On Movie Subtitle Translation From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

As a means of cross-cultural language communication, movie subtitle translation has become a topic of general interest in its related research fields. Therefore, it is necessary to have a deeper and better understanding of movie subtitle translation from the angles of translation practice and cross-cultural communication. This thesis sets out to be devoted to the analysis of the subtitle translation of English movie Forrest Gump into Chinese with relevance theory as the theoretical basis. Relevance theory has the emphasis on the importance of intention and inference in communicative activities, that is, the inference should be made about what the original speakers or writers is meant to convey to the listeners or readers. First, the translator must understand the original intention and related information based on his agreement with the original writer; second, bearing in mind the cognitive ability and expectations of the target language viewers, the subtitler, based on his competence of the two languages as well as his insights into the cultures, adopts suitable strategies in subtitles translation and manages to obtain the optimal relevance through subtitles, to produce the adequate contextual effects. And finally, the target audience, aided by reading the subtitles, understands and appreciates the film at minimal processing effort.This thesis, pursuing a pragmatic view based on the relevance theory by Sperber and Wilson and the relevance theory of translation by Gutt, proposes and justifies strategies of reduction, explicitation and domestication in subtitle translation in order to provide a brand new angle of view for further research and suggest principles for translation practice. Starting from literature review of relevance theory, relevance theory of translation and subtitle translation, the thesis launches a case study of subtitle translation of Forrest Gump under the guidance of relevance theory. The translated Chinese subtitles have been transcribed and collected from the movie screen produced by an Internet work group. Three translation strategies that are frequently used by the subtitler of Forrest Gump has been sorted out, which are reduction, explicitation and domestication. After discussion of these strategies with authentic examples, the author hopes to prove that the translated Chinese subtitles are guided by the relevance theory, provide optimal relevance, produce contextual effect and thus maximize the processing effort by the target audience and guarantee full comprehension of the movie.This thesis aims to provide a new channel to study subtitle translation and some practical strategies to guarantee the best and effective delivering of movie subtitles to the audience.