Dynamic Adaptation In Subtitle Translation Of The Open Courses

As multimedia programs from foreign countries have been flourishing in television andwebsite in China the subtitling of such audiovisual products has been witnessed fastdevelopment in the past few years. Recently the subtitling of free online open courses fromworld famous universities has obtained much attention in Translation Studies and has beenresearched by a number of professors and fan sub groups. Over hundreds of millionsclick-through rate of such open courses has been illustrated the strong study desires ofChinese people. However, the study of open course subtitling translation has been undersystematic investigation for rather a short time and we need pay more attention for therelative studies in this field.This thesis is an attempt on the study of subtitling translation of online open courses fromthe perspective of Theory of Adaptation by Jef Verschueren, the head of BelgiumPragmatics Association, through a case study Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do, thefirst introduced and most popular Harvard open course in mainland China.This thesis adopts research methods including questionnaires for the course learners andinterviews of the fan sub groups to analyze the online open course subtitling according tothe concepts and principles of Adaptation Theory. In the body of the thesis the authoranalyzes two versions of the case study with qualitative and quantitative study methodsand discusses the open course subtitling translation strategies from contextual correlates ofadaptability, Structural objects of adaptability and Dynamics of adaptability. Base on thisthe analysis result shows that when the translators consciously apply strategies ofadaptation theory in their open course subtitling the translation quality improves and thecourse can be better understood by Chinese learners.