An Analysis Of Translation Strategies Of English Film Subtitle From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Films deeply roots in society, politics, economy and culture and forms its own properties. In global environment, we need to take an open and alternative view to regard it. Globalization brings the development of film industry. At the very beginning of the twentieth century, American Hollywood leads the world’s films and exerts a profound influence on film future, including China and other countries that are seeking the optimal way to develop their own film industry as to reach the world level. Along the continuous cultural communications between countries, Chinese films are attracting more and more western audience’attentions. Meanwhile, more and more foreign films are flooding into Chinese market. So how to solve the cultural communication between different countries becomes an urgent problem. Importance and necessity of film subtitle generally comes into people’s sight.Compared with western research on film subtitles, our domestic academic study lags behind much. Like the leaders in this field, Gambier and Gottlieb, all have achieved great success in subtitle translation typology and theoretical system building. But until now, we have not yet built up a complete theoretical system. The studies on film subtitle translation are few and many problems are waiting to be solved urgently. Such as what kind of some translation theories are used to guide and check subtitling strategies, it is worthy of further research and discussion.This thesis employs relevance theory as theoretical support to study the effect of context on communication and guidance of theory to translation practice. The author uses a case study consisting of six films that are excerpts from twenty films that the author had already translated. The study analyzes the subtitling strategies from the perspective of relevance theory. The objectives of the study are in terms of four areas. First, the difference between film subtitle translation and other language; secondly, two important factors of relevance theory, i.e. context and optimal relevance; thirdly, the utilization of subtitling strategies and the most preferred ones; fourthly, the application of relevance theory to the subtitling strategies.Relevance theory was first put forward by Sperber and Wilson in1986. According to relevance theory, relevance is the center in communication cognition between speakers. Optimal relevance is the key to relevance theory. Other things being equal, the bigger the contextual effect, the smaller the processing efforts to gain the effect, then the bigger the relevance. The most effective contextual implication achieves the optimal relevance.Gutt(1991) introduced relevance theory to translation practices. In indirect translation, it had better make use of interpretive resemblance approach in order to be loyal to the source text; while in direct translation, stimulus-oriented approach is preferred, that is to render the stimulus in the original text. Gutt distinguished how to seek optimal relevance in both types of translation. He considered that the target text should be provided with enough relevance or contextual effect for audience and they do not need more unnecessary processing effort to understand it.This thesis employs Henrik Gottlieb’s typology of subtitling strategies in studying subtitle translation. The author makes detailed explanation of each strategy and cites examples to illustrate how relevance theory is applied to subtitling strategies. Six films are taken in this study as case study that adopts quantitative analysis method to compare each strategy utilization frequency and syllable control of target text and source text with timeline as reference. Finally, the author summarizes the analysis results and most frequently used subtitling strategies. Many empirical studies are taken to discuss the application of relevance theory and its relations with subtitling strategies.The first chapter points out the necessity of film subtitle translation and theoretical study under the global environment. The second chapter reviews the effort and contribution to film subtitle translation by overseas and domestic scholars. The third chapter emphasizes the concepts of two important factors in relevance theory and its applicable feasibility to subtitle translation. The fourth chapter makes a concrete analysis of application of relevance theory to the subtitling strategies. The fifth chapter takes six films as a case study to study each strategy utilization frequency in each film and film episode translation under the technical constraint of subtitle translation. It also makes comments on paraphrase and condensation strategies which are two most frequently preferred strategies. In the last chapter, the author indicates the practical implications of this study and suggestions for future researches.This thesis aims to make a practical study on application of relevance theory to the English film subtitle translation. The author sincerely hopes that more and more scholars will join in the research field of film subtitle translation.