A Probe Into Subtitles Translation From The Relevance-Theoretic Account

It has become more crucial to construct translation theories concerning films, which are regarded as one of the most important communicative channels in multimedia today. A number of academic researches have been devoted to this field abroad. The introduction of relevance-theoretic account of translation by Gutt, which is based upon relevance theory, has undoubtedly provided strong support to the translation study on subtitles in our country.After the analysis of subtitles from several English films and Chinese films, this thesis tries to propose corresponding translation strategies under the principle of relevance, which will also give support to relevance-theoretic account of translation as well.The thesis consists of four chapters.Chapter one reviews relevance theory by Sperber and Wilson and the relevance-based account of translation proposed by Gutt. It introduces some basic concepts of relevance theory which are related to translation study. The focus in this chapter is put on the illumination the relevance-theoretic account has given us.Chapter two mainly concentrates on studies about subtitles translation. It concerns the features, classification and functions of subtitles and also some past studies in the subtitles translation field. It also mentions the technical constraints of subtitling, which are of great importance to the subtitling and the film quality.Chapter three is devoted to translation strategies during subtitling guided by the principle of relevance. Depending on the flow of linguistic material in the film, the percentage of reduction varies from 30% to 50% of the original. Therefore, the most important strategy is reduction, which...