying qualities available for a single open course.Through a case study of two bilingual subtitle versions,produced respectively by Net Ease’s and Sina’s fansub groups,on the first class of professor Tal Ben Shahar’s open Harvard course Positive Psychology,What Is Positive Psychology,this paper carries out a data-based comparative research on open course E-C subtitling.To ensure validity of the data,erroneous ST subtitles,the corresponding TT subtitles in either version,and relevant bilingual subtitles in the other version should all be excluded from further research of E-C subtitling norms.To begin with,under the theoretical guideline of Corder’s error analysis,errors resulted from misunderstanding STs are identified in subtitles produced by both fansub groups.Following that,a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis is launched on the rest bilingual subtitles,and drawn from Toury’s categorization of operational norms,norms governing the translation process,different sets of matricial and textual-linguistic norms are targeted in two subtitle versions.Finally,in reference to the constraints of open course subtitling,a set of generally-applicable operational norms is proposed for open course subtitlers,amateur or professional.The result of the study shows that errors constitute only a small portion of total subtitles,proving Net Ease’s and Sina’s subtitle versions of What Is Positive Psychology eligible for further investigation into open course subtitling norms.And based on the comparative study of the data,a set of operational norms is proposed: 1)synchronization between a subtitle and the nonverbal element in open course;2)omission for utterances that can be recovered from other elements;3)reappearance of the ST for utterances that cannot be recovered from other elements;4)preservation of ST language formality;5)utilization of cohesive devices in pursuit of textual coherence;and 6)annotation presented in superimposed titles for citation.