A Study On Documentary Subtitle Translation From The Perspective Of Eco-translatology

Broadcast by Discovery Channel and imported by CCTV,China: Time of Xi is a documentary series broadcast by international media for the first time to study the thoughts on governance of General Secretary of Chinese Communist Party and Chinese President Xi Jinping comprehensively and systematically.The documentary series has been studied mainly from the perspective of how to build the national image of China,while there is still a blank space in the field of subtitle translation study.It is difficult to make the documentary series familiar to Chinese audience without subtitle translation.However,as an important way to conduct cross-cultural communication,compared with other types of translation activity,subtitle translation receives insufficient attention of translation circles.For this reason,with fast burgeoning of film and television industry,it is of great importance to study subtitle translation.Born and growing up in China,Eco-translatology is a research paradigm studying translation activities from the perspective of Ecology.The core concept of the theory includes “translation can be regarded as ecological balance,text transformation as well as adaptation and selection”.Studying the subtitle translation from the perspective of Eco-translatology is of great innovativeness and timeliness.Based on a qualitative research approach and guided by the principle “translation as adaptation and selection” in Eco-translatology,the thesis combines the theory and translation examples,delving into the translational eco-environment,translators' adaptation and selection,mainly focusing on translators' multi-dimensional adaptive transformation in the translating process.The transformation made to deal with constraints and the feature of authenticity of documentary subtitle translation is analyzed in the scope of communicative dimensional transformation.The major findings of the study are as follows.At the macro level of translational eco-environment,China's national image has been improved;people's living standards have been upturned;the Belt and Road Initiative also has been vigorously implemented.At the micro level,the documentary series comprises Chinese and English two languages and there are lots of terminologies,idioms and proverbs containing Chinese characteristics.Therefore,it requires the translators' adaptive transformation on the basis of overcoming the constraints of subtitle translation.The translators should adapt to needs,including material needs and spiritual needs,competence,and both macro and micro levels of translational eco-environment,and then make adaptive transformation focusing on linguistic,cultural and communicative dimensions.On the linguistic dimension,the translators focus on the transformation of parataxis and hypotaxis,active voice and passive voice,dynamic and stative,as well as abstraction and concreteness.On the cultural dimension,the translators focus on the expressions with Chinese characteristics in the documentary series,adopting literal translation method,liberal translation method,and transliteration plus interpreting translation method to realize the transformation of the cultural differences.On the communicative dimension,the translators focus on the different communication habits of Chinese and Western audience and how to overcome the constraints(time and screen length)of subtitle translation,and the authenticity of documentary subtitle translation,so as to reach good communicative effects.In conclusion,Eco-translatology has provided a new perspective for analyzing translation activities.Based on the theoretical perspective,this thesis testifies that Eco-translatology is of great practicable guiding significance for translation activities.It is hoped that the thesis could serve as a spur to induce other researchers to study subtitle translation activities as well as Eco-translatology.