At least two subjects—Ecology and Translatology are involved in eco-translatology。 Therefore, eco-translatology can be labeled as an interdisciplinary research。 Focused on the integrality of translational ecology, eco-translatology tends to analyze translational process from the view of ecological environment of translation, to describe the relationship between translators and ecological environment of translation, and to study translators’ living circumstances as well as the development of translational capability。 Definitionally, eco-translatology pays attention to “Ecology” and “ecological environment” and tries to study translation by introducing a new approach of interdisciplinarity。 From the content point of view, eco-translatology stands for “translator-centered” principle。 From the angle of grammar, “translatology” is the key word of “eco-translatology” while “eco” often acts as the modifier。 That is, eco-translatology is a new theory which asks us to explore translational phenomenon from the angle of Ecology。 It belongs to translatology just like linguistic translatology, cultural translatology, cognitive translatology as well as social translatology。 From the view of its standard position, it is acceptable to classify eco-translatology as a branch of translatology。 To sum up, eco-translatology breaks new ground for translational research。 Thus, this paper attempts to explore the adaptive selection from linguistic, cultural and communicative dimensions through analyzing subtitle translation of the film Zootopia。

2。2 Previous study on the subtitle translation of English films 

“Subtitles offer the target receptors a platform on which they are capable of grasping the movie’s scenarios from both the visual and the audio methods synchronously。”(Zhang 10) Although Subtitle translation belongs to literature translation, it is not equal to literature translation。

 In general, films and TV drama initially became prevalent in Europe。 Therefore, the founders of audiovisual translation study are western experts and scholars, who promote the development of movie translation theory。 

From late 1950s to early 1960s, experts and scholars from western world set to study subtitle translation。 One of the greatest and influential works about subtitle translation was Le sous-titrage des film by Laks。 

In 1974, subtitle translation came to study at the first time when Dollerup released On Subtitles in Television Programmes in Bable。 

In 1982, Lucien Marleau chiefly talked about the different problems about the subtitles, and pided them into four headings: psychological, artistic-aesthetic, technological and linguistic。 

Golden age of movie translation originated from Western movie translation in 1990s。 In 1991, Luyken published the works— Overcoming Language Barriers in Television: Dubbing and Subtitling for the European Audience。 In addition, Subtitling for the Media is the other significant book in that era。 The language transformation in films was analyzed from a professional angle。 In addition, plentiful data and details were cited to conduct a systematic and scientific study on the European movies。 论文网

In 1992, Ivarsson offered a great overview of this field by demonstrating the technical constraints of subtitling。

After 1995, Chaume has been committed to the classification of all kind of audiovisual modes。 Gambier also made enormous contributions to subtitle translation。 Gambier, an authentic leader of audiovisual translation, carried out his study from a deep and wide range。

However, different from the rapid theory progress abroad, studies in China are still at the preliminary stage。 In the early days, movies merely existed in a few metropolises and were enjoyed by a fixed minor group of people。 At the beginning, there only existed silent films with foreign language subtitles。 Thus, there was a large demand of subtitle translation soon。 In 1921, an increasing number of overseas movies were brought in, so the subtitle translation was taken seriously。 With the development of globalization, an increasing number of foreign films have been brought into China。 Chinese film market has entered a prosperous era after the year 1949 when the People’s Republic of China was set up while it set to leap from the early 1980s when Deng Xiaoping conducted the policy of reform and opening up。 Henceforward, a great number of overseas movies have flocked into China, speeding up the development of film translation。 Although not that rapid in the development of the theories of subtitle translation compared with Western countries, China has made significant contributions to this field thanks to its great experts and scholars。