A Comparative Study Of Documentary Subtitle E-C Translation From The Perspective Of Relevance Translation Theory

Since the broadcast of documentaries produced by BBC in China,the number of Chinese audiences who desire to watch foreign documentaries is dramatically increasing.However,the quality and the study of documentary subtitle E-C translation are far from satisfactory yet.Besides,many foreign documentary subtitles have been translated by fansub groups,whose contribution to the study of documentary subtitle E-C translation is of great importance.The BBC documentary The Story of China introduces the Chinese history from ancient China(beginning from the Xia Dynasty)to modern China.Under the guidance of Relevance Translation Theory,this thesis,taking the first three episodes of The Story of China as the material,aims to analyze the textual features,the target Chinese audiences and the translation difficulties of the source text,and to make a comparative analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the translated versions of PLSUB and the author,so as to summarize translation approaches appropriate for documentary subtitle E-C translation.First of all,based on the translation practice of the author and the analysis of the target Chinese audiences,the textual features and translation difficulties in this documentary are summarized as follows.Firstly,the words are simple and colloquial,but some of them contain implicit emotions that can not be easily inferred by Chinese audiences.The abstract English expressions make the subtitles more obscure to be understood.Secondly,the use of long sentences with repetition and different sentential orders cannot meet Chinese linguistic habits and affects Chinese audiences'understanding.Moreover,the omitted components leave sentences abstract to be inferred.Thirdly,the use of English allusions increase Chinese audiences' processing efforts.Besides,many narrations are translated from classical Chinese,which requires subtitle translators to make sure whether it is appropriate to use back translation of classical Chinese.Subsequently,according to the textual features and translation difficulties,in the light of Relevance Translation Theory,this thesis makes a comparative analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the two translated versions,and then summarizes translation approaches appropriate for documentary subtitle E-C translation.Conclusions drawn by this thesis are as follows.Lexically,firstly,the diction with the sounds and images of the documentary are combined to explicate the implicit emotions.Secondly,the appropriate use of Chinese four-character expressions and well-accepted Internet-hype words makes the translated subtitles more native and provides Chinese audiences with a stronger contextual effect to enhance their cognitive assumptions.Thirdly,the concretization of abstract English expressions is conducive to reducing Chinese audiences' processing efforts.Syntactically,condensation,omission and amplification can be properly used to enable Chinese audiences to infer the intention of the documentary quickly.Moreover,the adaptation of sentential orders makes the translated subtitles more native.Culturally,firstly,paraphrase without annotations can be used to make English allusions more explicit and achieve optimal relevance without increasing the processing efforts.Secondly,back translation of classical Chinese helps to enrich Chinese audiences' cognitive assumptions.All in all,it is hoped that the translation approaches for documentary subtitle E-C translation summarized in this thesis can be of great benefit for the study of foreign documentary subtitle E-C translation.Besides,it is hoped that scholars' interest in the study of the subtitle translation of fansub groups will be aroused as well.In brief,the study of documentary subtitle E-C translation will be conducive to the development of the domestic study of subtitle translation.