Amateur Subtitling And Translation

Along with the rise of online subtitling groups, a growing number of subtitled versions of non-Chinese audiovisual products have become available for Chinese viewers. This has tremendously enriched people's recreational lives with more choices. Meanwhile, these products have considerably influenced Chinese people's lifestyle and way of thinking. In fact, amateur subtitling has played a crucial role in increasing Chinese people's exposure to non-Chinese cultures and enhancing their understanding of those cultures.The functionalist approaches to translation, originated in Germany in the 1970s, were intended as a reaction against the traditional equivalence-based approaches. Perceiving translation as cross-cultural communication, the functionalist theorists have focused on the relationship between text type and text function, and the translation purpose, with an emphasis on the translator's agency. Taking functionalist approaches to translation as its theoretical framework, this thesis intends to discuss the translation methods adopted by YYeTs, a leading subtitling group in China, and draw more scholarly attention to amateur subtitling as a significant translation phenomenon.This thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter discusses the background, objectives, questions and significance of this study. The second chapter provides an overview of previous studies, including the findings on subtitling and amateur subtitling. The present author has noticed that amateur subtitling has been underrepresented and functionalist approaches to translation have rarely been applied to explain translation choices made by subtitling groups. The third chapter provides an overview of functionalist approaches to translation and discusses the application in the present study of YYeTs'subtitled version of BBC's Wild China. The fourth chapter provides an analysis of YYeTs' Chinese subtitles for Wild China from a functionalist perspective. This chapter has focused on the translation methods adopted by the amateur subtitlers to translate culture-specific items (CSIs) and non-CSI textual segments. The fifth chapter concludes this thesis with a summary of the findings of the present study and a discussion of the limitations of the present study and future possibilities for research on amateur subtitling.The findings of the study are:first, YYeTs'subtitlers generally comply with the skopostheorie in translation. All the translation methods are chosen based on the subtitlers'translation purposes and serve the translation purposes. The subtitlers not only follow the skopos rule closely to determine particular translation methods, but also follow the coherence rule and fidelity rule in skopostheorie. The subtitlers always take into consideration the needs of different participants in the translation process, and mediate among them to avoid any disagreement. Second, YYeTs' subtitlers tend to stay close to the source text (ST) while at the same time comply with the target culture. Third, amateur subtitlers are more flexible with the choice of translation methods as they are not bound by the rules (e.g. the number of words in each line) that regulate professional translators. Translation methods such as retention, transcription, substitution, back translation, simplification, explanation, generalization, literal translation, cultural changes and linguistic changes are used to realize the function of the translated text and facilitate the understanding of the target audience. Fourth, amateur subtitlers do not have an overt preference for certain translation methods and their choices are mainly based on the translation purposes. Fifth, since most amateur subtitlers haven't received formal education in translation, their Chinese subtitles contain mistranslations and unintentional omissions. However, the amateur subtitles will not affect the target audience's viewing experience on the whole.As an analysis of YYeTs' Chinese subtitles for Wild China, the findings presented in this study are case-specific. Subtitled versions of other non-Chinese audiovisual products produced by YYeTs, subtitles translated by other subtitling groups, and the application of functionalist approaches to explain translation choices in amateur subtitling are all worthy of further investigation.