With the popularization of broadband in China and the wide application of MPEG-4 technology, many DVD-compressed DVDRIP movies spread in the Internet at an alarming rate. In fact, in China, most people don't have the ability to directly appreciate foreign language movies, but many DVDRIP movies are only original sound and foreign language subtitles. As an important part of DVD movies, subtitle translation is gradually attracting people's attention. These include vobsub subtitles copied from genuine or pirated DVD discs, and srt subtitles spontaneously translated by netizens.

Characteristics of Chinese subtitle translation

Chinese subtitles and Chinese dubbing are different in translation requirements. For example, the well-known Shanghai Translation Factory requires that the dubbing should be consistent in mouth shape and the sentences should conform to China's oral norms. Its advantage is that it is convenient for the audience to watch movies and understand them directly without looking at subtitles. Its shortcomings are also obvious: due to the requirements of mouth shape, sentences have to be abbreviated or expanded; Due to the differences in foreign history and culture, many puns and humorous meanings are difficult to express, so the translation of these sentences has to be abandoned.

Taking the bilingual version of Capricorn I as an example, we can clearly see the difference between Chinese dubbing and Chinese subtitles. There is a story in which a mother speaks English tongue twisters to her children. If the dubbing is translated directly and it is difficult to rhyme, she will tell the story instead. Another story is about an astronaut telling a joke while climbing a mountain. This joke is meaningful. If translated directly into dubbing, many viewers will feel puzzled, so the dubbing version is changed to an astronaut calling for help while climbing a mountain. Many humorous elements in the dubbing version of the film have been changed, thus losing a lot of fun in enjoying the film.

Film subtitles can better deal with these problems. First of all, there is no mouth shape restriction, subtitles can be translated directly from the original text, while humor and pun can be solved through annotations. Of course, the best way is to learn a foreign language well and watch movies with foreign subtitles directly. However, when personal conditions do not allow, subtitle translation is the best way to express English meaning to the greatest extent.

A battlefield without smoke

Netizens who often watch DVDRIP movies know that there are several major websites in the open Chinese subtitle library. Shooter. Com sits firmly at the top of the subtitle website, which is characterized by allowing free uploading and complicated subtitles. Because there are many subtitles, there are several versions of the same film, which makes users feel at a loss when downloading. The scoring system set up on the website is basically useless, because most netizens come to download subtitles, and they have long forgotten to score subtitles after watching the film. Shooter. Com has four friendly search links of subtitle websites: TLF, Hanfeng, New Vision and Niu Guo. You can continue to search for subtitles that are not on the shooter. com。 These four subtitle websites are mainly forums, and each has a subtitle group with strong translation ability. In addition to the four forums mentioned above, there are subtitle groups of film and television forums such as Eden and Planet. Although there is no independent subtitle website, it also has strong subtitle translation ability, and its strength should not be underestimated.

It is true that peers are enemies, especially in the subtitle industry. There is an unwritten rule in subtitle field that every member of subtitle group is not allowed to join other subtitle groups or publish his own translation works in the name of other subtitle groups. Some members tried to break the law and were expelled from the group. It is a semi-open secret that each subtitle group has a special activity section in its own forum, and only members of the group can enter it. Whenever a hit blockbuster goes on the market, these secret bases feel like killing people. Each subtitle group is in full swing, holding a working meeting, assigning tasks, and striving to release subtitles as soon as possible. Team members who receive tasks often stay up all night and work for more than ten hours. A few days later, the quality comparison of subtitles produced by various forums became a hot topic in the subtitle group discussion. People with good deeds will evaluate the quality of subtitles produced by various forums by randomly selecting sentences for comparison. Therefore, the translation of popular blockbusters is tantamount to a fierce battle, and due to years of war, the popularity of several major subtitle groups and their forums soared, and the translators rejoiced, eventually forming a situation of N winning.

A few kind bricks

To put it bluntly, the translation of Chinese subtitles is quite confusing at present. Because there is no uniform standard similar to rip subtitles, and many translators are eager for quick success and instant benefit, they regard translating subtitles as a means to cope with errands, resulting in uneven subtitle quality. In solo combat, apart from the high quality of individual translations, the stragglers in non-subtitle groups generally lack translation experience, and there are also many problems in subtitles. However, some subtitle groups only seek quantity, regardless of quality, and they are happy as long as they are turned over, and there is no relatively perfect quality supervision mechanism to restrain them. There is no need to check carefully. After watching the films, the average obvious errors (such as typos and format errors) of each film are above 10. Recently, there are not many subtitles published by Hanfeng HTS, and only a few can control the error within a certain range (some of them were translated long ago). To sum up, I personally think that the subtitle industry has four disadvantages (I found that the title actually rhymes, hehe):

1, one person does translation proofreading.

The early subtitle group of Niu Guo Forum (the predecessor of HTS subtitle group in Han Feng) was once brilliant and established a special translation proofreading system. The beginning and end of subtitles are marked with translation and proofreading, and it is stipulated that translation and proofreading cannot be the same person. The subtitle groups of other forums have also adopted this form, but unfortunately they have only learned the form and have no substantive content. Most subtitles produced by the subtitle group are translated and proofread by one person.

It would be irresponsible for me to say that the quality of subtitles translated and proofread by one person is definitely not as good as that translated and proofread by two people respectively. Some individuals independently translate and proofread subtitles, and the quality is even much higher than that of two people. But think about it, how many people will actually proofread the subtitles after translating them? How many mistakes can the school find in its own subtitles? According to my previous translation experience, watching movies repeatedly for N times in the process of translation has exhausted me, and it is hard to be in the mood to watch them again after translation. Moreover, mistakes in my own translation are hard to find. This is why we should encourage members of the subtitle group to proofread each other.

Even the translation and proofreading mechanism I mentioned is a form in itself. If this article comes out, the subtitle groups of many forums have been changed to multi-person proofreading one after another, but the quality has not improved. Isn't that still formalism? If we really want to maintain the quality of subtitles, we must have more specific standards, and limit the number of subtitle errors produced by each subtitle group to a few, and there will be penalties if it exceeds.

2. Serious waste of human resources.

Because each forum does its own thing, there is no unified arrangement and planning, resulting in a shortage of translators, who are all focused on the translation of popular commercial films. The Lord of the Rings series and The Matrix series have more than four subtitle groups working simultaneously. Many movies with Chinese subtitles have come out with another RIP version, and the translator retranslated them without searching. Some subtitle groups once formed a translation alliance to organize and arrange their work in a unified way to avoid repeated translation, but due to the task allocation and translation ability, they finally had to return to their own state.

I have a dream that all Chinese subtitle agencies will unite and set up a special subtitle translation and distribution website to translate popular blockbusters in turn. Other films will be translated by individuals themselves. In addition, we will formulate uniform rules for subtitle translation and proofreading, and specify the details of subtitle translation to ensure the quality of subtitles. Of course, this is just a dream of mine, and it is quite difficult to really implement it, which involves website management, task allocation, communication, and especially the self-interest of each subtitle group. In order to realize it step by step, the communication between the heads of each subtitle group is the primary task.

The translation of feature films and old films is too tiring

At present, individual application system is widely used in subtitle translation, and everyone chooses the film translation that suits them according to their own hobbies. In the absence of special interest, romance films and action shootouts are usually popular because of their few sentences, attractive plots and low translation difficulty. However, feature films, old black-and-white film, documentaries and literary films with more than 1500 sentences are rarely talked about because of many dialogues, boring plots and difficult translation. Of course, these situations are not absolute. I remember once turning over an old film with more than 200 sentences. Generally speaking, this is actually the contradiction between personal interest and subtitle demand. Subtitle groups are established on the basis of hobbies, so why not repeat translation as long as you like? Forcing others to translate movies they don't like is against the concept of "hobby". Without considering the interests, we can give extra rewards to netizens who translate unpopular films through the proper inclination of the forum reward system, so as to solve the problem of not translating long films and old films.

4. Newcomers are not here to retire.

People's hobbies will change. After the subtitle group was established for a certain period of time, many old members will gradually lose their original enthusiasm for translation after translating and proofreading more than a dozen films, and the number of people involved in translation will gradually decrease, and many of them are in a semi-retirement state. At present, Hanfeng Forum's point system+flow system has solved some translation slack problems, but it is not a long-term solution after all. In my mind, a better subtitle group model should be similar to "Young Volunteers" teaching in the frontier. After several years, old members quit one after another, and new members kept joining. Of course, people who are willing to serve for a long time are more welcome. In subtitle translation, there has always been a great demand for talents. Unfortunately, the publicity is not enough, and it is difficult to maintain the continuous input of fresh blood only by recruiting new members within the forum. I hope to recruit such members in BBS and professional English forums in colleges and universities. After all, not everyone can persist in this energy-consuming work for a long time. This article is written for recruiting new members of Hanfeng subtitle group. Please don't delete the last advertising article when reprinting.

First, the subtitle production requirements

Seriously-I put this first. Poor English level and poor Chinese expression are excusable, but careless low-level mistakes are unforgivable. It's ridiculous that someone should raise the threshold for entering the subtitle group. There is a serious shortage of manpower at present, so we can't mention it any more. The poor quality of most subtitles is not due to poor English, but to a lack of serious attitude. Personally, the quality of a subtitle is 40% due to serious attitude, 20% due to translation experience, 19% due to English level, and 2 1% due to Chinese expression. Among them, the translation experience includes Chinese and English expressions and the application of tools, software and Internet search in translation. Beginners will not pay attention to this empirical knowledge at first, but they will gradually understand it after a long time.

English-Usually, the subtitle groups of major forums recruit people from outside and require CET-6, which really scares many newcomers who are going to try subtitle translation. I want to correct my statement here, hoping to encourage these netizens who are scared away by the high threshold. Generally speaking, the sentences in movies are much simpler than those in college English textbooks. I think as long as the students who have gone to college, whether they have passed CET-4 or CET-6, can meet the requirements of English subtitle translation with the help of translation software such as Kingsoft. Of course, the higher the English level, the better, especially the netizens who study and live abroad, because sometimes, there will be some complicated sentence patterns, slang and knowledge about foreign history and culture in the film, which can't be found in dictionaries and translation software, and then the advantage of English level will be reflected.

Chinese-Strangely, although English translation involves two languages, many subtitle groups often do not require any Chinese level. Probably because we are all from China, and have studied Chinese for 10 years, there should be no problem in expression. In fact, English translation should have more requirements for Chinese expression. Some foreign students who have been abroad for many years have good English, not to mention many slang words that they can't find, but the translated subtitles are a mess. Probably adapted to English expression, and then turned back to Chinese expression, but it seems to be "British Chinese." I wonder if he will talk like this after returning home.