On Subtitle Trans-editing Of Chinese Documentary From The Perspective Of Communicative Translation Theory: A Case Study Of Along The Qinghai-tibet Railway

Along the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, a documentary of Chinese nation series, was broadcast by China Central Television 1 in 2010. Driving along the Qinghai-Tibet Road close to the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, the camera crew constantly shows audiences the geographic style, ecological environment and wild animals during exploring Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. The documentary elaborates the historical events, folk customs, long and splendid culture, and current situation of construction and development. The translation of this documentary can make people in English-speaking country more aware of Chinese traditional culture and China’s economic development.Communicative translation theory, put forward by Newmark, has been widely applied to the subtitle translation, offering a reliable theoretical basis, which can cause more convenient and rapid communication with the target language users. Directed by communicative translation theory and combined with “trans-editing”, this paper will analyze the subtitle trans-editing of Along the Qinghai-Tibet Railway from language and culture and discuss the methods of subtitle trans-editing. When the English version of the documentary is broadcast by overseas television station, it will be directly presented in English pronunciation and subtitle form in front of audiences. Therefore, that will be totally in a very formal situation of English language. On the linguistic level, in order to make the translation simple and clear, the translator can omit redundant information caused by repeated words and terms, and adjust the sequence of topic sentence and minor sentence. On the cultural level, the translator can add some Chinese cultural information in order to make it more convenient for English audiences to understand Chinese culture better. However, the translator can also omit some uncommon cultural information that is hard to understand.