A Study On Subtitle Translation In The Flowers Of War-from The Eco-Translatological Perspective

The word “ecology” has come into the view of the public and got attention around theworld in recent years. It emphasizes the harmonious coexistence with the nature. Gradually,some interdiscipline subjects such as ecological economics, ecophilosophy and ecologicalpolitics have emerged. Based on this, in2004, Hu Gengshen, professor of Tsinghua University,introduced Darwin’s principle of “natural selection” and “survival of the fittest” to translationstudies; he proposed “translation as adaptation and selection”. Later, in2008, Hu Gengshenfurther put forward the theory of “eco-translatology”, thus carried the theory forward withvast potential for future development. According to the theory of eco-translatology, translationis defined as “a kind of selective activity of translators’ adaptation to fit the translationaleco-environment”. The theory explains that translation process is an “alternation of thetranslator’s adaptation and selection”; it puts forward a completely new perspective anddescription in translation studies. Eco-translatology focuses on the mutual relationshipbetween translation participants and translational eco-environment. It places the translator at acentral position and takes all the essential factors of translation into account, such as thesource text, readers, client, and translator’s background and so on. Therefore,eco-translatology offers a new and comprehensive interpretation to translator, translationmethod, principle and process (Hu,2008:11).With the deepening of the reform and opening up to the outside and the rapid developmentof the economy, China is playing an increasingly vital role in the world, therefore the translationof Chinese movies that serves as one of the ways of cultural communication is of superbsignificance. As a means of cross-cultural language communication, film subtitle translation hasbecome a topic of great interest in its related research fields, reflecting the significance and thecomplexity of film subtitle translation from the perspective of translation practice andcross-cultural communication. Recently, the researchers in China and foreign countries have made a number of studies on the subtitle translation. However, it must be mentioned that mostof the studies are just occupied in the micro level with a focus on simple language features orother superficial features of rhetorical devices.For the first time, this thesis combines the theory of eco-translatology and film subtitletranslation; this theory defines that in the process of translation, the translator makes hisadaptation and selection taking eco-environment into consideration. The translationeco-environment means the whole situation and condition presented by the source text, thesource language and the target language, the corresponding parts of language,communication, culture and society as well as the author, the reader or viewer and thepublisher included. Based on the theory, this paper analyzes the eco-environment and theprocess of the subtitle translation more systematically from a new angle.This thesis, focusing on the study of subtitle translation from Chinese into English,attempts to make an eco-translatology analysis on subtitle translation. Through comparisonand analyses of the Chinese and English versions of The Flowers of War from theperspective of eco-translatology, this paper attempts to demonstrate that eco-translatology isa relatively new and efficient way to direct subtitle translation. Firstly, the researchbackground, research objective, research methodology, significance and the layout of thethesis are presented in chapter one. The second chapter introduces current foreign anddomestic researches on the subtitle translation. The third chapter presents Professor Hu’stheory of eco-translatology. The fourth chapter is the most important part of the thesis; itrecommends the detail analysis of the subtitle translation of the Flowers of War under thedirection of eco-translatology. At the end of this paper, the author come to the conclusionthat eco-translatology provides a new angle to supervise the subtitle translation; what’s more,this paper can be considered as a case study to testify the power and feasibility ofeco-translatology.