| Began in the late twentieth-century, our society has transited from a paper-oriented one to a media-oriented one, which has triggered the emergence of Audiovisual Translation (AVT) as the most dynamic and fastest developing trend within Translation Studies (TS). From the very beginning's term"Screen Translation"to"Film Translation"and the final"Audiovisual Translation", it demonstrates its own expansion and development as a more and more individual discipline. At the backdrop of globalization and the technology development, more and more people engage in the AVT industry. There are a large quantity of the works of AVT coming out in the world every year. On the contrary, movie subtitles and dubbing of "foreign" language films have long been largely neglected, both in and of themselves and as an area of intellectual inquiry, especially in China. There are few papers or dissertation on this subject. Let alone the systemic theories on it. From the perspective of TS, the Audiovisual Translation is in an urgent need of exploration of its essence and more theories on AVT to give a better guidance to our practices.Relevance Theory is first proposed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson in their book Relevance: Communication and Cognition in 1986, which from the perspective of human's cognition to explain the communication. Wilson's student, Ernst-August Gutt first applies Relevance Theory to the translation research in his book Translation and Relevance: Cognition and Context in 1991. He claims translation is a communicative activity. The translator looks for the optimal relevance for the readers/audiences of translation or provides them with sufficient contextual effects without gratuitous processing in achieving those effects.After thorough exploration of the cores and features, as well as constrains of audiovisual programs, it is clear that the requirements of audiovisual translation is in line with the Relevance Theory. In order to enable Chinese audience enjoy the English films better, Relevance Theory is applied to explore the problems in dubbing translation and subtitle translation. The case of Ratatouille is brought in for study from the perspective of the interpretive theory of translation. Comparative analysis is made in this paper to find out the differences between dubbing and subtitles. By applying the Relevance Theory of translation to the case study, the author proves the applicability of the theory in describing audiovisual translation phenomena and guiding translation practice.This thesis is composed of introduction, four chapters, and conclusion.Part One is an introduction to the significant study, and the layout of the thesis as well as the methodology to be adopted.In the first chapter, a thorough review of the literature related to the present investigation is made to indicate what has been done by other investigators and practitioners in this field and to what extent the documents are helpful to the present research.Chapter Two introduces Relevance Theory. It states the application of Relevance Theory in Translation Study, which demonstrates the powerful explanation of RT in TS.The third chapter is devoted to the case study of dubbing and subtitles. Dubbing and subtitles produced by Disney China in Ratatouille are analyzed and compared in details. By doing so, failure in decoding and in inference are pointed out and improved by the author.In the fourth chapter, typical problems and constraints of dubbing and subtitles are mentioned in the specific film, Ratatouille. Focusing on these, the author finds out the solution under the guidance of Relevance Theory.The last part is the conclusion of the whole thesis. It points out the limitation of the present study and makes some suggestions for further studies on this subject. |
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