A Report On English-Chinese Subtitle Translation Of Online Technology Videos

In recent years,an increasing number of foreign language videos on You Tube have been favored by Chinese audiences,which stimulates unprecedented demand for translating online videos.However,in China,previous research on subtitling mainly focused on films and TV dramas,while subtitling for online videos has rarely been studied,in particular,studies addressing tech-related topics have been few and far between.This report takes the You Tube channel,Linus Tech Tips,as an example to explore what translation strategies can be applied to solving common issues in subtitling for technology online videos.With a total duration of 1 hour and 48 seconds,the five source videos came from Linus Tech Tips and were selected by the author,whose topics cover product review,PC-building and technology introduction.Several requirements were proposed by the client,including the quality of the rendition,content that needs to be translated,language style,and details of the subtitles.Based on the above requirements,the author applied Aegisub,an open-source subtitle editing program,to facilitate transcribing,splitting,and spotting so as to handle the spatial and temporal constraints in subtitling.Several features are summarized after analyzing the source videos and the target audience: 1)Verbal features: the source texts are characterized by prefabricated orality,highly flexible sentence structures,and frequent use of terminologies;2)Non-verbal features: the source videos are characterized by frequent use of body languages,tones,and background information,etc.3)Features of the target audience: the source videos are supposed to be viewed by young and well-educated native Chinese speakers who are interested in technologyrelated content and familiar with the culture of the target platform.The main problems and the corresponding translation strategies of subtitling for online technology videos are summarized as follows: 1)Terminologies: literal translation or annotation depending on the acceptance of the audience;2)Comments on products: should be translated literally and faithfully without intensifying or weakening them;3)Spatial and temporal constraints: reduction,simplification and omission;4)Non-verbal information: description,supplement and annotation;5)Extralinguistic references: literal translation,adaptation and omission.