The Standards Of E-C Documentary Subtitling

Documentary films have become increasingly popular in China with the development of globalization.With their distinct features,subtitle translation of documentaries is quite different from conventional translation due to technical restrictions such as time,space,pictures and sounds.In addition,it is also distinct from subtitling of other films and television programs,for the methods and principles applicable to other types of subtitling are not all suitable for subtitling documentaries.This paper tries to explore standards specific for documentary subtitling.In order to obtain desirable results,the paper tries to explore the standards of English documentary subtitling through analyzing a documentary subtitling Wanted in Paradise within the framework of functional equivalence theory(vocabulary,syntactic,discourse and stylistic equivalence)and standards of subtitling companies.The paper makes a conclusion based on the analyses,the standards and characters of English documentary subtitling.Finally,the paper summarizes the conventions of documentary subtitling from four aspects.At language level,the translator should ensure the equivalence from vocabulary,syntactic and discourse levels.At stylistic level,the translator should maintain that the style of translation is near or equal to the original text.At cultural level,the translator should adopt translation methods to handle “cultural words” properly.At technical level,the translator should follow requirements of the spatial and temporal constraints as well as maintaining the coherence of the subtitles and other technical requirements.