A Study Of The English Subtitles In Red Cliff In Light Of Relevance Theory

In recent decades, with the development of science and technology, film has become a main form of cultural communication due to the proliferation of affordable technology for making films. Film is not only the carrier of culture, but also its product. In China, with the deepening of reform and opening-up, every year a lot of foreign films rush into Chinese market. Influenced by foreign filmic culture, Chinese films develop quickly and become influential in international film market. Film subtitle translation, as a new-emerging and special translation form, serves as the bridge in film communication. So it is important to further explore subtitle and its translation.According to relevance theory, communication is a relevance-seeking and ostensive-inferential process, in which assumptions from optimal relevance are selected with minimum processing efforts to achieve adequate contextual effects. In translation practice, the translator stands at the center of cross-cultural communication between the original author and the target audience. He mobilizes his cognitive resources and develops his subjectivity to seek for the optimal relevance in the source cognitive environment. And then based on the consideration of the target audience's cognitive environment, he conveys the author's informative intention and communicative intention.The thesis adopts the English subtitle of the film Red Cliff which was directed by Hong Kong famous film director Wu Yusen as a case study. Adapted from the historical stories in Three Kingdoms Period, the film transmits Chinese history and its traditional culture. Excellent subtitle translation promotes the recognition of Chinese films in the international market. In order to make the target audience have a good understanding of a foreign film, the subtitler must take the target audience's cognitive environment into consideration, employing effective translation strategies to make sure that the target audience could obtain maximum information with minimum effort. Therefore, it is of great significance to adopt relevance theory to guide subtitle translation. Based on relevance theory, the thesis puts forward some effective methods in subtitle translation, and points out some distorted translation to be avoided. Grammatically speaking, at word level, simple and high-frequency words, instead of long and rare words, are usually preferred by the subtitler; at sentence level, syntactic structure tends to be simplified and transitional words are usually added to make the subtitles more coherent. Semantically speaking, the implied meaning connoted in the original is inclined to be explicated. Culturally speaking, cultural gaps are often bridged by adding information or explanation. With the help of these methods, Chinese film will get further development and more and more Chinese films which have excellent subtitle translation can enter international market. When seeing these films, foreign audience will not concentrate much on comprehending the subtitles. Instead, they can focus on enjoying the film itself. This will facilitate the spread of Chinese culture abroad.