A Comparative Study Of E-C Film Title Translation From The Perspective Of Relevance Translation Theory

Film translation in China began about in the late of the 1940s. Since China adopted the reform and opening-up policy in 1978, a large scale of foreign films, especially English films, were introduced into Chinese market. Therefore, some attention is given to film translation in recent years. However, compared with that given to film translation, the translation of film titles does not receive enough deserved attention. Besides, a disordered situation exists in the field of E-C film title translation, that is, one English film title with several Chinese versions, which brings great confusion and inconvenience to Chinese audience and causes a big disorder in the film market. Some scholars notice this phenomenon and try to make some efforts on it, but they fail to propose some specific methods to solve the existing problems.This thesis attempts to interpret this phenomenon from the perspective of relevance translation theory and then to find a solution to it. Ernst August Gutt (2004) once said relevance theory can interpret all the phenomena in translation and then he puts forwards relevance translation theory. Film title translation is of course one of the translation phenomena, thus this theory may have strong interpretative power to the translation of film titles. Based on relevance translation theory, this thesis firstly analyzes the unique features of English film titles and the possibilities of applying relevance translation theory to E-C film title translation, and then classifies the collected English film titles into five types according to their sources—the titles named after the scenario, the background, the theme, the protagonist(s) or the clue of a film—and compares their Chinese versions from the perspective of the director's (the original author's) intention and Chinese audience's (the target reader's) cognitive environment and their expectations, and at last finds out a better version with optimal relevance to the film content and the director's intention.From these examples, the followings can be obtained: firstly, the analysis and comparison of these examples would offer the translator some specific steps to translate an English film title. Besides, the film distribution corporations are also suggested to adopt the same way and compare several versions of one foreign film title to present a unified translation to the target audience and at last put the disordered phenomenon to an end so as to thoroughly rectify and standardize the order in the film market. Secondly, the argument on the classification of film title translation—literary translation or advertising translation—can be solved in the light of relevance translation theory. Under the framework of this theory, when translating a foreign film title, the translator should try to make the director's intention (fulfilling the informative and commercial value of a film) meet Chinese audience's expectations (expecting the informative, cultural and aesthetic value of a film), which just gives attention to both literary translation and advertising translation.This thesis is made up of six chapters. In the first chapter, the author introduces the background and the significance of the study and illustrates the structure of this thesis. Chapter Two provides a brief review of researches on relevance translation theory and film title translation. Chapter Three focuses on relevance theory and relevance translation theory. Chapter Four puts forwards the research questions, research methodology as well as the process of data collection of this study. Chapter Five is the comparison of different Chinese translations of one English film title from the perspective of relevance translation theory and shows the author's thoughts obtained from the comparison. The last chapter summarizes the study and points out the limitations of the present study and the suggestions for the further researches.