A Report On The Subtitle Translation Of TED Talks

With the continuous development of modern science and technology,the way we obtain information and absorb new ideas has undergone tremendous changes.More and more people are inclined to catch the latest social trends by watching videos through mobile phones,computers,and other electronic devices.Traditional books and newspapers can no longer meet people’s fast-paced needs.TED speeches,however,conform to that preference of most audiences.Since most TED speeches are presented in English,to meet the needs of audiences around the world,video subtitles often need to be translated into local languages.The translator participated in the English to Chinese translation of TED speeches as a translation volunteer.This report is based on the subtitle translation of 6 TED talks guided by Nida’s functional equivalence theory.In this report,the translator,first of all,gave an introduction to the project and then described the whole process of the project.Later,the theoretical framework was elaborated.Finally,it came to the most important chapter,the case study where 14 typical translation examples are listed along with the relevant analysis to demonstrate the semantic,syntactic and pragmatic strategies applied during the translation.Hopefully,this report can make some contributions to the future research and practice of subtitle translation.