Exploring Documentary Subtitle Translation Strategies From The Perspective Of Communicative Translation Theory

With the development of cultural globalization,intercultural communication is becoming increasingly frequent.As a special way of cultural exchange,subtitle translation plays a significant role in sino-western communication.Despite temperalspatial constraints and cultural differences,subtitle translation should reserve the original style and artistic connotation as well as conforming to the conventions of the target language.Proposed by Newmark(1981),Communicative Translation Theory aims to reproduce original readers' feelings among their target counterparts as much as possible.In other words,this theory takes target readers as the center and pays close attention to their understandings and perceptions.Applying Communicative Translation Theory as its theoretical framework,this thesis discusses documentary subtitle translation strategies with the Chinese-English translation practice of the first two episodes of Trust in China as an example.As a whole,it is divided into five chapters.Chapter One introduces Trust in China,research background,research purposes and thesis structure.Chapter Two presents an overview of documentaries and subtitles and reviews studies on subtitle translation at home and abroad.Towards its end,it proposes principles of documentary subtitle translation.As the theoretical framework of this thesis,Chapter Three reviews the background,development and main arguments of Communicative Translation Theory.Towards its end,it makes a discussion of the applicability of this theory to subtitle translation.Chapter Four systematically analyzes Chinese-English subtitle translation strategies of Trust in China with the guidance of Communicative Translation Theory respectively on the lexical,syntactic and textual levels.The strategies on the lexical level are paraphrase,word-class shift and omission.The strategies on the syntactic level are affirmation,domestication and voice conversion.The strategies on the textual level are condensation and recreation.As the conclusion of the thesis,Chapter Five summaries the major findings and points out its limitations and directions for future research.