| As an advanced form of movie and cultural product,documentaries play a bridge role in today’s global cultural exchanges.They demonstrate a country’s local customs,values and development achievements to the rest of the world as a window.Among foreign documentaries,BBC and National Geographic documentaries are very popular in the world,which reflect the importance of translating documentaries.However,Chinese domestic documentaries are far less popular than them,partly because of the unsatisfactory quality of subtitle translation and cultural factors that impede the audience’s understanding.Therefore,it is necessary to explore subtitle translation of the documentary because of the important role of promoting Chinese documentaries to “go out”.The first two episodes of the documentary And Yet The Books 2 was produced to tell the real stories of six characters who work related to books such as an expert in bibliography of editions,a librarian and cartoonists who are still fighting in today’s ailing publishing industry attacked by the habit of fragmented reading and show the development of multi-dimensional publishing industry.This translation practice uses the first two episodes of the documentary that haven’t been translated into English as translation materials.Based on time and space limits of subtitle translation,this report demonstrates the difficulties of translating documentary subtitles including difficulties of translation of book terms,poetic sentences,long and complex sentences in narrations and repetition and redundancy as well as omission of sentences in interviews.In addition,the translation methods of coping with difficulties in narrations,interviews and terms related to books in the subtitles of the documentary are listed through analyzing specific examples.Four methods are used in translating terms related to books and titles of ancient Chinese books: literal translation,transliteration plus literal translation,transliteration plus annotation and choice of existed translation.And in translating narrations,free translation and restructuring are adopted.When translating colloquial interviews,methods of omission and addition are used.The translation methods mentioned above are used to make the documentary subtitles succinct,clear and readable.By translating the first two episodes of the subtitles of And Yet The Books 2,this translation practice intends to demonstrate the development of Chinese publishing industry and the real and touching stories of numerous Chinese scholars and other professionals in the industry.This translation report also aims to provide useful references for translators who are interested in Chinese-English documentary subtitle translation. |
