A Study of Translation Policy in the Subtitling Industry in China: An Actor-Network Approach

This research will investigate how translation policies are put into the practice of subtitling in contemporary China. It draws on Actor-network theory (ANT) to identify the actors that underpin policy-making and translation on the one hand; and to assemble the professional and fan-based networks of Chinese subtitling on the other hand. This is timely and relevant as little has been written on the impact that power, ideology, and censorship have when translating audiovisual texts in the Chinese context while the number of imported audiovisual productions is on the rise. Moreover, existing research has largely focused on the products of audiovisual translation, leaving the actors involved in subtitling production processes underexplored. Ethnographic fieldwork will be conducted to investigate how policies are complied with and negotiated across the spectrum of subtitling agents and policy-makers through a combination of research techniques including questionnaires, interviews, document analysis, and participant observation. By assembling distinctive actor-networks of subtitling and policy-making agents, the research will deliver a comprehensive survey of policies which modulate the choices and strategies adopted by the multiple subtitling agents at various levels in China.