Reviewing the Translation of the Chinese Animation Film Ne Zha: Birth of the Demon Child in North America from the Perspective of Eco-translatology

Abstract

The Chinese film Ne Zha: Birth of the Demon Child entered the North American market, with English subtitles and dubbing versions. This paper compares the two, analyzes the differences from the perspective of eco-translatology, and discusses the possibility of enriching the concept of communicative dimension of eco-translatology with Translation Economics and Nida's functional equivalence theory. Through comparison of the two versions, this paper finds that the dubbing version of the film has greater deviation from the Chinese subtitles, and is generally closer to the three dimensions of the target language (English): linguistic, cultural and communicative. In terms of swear word translation in the cultural and communicative dimensions, the subtitle version used literal translation, while the dubbing removed all the swear words. In terms of readability, the dubbed English version is more colloquial and idiomatic, which makes the language easier to understand and suitable for children. The dubbing version fully demonstrates the translator’s consideration of the audience demographics; meanwhile, its low-cost dubbing production also reflects the distributor's consideration of market and economic benefits.