Features And Strategies Of English-Chinese Subtitle Translation For Video Courses

As the idea of open education spreads across the world,a great number of massive open online courses,mostly in the form of videos,have been translated into Chinese.This thesis explores the features and common problems of English-Chinese subtitle translation for video courses and proposes strategies for fellow subtitle translators by conducting a case study on the translation of one of these courses,Machine Learning taught by Andrew Ng.The thesis summarizes the features of video course subtitle translation from previous studies: Taking the course videos as the source text,this type of translation is restricted by the form of audio-visual text,the subtitling practice and the course content.The principles of video course subtitle translation are brevity,simplicity,wholeness,and terminology and accuracy.By comparing the first draft and the reviewed translation of Machine Learning,the thesis classifies the common problems of video course subtitle translation into two categories: mistakes in listening or understanding the source text and problems of target text expression.The former includes confusion about words with similar pronunciation,inaccurate terminology and comprehension mistakes.The latter includes problems with spoken language and word order.The thesis proposes different strategies for these two types of problems.Translators may use one or more of the following strategies to avoid mistakes in listening or understanding the source text: extracting information from video images or the context,using web search engines and learning more about the subject.For problems of target text expression,translators should prioritize the principles for each problem according to specific context and choose to omit unnecessary information,change the word order or add information.