Comment On The Chinese Versions Of American Movie Inception’s Subtitle From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

In recent years, subtitle translation of movie has become a new subject in the studies oftranslation theory and has been playing a relatively crucial role in the field of cross-culturalcommunication. The process of subtitle translation and making is, however, quite simple and canbe easily carried out and released onto the Internet by a well-trained English major student.Conveniences, therefore, have been widely brought to movie fans, as well as the huge amountsof materials that are available for deeper analysis and translation studies.This paper comments on the three different translated Chinese versions of the Americanmovie Inception’s subtitle based on Relevance Theory. What Relevance Theory emphasizes mostis the understanding and reasoning process of the communication between the talker and thelistener, is to convey the initial meaning to the listener without jeopardizing it. Meanwhile, thelistener should be able to receive messages straightforward and fast. Under such circumstances,the process of subtitle translation is to search for the common ground of efficiency and quality, tohandle the original information with high-efficiency and to ensure the audience’s comprehensionis without ambiguities. The subtitle translator is playing double roles in this communicativeprocess: first, it is the responsibility of the translator to understand the source text properly, tomake synchronization in cognition and comprehension; second, it is the obligation of subtitletranslator to cope with the idiomatic expressions of the listener to make the subtitle linguisticallyrelevant, and to ensure there won’t be any misunderstandings generated. The ultimate goal ofsubtitle translating is the proper comprehension of the original context and the connection ofcorrect relevance between the listener and the source text, and thus, to make the best experienceduring movie-watching. To put it simply, readability, simplicity and relevancy are the keyelements in the interaction process between the audience and the subtitle, only then canentertaining subtitles be created.This thesis attempts to analyze the three Chinese versions of the American movieInception’s subtitle to verify whether they are in great accordance with Relevance Theory. Thethree versions of subtitle are first categorized into the good one and the bad one with an analysisof merits and defects according to the translation effect, then elaborated in terms of translationmethods and what follows then is the detailed elaboration of different problems occurring in theprocess of subtitle making with Relevance Theory, on the basis of which the conclusion is madeas follows.First, the version created by Shanghai Film Dubbing Studio clearly fits the Chineseaudience’s viewing habits and has verified that Relevance Theory is more than enough to guidethe practice of subtitle translation. Taiwan Version, though basically in accordance withRelevance Theory, has the least contextual effect generated from the mainland audience, whosetranslation effect is the least among all the three versions. TLF version is of average quality, andis either too good or too bad.Second, the successful cases listed in this thesis indicate the successfulness of translatedsubtitle mainly depends on whether it is in accordance with the regulations and descriptions of Relevance Theory when there is enough contextual information that has been provided by thepicture.Third, the over-omission of information and over-dependence on the movie’s picture lead tomany poor subtitle translations with the least contextual effect. According to Relevance Theory, anecessary reduction of relevant information generated between the movie and the audience canhelp the spectators reduce the over-paid attention to the subtitle and focus on the intention of theoriginal dialogue. Yet the prerequisite is that the audience should own a great comprehension onthe contextual information rather than loss-of-information kind of relevance.Therefore, during the translation of movie subtitle, to master the level of the audience’scomprehension of the movie and the exposure degree of all the implicature borne in the contextis one of the most important scales to judge the quality of translated subtitles.The thesis is composed of five parts. PartⅠintroduces the research background andsignificance; PartⅡis a literature review of the subtitle development at home and abroad; PartⅢ elaborates Relevance Theory and its relationship with subtitle translation; Part Ⅳ is a casestudy on the three versions of American movie Inception’s subtitle translation with RelevanceTheory; and Part Ⅴis a conclusion of the current status of subtitle translation in China and itsprospect.