A Report On The Translation Of An Online Course Navigating Digital Information(Excerpts)

In the summer of 2021,the author retranslated the subtitles of an online video course published by Crash Course,an educational You Tube channel.The rationale for translating online courses is that international knowledge transfer has become a general trend in the era of digital transformation.The translation of online courses can be a typical indicator of such a tendency.Domestic online platforms such as Net Ease have introduced quite a few foreign academic courses to China.However,due to the dramatic growth of online education,a great number of excellent online courses remain unknown to Chinese learners.Several folk subtitle translation groups are also working on international academic courses,but these courses account for a relatively small proportion of all video types.To gain a better understanding of online academic course translation,the author retranslated the subtitles for this course in the autumn of 2021 and conducted a comparative analysis of the two versions in an endeavor to upgrade his competency in subtitle translation.The results of comparison and analysis show that the original text of this course is more vivid in style than that of standard academic courses,exhibiting traits of both oral and academic languages.If not managed properly,the translation may become complex and challenging to understand,making it unsuitable as subtitles for popular science courses.After conducting an assessment of his translation outcome,the author identified several major issues that deserve deliberate treatment,including style,translationese,and metaphor.The purpose of subtitle translation of popular science videos is to assist the dissemination and acquisition of new knowledge.To achieve this purpose,the author adopted the strategies of domestication and foreignization to reproduce the style of the original text by modifying the form of the translation on the basis of ensuring the transmission of information.He adopted the communicative translation theory to cope with translationese by clarifying the connotation of the original text and bringing the translation in line with the conventions of the target language and to deal with the problem of metaphor by judging whether the image of metaphor exists in both SL and TL cultures.The second version of subtitle translation is closer to the original text in style,more natural and acceptable in terms of the TL conventions.The process and outcome of the translation practice demonstrate that when translating subtitles for academic video courses,the following should be kept in mind: the unique style of the original text should be preserved;the translation should be well-structured,natural and learner-friendly;metaphorical images that are unfamiliar to the target audience should be converted;and project management and planning are critical components of quality assurance.