Translation Strategies For Localization Of English Game Websites From The Perspective Of Eco-Translatology ——A Case Study On Overwatch

The online gaming sector is growing as a result of the pandemic and an increase in internet activity.The official website for online games serves as an excellent platform to learn about the products.High-quality website localization helps product promotion and increases the brand effect.The number of websites for imported online games is gradually increasing,while it is rare to find research on translation strategies for localization of English game websites.Various aspects including content creators,consumers,and diverse cultures are all involved in web localization which should be studied from a comprehensive perspective.Eco-Translatology,centering around concepts including "translation as adaptation and selection","the translational eco-environment",and "the threedimensional transformation",provides a new approach to studies on web localization.The theoretical bases of the theory are the classical Chinese philosophy of "the unity of heaven and man" and "the pursuit of harmony and mean" and the Darwinian doctrine of natural selection and "survival of the fittest".Translational ecoenvironment refers to the world constituted by source and target texts,source and target language.The three-dimensional transformation refers to the selection and transformation made by the translator to adapt to the translational eco-environment.This thesis examines the American English1 and Simplified Chinese2 versions of the official website of Overwatch,an American online game,with Eco-Translatology.This study first explores the translational eco-environment of the case,then tries to find the translation strategies that facilitate the adaptive transformation in the three dimensions.This thesis aims to find effective translation strategies for the localization of game websites from an Eco-Translatology perspective.From the case study,this paper concludes that:first,the translator should take the writers of the game,user profiling,the characteristics of texts on the websites,the characteristics of the source,and the target language into consideration.Second,the translator completed the three-dimensional transformation with Domestication including Liberal translation and Imitation,translation techniques including Addition and Deletion:the translator adapts to the linguistic characteristics of English and Chinese,and websites as a genre,ensuring the successful transformation from the linguistic dimension;the translator sometimes partly sacrifices meanings in the cultural dimension with Domestication to ensure the complete transformation from the communicative dimension;the translation meets the communicative purpose of the website with Domestication.Third,for English-Chinese localization of game websites,Domestication is more common and effective from the perspective of the threedimensional transformation;the translator can use Foreignization to separate the virtual world from the real one to ensure the consistency of context in the game website.