Exploring War Movie Subtitle Translation From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Nowadays, China's movie industry has fetched in a great number of foreign movies and audio-visual translation unavoidably becomes a necessary and heavy task for translators. Subtitle translation, as a main branch of audio-visual translation, will be studied in this thesis. What are the achievements and deficiencies in the field of movie subtitle translation today? How does relevance theory bridge this gap and interpret movie subtitle translation? What are the unique features of war movie subtitle translation from the perspective of relevance theory? And how is relevance theory applied to war movie subtitle translation theoretically and pragmatically? To answer these questions, this thesis will explore war movie subtitle translation from the perspective of relevance theory while taking Saving Private Ryan as an example.Based on Gutt's relevance theoretic account of translation, the thesis interprets movie subtitle translation in light of relevance theory. To prove the effectiveness of relevance theory in the war movie subtitle translation, the thesis first studies the two prominent roles in the translation process: war movie—the speaker in primary communication situation and war movie viewers—the audience in secondary communication situation. Thus, the stylistic features and temporal-and-spatial constraints of war movie subtitle and the cultural standing of movie viewers are concluded after some statistical studies. Having known the features of war movie subtitle translation, Saving Private Ryan is taken as a case to testify the effectiveness of relevance theory in war movie subtitle translation. The analysis is carried out in two aspects: univalent translation constituent and bivalent translation constituent. Some relevant examples in Saving Private Ryan are taken out and the results of the statistical studies are adopted as the measurable yardstick for evaluating the translation. After the systematic analysis, domestication strategy is proposed as a main trend for war movie subtitle translation. By discussing the translation of univalent and bivalent translation constituents in a detailed way, some specific directions and strategies in war movie subtitle translation are concluded. The thesis analyzes the process of war movie subtitle translation from the perspective of relevance theory and concludes the unique features of it, which is of referential value in war movie subtitle translation study. Applying relevance theory to war movie subtitle translation testifies the application of relevance theory to translation field and enriches the study of translation as well. Meanwhile, this thesis offers a new perspective for war movie subtitle translation, and the specific directions and standards of war movie subtitle translation concluded from this thesis are of some help for the war movie translators in future work.