On The Subtitle Translation Of BBC Documentary The Story Of China Under Skopos Theory

In recent years,together with the progressive enhancing of China's international influences and the increase of cross-cultural communication between the East and the West,western media pay more attention to China and successively release a series of documentaries themed with Chinese history,humanity,education and natural environment.The six-episode series Chinese history-themed documentary The Story of China produced by BBC is a typical example.For better spreading Chinese culture and molding a positive state image,documentary subtitle translation work is very important.In comparison with western academic field,domestic subtitle translation work does not obtain due attention,and lacks systematic theoretical system and authoritative official translation agencies.Meanwhile,the varying competence of domestic subtitle translators further affects the quality of subtitle translation.As the core of German Functionalist translation theory,functionalist Skopos theory breaks through traditional translation framework characterized by “translation equivalence” and defines translation as a purposeful cross-cultural communicative activity dominated by translators.The skopos perspective emphasizes that translators should choose appropriate translation strategies for translation rewriting or variation according to the skopos of documentary planner,subtitle translator and target audiences;coherence perspective requires the word,sentence and episode in subtitle translation to be accepted by target audiences in a concise and coherent manner;and fidelity perspective demands subtitle translator to be faithful to the source text,target audiences and culture in the target country.As a result,it is feasible to apply the Skopos theory in documentary subtitle translation.How to choose appropriate documentary subtitle translation strategies according to the three perspectives of the Skopos theory is the research priority in the thesis.Based on the case of documentary The Story of China and the theoretical foundation of Skopos theory,the thesis adopts literature induction method and case study method to resort to the skopos perspective,coherence perspective and fidelity perspective to develop the research.As proved by the research results,in view of considerable culture-loaded words including quotations,poetry,proverbs,idioms,andfour-character phrases involved in the documentary,the translator should accordingly choose literal translation,annotation,domestication,foreignization and replacement translation strategies to precisely convey information to target audiences.The thesis calls on domestic scholars to place emphasis on documentary subtitle translation and expects research findings to make trivial contribution to existing documentary subtitle translation in China.