A Study Of English Film Title Translation From The Perspective Of Relevance-Adaptation Model

Nowadays, with the continuous development of international communication, cultural exchange has played an essential role. Film as an art form has destined to become an important carrier of human civilization and it is also a main way of cultural exchange since the date of its birth. At present, film has become an essential part of human life in modern society. Watching foreign films can promote better communication between different cultures; meanwhile, it is also an important method and approach to understanding foreign cultures. With the popularity of foreign films, China has introduced a large number of foreign films which caused a gradual rise of film title translation in recent years. Compared with other translation forms, the history of film title translation is still very short, not to mention a systematical and comprehensive research. Compared with the great influence of film title on society, the related study on film title translation can be said to be very insufficient.In order to achieve a creative fusion between Eastern and Western cultures, we need an appropriate theory as guidance. The present research pragmatically explored English to Chinese (E-C) film title translation from the perspective of Relevance-Adaptation Model (RA Model in short). RA Model is a cognitive science which is also a cross-cultural, translator-centered theory. In this theoretical framework, translation is both a relevance-seeking, ostensive-inferential process and a dynamic-adaptation process. That is to say, the translator as a communicator, searches for relevance in the original cognitive context, and makes dynamic adaptation in the target cognitive context. In the Discourse-Interpreting Communicative Process (DICP in short), the communication between the translator and the author is an ostensive-inferential process. During this process, the translator will accurately do cognitive search for an optimal relevance in order to match the author’s communicative intention. Meanwhile, the Discourse-Producing Communicative Process (DPCP in short) is a process of constantly making choices and adaptation for the target language audience. During this process, the translator should consider cognitive context from five aspects:social-cultural context, linguistic context, the translator’s intention, the aesthetic expectation and the acceptability level of target audience. In a word, RA Model plays an important role in guiding to interpreting the connotation of film title.The present research made a thorough analysis of the different translation strategies in different film titles, and demonstrates that translation is a relevance-seeking, dynamic-adaptation process. In this paper, the author chooses different translation strategies for film title translation in order to make the translation version faithful to the original one. It also conforms to the target audience to achieve successful cross-cultural communication and to get commercial effect.