CGTN Nature

a mini-documentary series on nature

created by China Global Television Network

which realistically documents the topography and landform

climate features

and rare wildlife in China. The documentary is bilingual with English and Chinese subtitles

facilitating Chinese natural landscapes and culture to go global. This paper applies Professor Hu Gengshen’s Eco-translatology to analyze the subtitle translation in CGTN Nature. Through case analysis

the article finds that the translator firstly adapt to the specific “ecological context” of the film

and then choose the most appropriate language to translate the subtitles from the three dimensional transformations of language

culture and communication. Due to the inherent “constraints” of subtitles

the three-dimensional transformations can break this constraint and achieve better translation results to some extent. This paper finally concludes that translators should give full play to their subjectivity and make “adaptive choices” on the basis of balancing the constraints of documentary translation

so that they can translate high-quality subtitles and thus realize the documentaries’ purpose of overseas publicity and cultural communication. The author hopes that this article can provide some reference for the theory and practice of English subtitle translation

and calls for more translators to devote themselves to the translation of Chinese foreign publicity work.