Research On The Subtitling Translation Of The Film Confucius:a Relevance Theory Perspective

The thesis mainly focuses on a descriptive and explanatory analysis of the subtitling of the film Confucius, with three research questions as follows:First, what are the factors influencing subtitling? Second, how can the subtitling strategies be analyzed in a deeper way? Third, what are the essential qualities a subtiter should have?In this thesis, an analysis of the subtitling of the film Confucius was made primarily from the perspective of the Relevance Theory. Meanwhile, some related theories were also adopted such as the Equivalence Theory and the Speech Act Theory. The Relevance Theory proves to be a very influential theory in contemporary pragmatic research, which is based on Grice’s CP theory and reduces all Gricean maxims to a single principle-principle of relevance. The Relevance Theory has strong influence on many subjects, translation included. It can be said that translation will need no other new approaches any more as the construction of translation theory can be accomplished within the frame of the Relevance Theory. The Equivalence Theory was proposed by Eugene A. Nida, with the key concept of "dynamic equivalence" or the later wording "functional equivalence". The equivalence theoretic approach to translation is devoted to reproduce the intention of the source text in translation rather than reproduce the actual words of the original. The Speech Act Theory was initially put forward by John Langshaw Austin and further developed by John Rogers Searle, which can be taken as a philosophical explanation of the nature of linguistic communication with the aim of giving answer to the question "what we do when using language".Both the original subtitles and the translated subtitles can be categorized as speech acts, which, from the perspective of the Speech Act Theory, can be divided into three aspects:the locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act. Illocutionary act is a major element to be considered in translation for it is concerned with functional equivalence:the readers of a translated text should be able to comprehend and appreciate it in substantially the same manner as the original readers did. Various elements exist in the process of subtitling such as maximal relevance and optimal relevance, context and contextual effect, processing effort and benefit, all of which are basic elements within the frame of the Relevance Theory. In addition, many subtitling strategies will be exploited in the process of translation. The subtitling strategies adopted in this thesis consists of reduction (19examples), addition(3examples), substitution(3examples), lexical rendering(5examples), syntactic rendering(5examples) and semantic rendering(5examples). And the method of reduction also includes condensation(2examples), deletion(5examples), omission(5examples) and reductive paraphrasing(7examples). Each example is analyzed with corresponding subtitling strategy and relevant translation theories. In doing so, a deeper analysis of the subtitling strategies could be carried out.After probing into the subtitling of the film Confucius, three kinds of factors influencing subtitling can be summarized:firstly, cultural factors such as living environment, religious beliefs, history, manners and customs and so on; the second category, technical factors such as constraint of time and space limitations; the third category, linguistic factors such as codes of language, properties of languages(syntactic and grammatical differences) and modal shift(from oral speech to writing). Apart from that, deep exploration of the subtitling strategies is mainly conducted with case study. In addition to the factors influencing subtitling and subtitling strategies, essential qualities of the subtitler are also summarized such as profound and comprehensive knowledge, keen insights in subtitling, acute cultural sensitivity, linguistic flexibility, and audience-oriented attitude and so on.