Translator’s Adaption And Selection

As “the increasingly important area in the field of translation studies”, audiovisual translation has arousedmuch more attention in translation circle of which subtitle translation is an important part. Nowadays, a lot offoreign TV dramas have been introduced into Chinese market with the impact of globalization and thedevelopment of network technology. American TV dramas are especially favored by more and more Chineseaudiences. The Big Bang Theory is a typical American TV drama which contains vivid figures, vast scientificknowledge and cultural factors of different nations, countries and religions and is popular with many Chineseaudiences. The popularity of American TV dramas has aroused a huge demand for subtitle translation, whichresults in a rapid growth of network subtitle translation and an increasing enthusiasm for subtitle translationstudies. At present, subtitle translation studies on American TV drama in China are mostly on some old-typedtexts and rarely under the Eco-translatology theory. This thesis aims to study how the translator achieve“Selective Adaption” and “Adaptive Selection” in the process of The Big Bang Theory’s subtitle translationunder the theoretical framework of Eco-translatology theory, attempting to provide a new perspective to subtitletranslation as well as a proof for the explanatory power of Eco-translatology.According to Eco-translatology, translation is translator’s selections to adapt translational eco-environment.A translational eco-environment refers to the worlds of the source text and the target language, as well as theauthor, the client, and the readers which affects translator’s best adaption and optimized selection. The methodsof translation refer to adaption and adaptive selection in multi-dimension which relatively focus on threedimensions as linguistic dimension, cultural dimension and communicative dimension. Subtitle translationenjoys unique features which is different from literary translation. Eco-translatology theory is a theory that takessome other conditions and factors of non-literary translation into consideration, thus it has advantages instudying subtitle translation.This thesis is a case study on subtitle translation of The Big Bang Theory under Eco-traslatology. The writerfirstly analyzed translator’s “Selective Adaption” to translational eco-environment mainly focused on source textand target audiences. After data analyzing, it shows that the source text, The Big Bang Theory, has uniquefeatures as boasting complicated figures, vast scientific knowledge and various cultural information. Meanwhile,the target audiences are mostly young people with high degree. All these factors require the translator’s effortsfor adaption to translational eco-environment before and in the process of translation. Then the writer discussed how the translator achieved “Adaptive Selection” through “Three-dimensional Transformation”. The analyzeshows that in the translation process of The Big Bang Theory’s subtitle, based on the adaption to translationaleco-environment, the translator adopts various translation methods as application of buzzwords, application oftypical Chinese syntax structure, information adding, and so on, to achieve adaptive selection in linguistic,culture and communicative dimensions, resulting in translation version which successfully gets through languagebarriers, bridges cultural differences and helps target audiences to appreciateAmerican TV dramas better.