A Study On The Subtitle Translation Of The Film CZ12from The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

With the rapid development of film industry, the film, which functions astransmission of information, cultural exchange, leisure and recreation, reflection ofreal life and so on, has become an important part in people’s daily life. Besides,thanks to the increasing exchanges between countries as well as the constantupdating of motion picture technique, films have already been an important “bridge”connecting the communication of languages and cultures of different countries. Iffilm-makers want to reap both the social benefits and economic benefits, it is farfrom enough to merely earn box office at home. Instead, it is more important forthem to make their products go abroad and explore the international market.However, due to the barriers of language and culture between different countries,foreign viewers usually find it difficult to appreciate the original film as accuratelyand thoroughly as the native speakers do. To solve this problem, scholars andresearchers begin to pay more and more attention to film subtitle translation.This thesis takes the relevance theory proposed by Sperber and Wilson as thetheoretical framework to study the film subtitle translation. Relevance theory regardstranslation as the behavior of verbal communication which involves the inference ofhuman brain. Based on this point, the film subtitle translation can be seen as theindirect verbal communication between the source language scriptwriter and thetarget language viewers. What’s more, according to relevance theory, a completecharacterization of communication is a dynamic ostensive-inferential act. Therefore,to make sure of successful communication, subtitlers have to make the intention ofthe source language scriptwriter explicit to the target language viewers, helping theaudience achieve the optimal relevance, that is, yield the optimal contextual effectswith minimum efforts.The thesis is divided into five chapters. The first two chapters are introductionand literature review, respectively. The main body of the thesis starts with a detailedand systematical exposition of relevance theory and relevance translation theory, then followed by the introduction of the four relevance factors which should be takeninto consideration in the course of film subtitle translation. Based on the abovetheoretical research findings, combined with the concrete C-E sample subtitles fromthe film CZ12, the thesis attempts to summarize its subtitle translation strategies andgives them a detailed analysis from the perspective of relevance theory. In theconclusion part, the author presents the major findings and limitations of the thesis,and tries to make some humble suggestions for the future study as well.