On Documentary Subtitle Translation From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

Based on the translation practice of Back to the Village,this thesis analyzes the methods and strategies of documentary subtitle translation from the perspective of functional equivalence theory.Back to the Village is a ten-episode documentary produced by CCTV,which introduces the beautiful Chinese countryside in a vivid language.Through this documentary,the audience can have a good understanding of the real life condition in rural areas.The author translates the subtitles of this documentary and strives to reproduce the original flavor of the documentary so that the foreign audience can understand the most authentic rural life in China.In this thesis,the author uses functional equivalence theory to guide her translation practice and study.Functional equivalence theory focuses on "readers' response",and proposes that the translated text should focus on functional equivalence between two languages rather than a "word-for-word correspondence".The core of this theory is that the target text readers should respond to the translation in the same way as the source text readers respond to the source text.In subtitle translation,differences between Chinese and English in language and culture must be considered.At the same time,time and space constraints entail brevity and conciseness of language.Therefore,functional equivalence theory is very enlightening to subtitle translation practice and research.The thesis analyzes subtitle translation at lexical,syntactic and stylistic levels.At lexical level,which involves proper names,culture-loaded expressions and four-character idioms,the author adopts liberal translation,deletion,annotation,literal translation and transliteration strategies.At syntactic level,the author adopts sentence restructuring,application of conjunctions and conversion of voice.At stylistic level,the author adopts literal translation and deletion strategies to translate figures of speech.With Shaanxi folk songs,the author strives to reproduce the style by using rhythms and plain words.To distinguish between formal and informal language styles,the translation varies in terms of sentence length and structure.The author hopes that this study can promote further research in the field of subtitle translation.