Subtitle Translation Of Animated Films From The Perspective Of Eco—translatology

The theory of Eco-translatology is put forward by Professor Hu Gengshen, a well-established scholar in translation studies from Tsinghua University. It takes "natural selection" and "survival of the fittest" as the philosophical basis and the approach to translation in the form of adaptation and selection as the core of this theory. Translational Eco-environment refers to the whole translation system made up of the source language, the source text and the target language. It is an integrated survival environment for the translators and the translated text. Eco-translatology gives a new explanation of the nature, process, method and criteria of the translation activity. According to Eco-translatology, translation is a process in which translators make a series of circulatory adaptation and selection to fit the translational Eco-environment. The best translation is the one that makes optimal adaptive selection. The approach involves three dimensional transformations, namely linguistic, cultural and communicative dimensions, which should be kept in mind for translators. When translators put the source language in a macro translational Eco-environment instead of only focusing on linguistic or aesthetic aspects, better translated texts for readers can be realized. As an innovative and relatively systematic translation theory, Eco-translatology provides a different and innovative perspective for translation research.Applying Eco-translatology to film subtitle study, especially to animated film subtitle study, is a new area. This thesis studies the Chinese translation of animated films subtitles with The Croods as a study case. The Croods is an American3D computer-animated adventure comedy film produced by DreamWorks Animation in2013. It received generally positive reviews around the world and proved to be a box office success. However, due to the language barrier, most Chinese audiences have to rely on Chinese subtitles to enjoy this film. Under such conditions, its subtitle translation is highly important. In fact, this film’s translating process and quality can be guided and inspected by the theory of Eco-translatology.This thesis, with the Eco-translatology as the theoretical framework, probes into the subtitle translation of animated films, taking the Chinese translation of The Croods as a study case. Descriptive method is adopted to explain the viewpoints of Eco-translatology and translation phenomena in The Croods. For the translator’s adaptations to the translational Eco-environment, this thesis firstly analyzes the characteristics and constraints of translating animated film subtitles. And through the discussion of such aspects as the ideology of the source language society and the target language society, the expected aims of The Croods, the target audiences, the specific translational Eco-environment are analyzed. After that, this thesis adopts blended methods such as case study method and text analysis method to expound and analyze the translator’s adaptive selection from three dimensions with some typical E-C translation cases in the film. This thesis aims to prove Eco-translatology’s applicability to the subtitle translation of animated films. Hopefully, this thesis can provide a new angle for the practice of translating animated film subtitles and be a supplement for the research perspective for animated film subtitle translaton as well.