A Study of the Subtitles of A Bite of China from the Perspective of Semantic and Communicative Translation

Abstract

With the increasing attention of the international spread of Chinese culture, documentaries became an essential carrier of Chinese culture to the world. Based on Newmark’s theories of semantic translation and communicative translation, this study analyzes the English subtitles of A Bite of China Episode 4: The Taste of Time, and discusses the use of the two translation methodologies in the Chinese documentary subtitling. The findings reveal that the subtitle translation is a flexible blend of semantic translation and communicative translation to strike a balance between the preservation of culture-specific information and the understanding and acceptance of the audience, thus allowing the cross-cultural communication of Chinese cuisine.