As international exchanges between China and foreign countries become more and more frequent.....

• As international exchanges between China and foreign countries become more and more frequent, film and television works become one of the main cultural exchange carriers, and subtitle translation becomes particularly important. Although China's film and television subtitle translation is a step behind compared with foreign countries, it is especially important as the popularity of film and television works increases among the audience.

   

  High-quality translation is conducive to the audience's understanding of the information content of the film and television works and appreciation of its cultural meaning, and is the bridge between the film and the audience.

   

  What are the characteristics of subtitle translation for film and television? First of all, in film and television works, dialogue is the main body of the characters' language, and its main form is dialogue. Dialogue has the typical characteristics of spoken language, and the most important feature of spoken language is the briefness.

   

  The translation of a film or television work is usually prepared for dubbing. In order to avoid long and complicated sentences that are difficult for the audience to understand, it is necessary to use easy-to-understand everyday spoken language to express through dialogue.

   

  Secondly, subtitle translation is to be complementary to audio and video, and does not exist independently. Subtitles without picture and sound are difficult to be understood, and they cannot exist independently of picture and sound, so they will change with the change of picture and sound, which is the time-limited nature of subtitles.

   

  Finally, when we translate subtitles, we must be flexible in dealing with subtitles, preserving the original text and innovation appropriately. When converting vocabulary and word categories, we need to make the subtitles suitable for the cultural environment and reduce the difficulty of understanding caused by cultural differences, and we can go to add some explanations appropriately. It is also necessary to ensure that the translation is accurate and choose the appropriate language style according to the genre of the movie.

   

  Of course, the layout of the subtitles must meet aesthetic standards, and the font should not be too large to affect the picture, nor too small to make the font illegible. The length of each subtitle line is also limited because the screen stays short and the subtitle translation is limited by time, which mainly means that the subtitle translation must be synchronized with the characters' dialogues, actions and images.

   

  In addition, viewers take different amounts of time to navigate through the subtitles, depending on their level of understanding. Generally, a single line of subtitles on the screen may be only 2 seconds, and two lines of subtitles about 7 seconds. Therefore, there should not be too much content in the captions, and punctuation should be carefully considered.

   

  WetransTech believes that the purpose of subtitle translation is to try to convey the language and cultural information of the film, to better realize the aesthetic and commercial value of the film and television, to attract the attention of the audience to the greatest extent, and to meet the viewing needs of the majority of the audience. It is also to promote the cultural exchange and integration of different languages and nationalities.