On The Translation And Dissemination Of Contemporary Chinese TV Series Based On The “5W” Model

Thanks to the globalization and the Belt and Road Initiative,a large number of excellent Chinese film and television works are “going out”,and TV series have become the main program form of “going global”.Since 2012,the National Radio and Television Administration(NRTA)have implemented some audiovisual translation projects.Sponsored by these projects,a great many high-quality audiovisual products have been subtitled and dubbed into more than 30 languages,and exported to over 100 countries or areas.Some have even broken local TV viewing records.The translation and overseas dissemination of film and television works have become an important way to tell China’s stories well and make China’s voices heard.The current domestic research mainly focuses on the “going out” of literary works,and the study on the translation and dissemination of contemporary Chinese TV series has just started,which deserves attention.Produced to celebrate the 100 th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China,Minning Town,a poverty-alleviation TV series,premiered in China in January,2021,and was popular among Chinese audiences,especially the version with regional dialects.And the drama has been translated into eight foreign languages so far,including English,French,Spanish and Arabic,and disseminated to the overseas markets.In this thesis,a case study is conducted on the English subtitled version of Minning Town broadcast on You Tube to explore the translation and dissemination of contemporary TV series.The teleplay was first broadcast on You Tube by New TV,the Internet TV new media platform under CCTV.com,and its English subtitled version was uploaded on You Tube at the end of April,2021.According to a report in August,2022,the total view count of Minning Town on You Tube has reached 50 million.It has received an overwhelming response.The translation and dissemination of Chinese film and television products is an act of mass communication,so Lasswell’s “5W” communication model is applied in this thesis.This study,taking the English subtitled version of Minning Town as an example,investigates five elements including its subtitling agents,C-E subtitling,communication channel,target audiences,and the reception by the target audiences and English media.In terms of the C-E subtitling,the study focuses on the subtitling strategies that the subtitlers adopt during the subtitling process in order to make the translation better accepted by the target audiences.It is found that the outward translation model of Minning Town is a government-sponsored and commercial model.The subtitling agents of its English subtitled version on You Tube consist of NRTA,New TV and Besteasy,an commercial corporation providing translation services.They have all contributed to the subtitling and overseas dissemination of the drama.The subtitling content is Minning Town.It is found that the subtitlers face the challenges during the subtitling process,including the subtitling of appellations,idioms and regional dialects that cause misunderstanding,as well as temporal and spatial constraints of subtitling.The major translation strategies adopted by the subtitlers to cope with these challenges are explicitation,reduction,equivalence and transcreation.The main problems in translation are also pointed out,which are neglect of visually transmitted verbal signs,failure to achieve intratextual coherence and poor readability in some cases.The revision suggestions are provided by the author in this thesis.The communication channel of the English subtitled version is You Tube,and the target audiences mainly consist of two groups of people which are the Chinese people who are abroad and the international viewers who have interest in China.By studying the reception by the audiences and English media,the author finds that the translation and dissemination of Minning Town is successful on the whole,which may be attributed to the high quality of the drama itself,the ideal timing of its airing on You Tube and good publicity,the cooperation between an official institution and a commercial corporation,and the adoption of effective translation strategies by the subtitlers.This study intends to provide practical suggestions for the “going out” of contemporary Chinese TV dramas,as well as for the future research and practice in translating the teleplays.