Rewriting Of English Subtitles In Documentary The Silk Road And Approaches To Reshaping China’s Image

Documentaries are the vanguard of cultural exportation.In the process of Chinese culture going global,Chinese documentaries have made pivotal contributions.The subtitle text in documentaries is different from the traditional written works,which is rich in literature and educative and needs to be colloquial and popular.Due to these traits,higher requirements are put forward for the translators of documentary subtitles.The rewriting theory of translation proposed by André Lefevere is one of the pillar theories of the culture school in translation.As an important method of translation manipulation theory,rewriting emphasizes that translation is the process of rewriting the original text.Through the methodology of content analysis and the use of Nvivo,this paper centered on the English subtitles in the documentary The Silk Road co-produced by China’s CCTV and Japan’s NHK in 1980.Through data collection and case analysis,it is concluded that when the original The Silk Road subtitle text was translated into English,the translator made some inappropriate rewriting such as adding and deleting key points,changing praise and criticism,and misinterpreting,which led to the misinterpretation of China’s image and impairment in the dissemination of Chinese culture.After classifying cases according to rewriting theory,this paper proposes multi-dimensional strategies to deal with the inappropriate rewriting brought by patrons,ideology,and mainstream poetics in order to correct the misinterpretation of China’s image in the original translation,and further proposes six strategies for subtitle translation of documentaries,namely,explanatory translation,annotation,transcreation,amplification,modification,and foreignization,to provide a reference for translation circles to improve the level of English subtitles translation of domestic documentaries,spread Chinese culture to the outside world and reshape the image of China.