An E-C Interpretation Report Of Malthusian Trap:Function And Loyalty In Lecture Subtitles Interpretation

This interpretation report was concerned with the subtitles interpretation program of Malthusian Trap, an online social economics lecture given by Gregory Clark, a professor of economics at the University of California. The program was initiated by Hangzhou Sizheng Translation Service Co., Ltd..The interpretation program covered source language input, sight interpretation, transcription, modification and composition the lecture Malthusian Trap, with sight interpretation, transcription, and the analysis of interpretation methods as the focal point of this report. There were several difficulties in the interpretation process, one was the production requirements of lecture subtitles (64English characters and21Chinese characters in each subtitle line, including blank space), and the other is those special features of lecture language (frequent usage of complex clauses, world order inversions, professional terms and pronouns; appearance of semantic repetitions and errors). Therefore, appropriate theories were needed in interpreting this lecture subtitles.To guild the interpretation of Malthusian Trap, this report adopted Nord’s Function plus Loyalty Theory, which suggested that translators should be aware of the factors that influencing the functions of the translated text in a target language environment, and be able to properly deal with the relations among authors, translators and readers. Under this theoretical guidance, this report proposed five interpretation methods, i.e. syntactic linearity, merge and split, word order alteration, omission, addition, with the first two methods mainly applied to the sight interpretation process and the last three to the transcription process. During the interpretation process of Malthusian Trap, much attention was paid to the needs of audience, functions of the interpreted subtitles, intentions of the instructor, as well as loyalty to the original subtitles.The purpose of this report was that by applying Nord’s Function plus Loyalty Theory in lecture subtitles sight interpretation and transcription, interpreters may be better acquainted with the linguistic characteristics of lecture subtitles and employ appropriate theories and methods to their interpretations, thus promoting the development of related lecture subtitles studies and enhancing the quality of English to Chinese lecture subtitles interpretation.