The Pragmatics Of Film Subtitle Translation

As a means of cross-cultural language communication, film subtitle translation has become a topic of general interest in its related research fields, reflecting the importance and the complexity of film subtitle translation from the angles of translation practice and cross-cultural pragmatic communication. This thesis is devoted to analysis of English-to-Chinese film subtitle translation based on Relevance Theory (RT) of pragmatics, which focuses on ostension and inference of the communicator's intention. In other words, the original intention should be comprehended to the greatest extent and conveyed to the target audience to the utmost degree at minimal processing effort.Subtitle translation is a pragmatic process which involves into multi-level communication, taking inference as a necessary part of meaning. First, the translator must have a sound interpretation of the original intention on the basis of the co-text and share the related information with the original author on the extra-linguistic levels of psychology and cognition; second, bearing in mind the cognition and expectation of the viewers, the subtitler, based on his or her competence of the two languages as well as his or her insights into the cultures, manages to obtain the optimal relevance through subtitles, to produce the adequate contextual effects. And finally, the target audience, aided by reading the subtitles, understands and appreciates the film at minimal processing effort. Thus, the dynamic cross-cultural communication realized through translated film subtitles is achieved.The thesis aims to explore the process of the particular communication, and also the applicability and interpretation power of RT, supplying guidance to translation by means of analyzing the film subtitle translation. RT centers on optimal relevance so as to guide the translator, in his or her process of rendering, to have an eye on the audience's best understanding of the speaker's intention. In film subtitle translation, relevance is to make the translated subtitles relevant enough to produce optimal relevance and adequate contextual effects through the translator's understanding of the ostension of the original intention, the translator's conveying of information in a cross-cultural environment and minimizing the processing effort of the audience.Based on the studies of the various cases of subtitle translation and an analysis of their success and failure, a hierarchy of relevance, which comprises, firstly, conceptual relevance, secondly, relevance of cognitive scheme and thirdly, cultural and psychological relevance, is discovered and presented in a systematic way. Finally, suggestions are made for the future studies and it is hoped that the research can be of use to the researchers in the field of the related study of subtitle translation.