A Brief Study Of Subtitle Translation In Titanic From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

As a relatively new and special translation mode, movie subtitle translation has become a more and more important and inseparable branch of translation, so it is necessary to have a better understanding of subtitle translation in terms of the cross-cultural communication through the translated subtitles. This thesis sets out to be devoted to the analysis of the subtitle translation of English movie Titanic into Chinese with Relevance Theory as the theoretical basis. Relevance Theory emphasizes the importance of intention and inference in communicative activities, that is, the inference should be made about what the original speaker is meant to convey to the listener. In this process, the original information should be explicit enough for the listener to easily infer the original meaning and intention with minimal processing effort. In subtitle translation, the subtitler is involved in this two-way inference and communication. On the one hand, the subtitler must understand the original intention and related information based on his agreement with the original speaker; on the other hand, he must take into consideration the cognitive ability and expectations of the target language viewers. In the course of his inferring and conveying the related information, the subtitler combines the two sides, together with his own information and knowledge in his own cognitive context, trying to achieve the optimal relevance and produce the optimal contextual effects to make the original intention explicit enough for the target language viewers to understand with least information-processing effort. Therefore, the cross-cultural communication can be successfully conducted through the subtitle translation.A tentative attempt has been made to discuss the movie subtitle translation from the perspective of Relevance Theory so as to find out whether the subtitle translation of Titanic into Chinese is consistent with this theory and whether the subtitles in this movie are successfully translated on the whole. In addition, by the above analysis, the communicative process of movie subtitle translation has been further comprehended, and the applicability and explanation power of Relevance Theory also has been examined, which thereby provides theoretical and methodological reference for the subtitle translation practice.Relevance Theory, subtitles, subtitle translation, and the relation between relevance theory and subtitle translation are reviewed first, and then the focus is on the case study of the subtitle translation of Titanic from the perspective of relevance theory. For the sake of convenience and clear system, most of these Chinese subtitles selected as examples which are categorized by the method or strategy given by the former researchers have been analyzed to see whether they are successful.Suggestions are made that more future studies concerning the subtitle translation be done in hope that more and more translators will engage in the subtitle translation field to facilitate the cross-cultural communication.