Contextual Reconstruction in the English Translation of Chinese Children's Animated Film Titles: A Boundary Compression Approach

As Chinese children’s animated films increasingly permeate the global market, theirtitles act as pivotal paratexts that mold young audiences’ initial impressions, emotionalinvolvement, and interpretive anticipations. Translating these titles is far more than a merelinguistic conversion; it is a sophisticated process of contextual reconstruction, shaped bydisparities in linguistic structures, cultural cognition, and audience reception across China andthe English-speaking world. Grounded in the Boundary Compression framework, this studyinvestigates how Chinese children’s animated film titles are translated into English to align withthe cognitive developmental stages and affective demands of young global viewers. It posits thateffective translation entails compressing process-oriented Chinese linguistic expressions intoresult-oriented English forms, while simultaneously enhancing cognitive accessibility andemotional resonance for the target juvenile audience. Through case analyses of representativeChinese children’s animated films, including Ne Zha, Boonie Bears, and Big Fish & Begonia,this paper identifies five core Boundary Compression strategies-classificatory, eliminative,implicative, fixed-point, and prospective compression-and dissects how each strategy facilitatesthe reconstruction of narrative meaning, thematic focus, and affective appeal in Englishtranslations. By integrating cognitive translation studies and affect theory, this researchaddresses the gap in existing scholarship on children’s media translation beyond Euro-Americancentric perspectives, and contributes to broader discourses on translational convergences anddivergences in global children’s literature and audiovisual media. It further explores how culturalvalues and aesthetic sensibilities inherent in Chinese animated film titles are mediated andrearticulated through translation, fostering cross-cultural exchange in the juvenile medialandscape.