Report On The Chinese-English Subtitling Translation Of National Treasure Ⅲ

This paper is a translation practice report based on the subtitle translation practice of the second episode of the National Treasure Ⅲ,a large-scale cultural variety show in China.This episode mainly introduces three cultural relics selected by Emperor Qinshihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum: The Kneeling Archer,The Bronze Chariots and Horses,and The Bronze Crane.Through introducing cultural relics,background knowledge,stage performances,and interviews with storytellers in this life,this program shows the splendor of Chinese cultural relics and history.This report analyzes explicitly four translation problems encountered in translation practice: First is vocabulary translation.The subtitle contains many cultural relic names,ancient institutional names,and vocabulary with rich connotations,and there are no established translations.The second is to convert spoken language into more formal written language.There are many introductions to casting technology in this subtitle,which belongs to the scientific genre.However,due to the colloquial expression of the introducer,it is necessary to simplify the source text in translation and extract potential logical relationships between sentences.The third is the expression of humor and the translation of poetry.Some humorous expressions and ancient poetry are based on the Chinese cultural background in the subtitles.How to deliver to foreign audiences the humor in these expressions and the emotions conveyed in the poems is the problem that the author needs to solve.The fourth is the translation of parallel sentences.In order to achieve formal aesthetic equivalence,it is necessary to preserve the rhetorical devices of parallelism in the source language and maintain the unity of the writing style.To solve these problems,the author believes that Koller’s equivalence theory can be chosen to guide this translation practice.The author summarizes the above translation issues into five aspects: how to achieve denotative equivalence,connotative equivalence,text-normative equivalence,pragmatic equivalence,and formal aesthetic equivalence in subtitle translation.Multiple translation methods,such as literal translation,substitution,adaptation,and amplification,were applied to achieve better translation results.Through this translation practice,the author believes that using Koller’s equivalence theory to guide the translation of variety subtitles is feasible and can provide a valuable reference for future translation practices of variety subtitles.