Strategies And Methods Of Subtitle Translation

Subtitles translation of documentaries is a key way to show Chinese culture.Chu Guo Ba Bai Nian(Eight-Hundred-Year History of Chu State)is an important documentary co-produced by CCTV and Hubei Media Group in 2014.The first episode,The Newly-born,mainly tells the story of Chu overcoming many difficulties and finally establishing its own nation.The author translates the subtitles into English and writes a translation report accordingly.Basing itself on the subtitle text,this thesis describes and analyzes the process and content of the translation practice project as a whole.The documentary subtitles not only have the general characteristics of film and television subtitles which are extremely concise,but also have four-character words,proper nouns as well as both colloquial and written styles of language.In view of the text features and under the guidance of the principle of language economy,the author summarizes strategies and methods suitable for specific translation problems in this practice,both at lexical and syntactical levels.They are:1)adopt linear translation when four-character words are subordinate structure and combination structure;shift word-class when it is predicate-object structure;use both methods when it is subject-predicate structure;2)Use transliteration with annotation for such proper nouns as personal names,place names and dynasty names;adopt established translation with annotation for titles of ancient documents;adopt omission translation for ancient cultural relics;adopt reductive paraphrasing for quotes;3)Adopt structure adjustment for run-on sentences in the commentary and reductive paraphrasing for colloquial expressions.