A Relevance Theoretical Approach To Film Subtitles Translation

Film is a contemporary cultural carrier with obvious characteristics. As an importantmeans of cultural diffusion and exchange, the film exchange of different language and countryhas gradually became a vanguard of the global cultural exchanges in recent years. Hence, as acarrier of cross-cultural communication in the film, the importance of subtitle is increasinglyhighlighted.Subtitle translation is a new and special translation mode. On the basis of the features ofsubtitling like limitation of space and time, translator needs to accurately grasp the cognitiveenvironment of target audiences, and extracts the most related information. For the delivery ofsome cultural messages and the expression of implied meaning, translator also needs tocombine the intention of original film and the expectation of target audiences, to provide thesufficient contextual effects for them, so as to achieve the cross-cultural communicationpurpose. All those happen to coincide with Relevance Theory and Relevance TranslationTheory. Relevance Theory takes translation as an ostensive-inferential communication actamong addresser, translator and addressee. It also proposes “cognitive principle” and“communicative principle” of human communication, as well as “maximal relevance” and“optimal relevance”. It is believed that the translation should let the audiences using thefewest cognitive efforts to gain the greatest contextual effects, in order to achieve the maximalrelevance and realize the optimal relevance and communicative intention.Therefore, the paper adopts the Relevance Theory and Relevance Translation Theory asits theoretical framework to carry out a case analysis on the subtitling of Chinese blockbusterThe Flowers of War. The author believes that the translator should follow the principle ofoptimal relevance on the option of purposed translating information. What’s more, thetranslator should give full consideration to the target audiences’ cognitive environment, anduse the appropriate translation strategies to supply the most relevant information withmaximal contextual effects by using the least cognitive efforts of the target languageaudiences, so as to accord with their expectations and achieve the communicative intention oforiginal.This thesis is composed of five chapters. The first chapter mainly introduces the background, significance and objectives of the research. The second chapter is primarilytalking about the definition, categorizations, features of subtitling and constraints on subtitletranslation. Chapter three is the theoretical framework of this paper, the main idea ofRelevance Theory and Relevance Translation Theory will be presented in this chapter, whichlays the theoretical foundation of the following practical application. Chapter four is the mainbody of the thesis, which expounds the combination of subtitles translation and RelevancyTheory and carries out a case study of The Flowers of War under the guideline of RelevanceTheory and Relevance Translation Theory, and indicates some translation strategies to guidethe translation practice. The last chapter is conclusion, which points out the feasibility ofRelevance Theory and Relevance Translation to guide the subtitles translation, as well as thedeficiency of this paper.