Approaches To Condensation

As more and more Chinese films and television works have been introduced abroad,Chinese-English translation of subtitles in movie and television programs is playing an increasingly important role.Subtitle translation with high quality has positive effects on the popularity of Chinese films in overseas markets,the role of Chinese culture in the global cultural pattern,and the spread of it to the world.Focused on the history and culture of racing in Wuhan,the documentary The History of Racing of Wuhan tells the backgrounds and some interesting stories of six race courses in the history of the city.The final episode enables the audience to know more about the current situation of the industry in Wuhan.Based on the Chinese-English translation of the screenplay of The History of Racing of Wuhan,this thesis studies the phenomenon of condensation in subtitle translation due to temporal and spacial restrictions.As mentioned above,people don’t have enough time to read subtitles because of time restriction.And all the information cannot be expressed explicitly within limited space.So it is essential to condense some information when translating the texts.The study method used in the thesis is comparative analysis,of the changes that have been made between two versions,which is conducted to categorize the techniques of condensation into five types,i.e.condensation,reductive paraphrasing,deletion,omission,and substitution that are used in different situations to help audience read the rendered subtitles more efficiently.The significance of the report builds on the translation practice and the comparison,the analysis of the translation procedures and the summary of the technique-condensation,which can be used when there exist time and space constraints.On one hand,it can provide some choices and advice for subtitle translators when they work on their project,trying to reduce some information in subtitles.On the other hand,it may throw some fresh light on subtitle translation theoretically and practically.Finally,it is hoped that the practice report can provide some beneficial reference for the research and practice of subtitle translation in film and television works.The report can be divided into three parts:the preparation in pre-translation phase,the difficulties and the solutions in translation phase as well as the comparison with the final edition and the analysis in proofreading phase.The preparation in the first part includes technical preparation and the arrangement of the whole work process.Then in the second part,the report introduces several knotty problems that the writer came across in the practice.It also records how these problems were solved,what instruments were used and what parts they played during the process.The third part is the most significant one throughout the report.Some examples have been listed in the comparison between the writer’s version and the proofreading version.Next these examples are classified into five categories.Then the report gives analyses of different categories and arrives at a conclusion in the end.