Chinese Documentary Subtitle Translation From The Perspective Of Communication Theory ——A Case Study Of Russian And English Subtitles Of This Is China

With the development of technology and the close international cultural exchanges,information exchanges between countries are becoming more and more frequent.Because of its unique entertainment and cultural value,film and television works have gradually become one of the major carriers of communication between countries,and the audiovisual translation has also received more and more attention from researchers.In terms of research materials,popular movies and TV dramas are usually sought after,but other types of films and TV works,including documentaries,have also entered researchers’ sights.As for theories used,domestic researchers mostly employ the Skopos Theory,Functional Equivalence Theory,and other theories in the field of translation,while translation as a communication activity can also be studied under the framework of Communication Science.This is China is a well-produced documentary that seeks to introduce the Chinese culture,and its English and Russian versions have received good feedback abroad,which is inseparable from its high-quality subtitle translation.Therefore,this thesis attempts to study the subtitle translation of this work from the perspective of communication theory,in order to summarize relevant strategies of translating Chinese documentaries and to provide some reference for the future dissemination of Chinese publicity works abroad.This study has identified some common strategies of subtitle translation by studying the English and Russian subtitles of This is China.First,the translator,as one of the main communicators,screens the message.For subtitles involving cultural-loaded words,translators generally adopt the approach of preserving the source text and adding explanatory information after it.When the source material is an oral interview and has repetitions,translators usually rewrite the text to make the translation more fluent and smoother.Secondly,for the uniquely Chinese content,the translator has adopted the strategy of free translation and explicit translation,which makes the translation not confined to the forms of the source text and avoids interfering with the viewers’understanding due to cultural differences.From the perspective of communication channels,due to the temporal and spatial limitations of TV subtitles,the strategies of condensation and deletion are frequently used to reduce redundant information in order to lessen the cognitive load of viewers.Finally,from the viewpoint of audience and communication effect,translators tend to adopt the methods of supplementation and shifting perspectives to make the translation more compatible with the viewers’ way of thinking and enable them to understand the context in a short time,while mistranslation will weaken the credibility of the message and should be avoided as much as possible.It is hoped that more academics will combine translation strategies with communication theories in the future to provide guidance for the dissemination of Chinese programs and better serve the national strategy of "going global".