A Study On Translating Photo Captions From Chinese To English

With the gradual connection with the world,China has further and deeper exchanges and cooperation in terms of economy,politics and culture with other countries worldwide,which promotes the vigorous development of China's foreign publicity work.As China enjoys rapid economic development and growing national power,the scientific and cultural exchanges and tourism develop dramatically.As a result,a large number of books and reports on Chinese culture,history,geography,customs,historical sites etc.are mushroomed and need to be translated.The captions of the photos have the features of generality and simplicity.Therefore,the captions should be translated according to proper strategies so as to appeal to the English readers thinking models and reading habits,which can transmit the information in a more appropriate and accurate way.So it is important to explore the English translation of Chinese captions,which is of great significance for the further understanding of Chinese characteristics by the world.This paper is a practice report on C-E caption translation.It chooses the photo captions of the Shanxi University art troupe's tour performance to different Confucius Institutes in different universities in Armenia,Greece and America etc.and of the news of Shanxi Museum as the analytic texts to discuss various problems that may appear in the process of captions translation and corresponding translation strategies and solutions.This report is divided in five chapters.In Chapter Two,the preparation,the process and the correction of this translation task are presented.The author makes a detailed description of the process to complete the report.In Chapter Three,taking the photo captions proper and its features for granted,the author selects typical cases in the process of translation to conduct detailed analysis,which helps to find out some of the problems,including:inappropriate choices of original contents being translated and improper alternation of original structures.In Chapter Four,after the translation cases analysis,the author puts forward the corresponding solutions,including:the choice of tense and sentence structure,the addition of complementary and explanatory information that foreign readers are familiar with,and the deletion of some information that does not conform to the habit of English expression.After the report's description and case analysis,the following conclusions are drawn:1.We can't trust the original text too much.Sometimes the information of the photo captions is not in accordance with or related with what the photo wants to show.As a translator,we need to make a proper choice.The choice is to translate the information that is obvious in the photo.2.Because of the differences in modes of thinking and in culture background,the translator should be analytic and logical but not too holistic or intuitive.Only by this can the translator make it acceptable to foreign readers in order to transmit our information and culture.3.English and Chinese,as two different languages,have their own characteristics.There is no doubt that the photo captions of English and Chinese are different in terms of structure and expression etc.,which requires the translator,in the process of translation,on the basis of the understanding of images and original texts,to transfer the main content and the main information of the photos.