Cultural Default And Compensation In E-c Documentary Subtitling From The Perspective Of Communication Models

With the prosperity of video-based new media industry,subtitle translation is of increasing significance in cross-culture exchange.As an important kind of video production,documentaries feature authenticity and profundity,attracting a mass audience.The fascinating cultural differences of documentaries will also be reflected in the subtitles.To reduce the negative impact of culture disparity for the audience,it’s very important to figure out the proper method to complement cultural default in translation.Generally,both the productions and translation of film and videos aim at transmission.This thesis,based on the case study of English-to-Chinese subtitle translation of the documentary The City of Las Vegas: The Early Years,introduces communication models into the subtitling process.The paper analyzes cultural default of the subtitles and translation compensation methods in the practice from the aspect of four critical elements in communication models,namely Communication Load,Noise,Receiver and Communication Effect.Noise means all the factors disturbing the communication process,which refers to cultural default in the paper.The thesis finds out that five translation methods could be applied in compensating cultural default in subtitle translation,namely annotation,addition,omission,substitution,and rearrangement of sentence structure.With these methods,the subtitler could better control communication load,eliminate noises in the process and transmit the information effectively to the receivers,so as to achieve the expected and best communication effect of the subtitles and the video production.