| With the development of technology and China’s reform and opening-up policy, lots of foreign audiovisual works (AVW) have been flooding into the domestic market. While watching these audiovisual works, the majority of Chinese audience would like to consult the subtitles at the bottom of the screen in order to get better comprehension. Thus, subtitle translation, as a new translation mode, emerges and draws more and more attention from people. Lots of scholars from home and abroad study this translation model from different perspectives, which makes great contribution to the theoretical development of subtitle translation. According to Ernest August Gutt (2004), relevance theory has strong explanation for translation. Excellent translation can usually help people gain the optimal relevance. That is to say, people can get adequate contextual effects without unnecessary processing efforts from good translation.The Oscars, also named the Academy Awards, has gained great popularity in China. Different from many other entertainment programs, the Academy Awards is formal as well as humorous. The 86th Academy Awards is no exception. From the Internet, the author finds that the target language subtitles of The 86th Academy Awards provided by YYeTs is high in quality. By adopting some main points of relevance theory, this thesis probes into this subtitle translation version of the 86th Academy Awards from the perspective of relevance theory, pointing out that YYeTs’s success in the subtitle translation of the 86th Academy Awards mainly lies in guidance of relevance theory and its achievement of optimal relevance in the provided subtitles.This thesis consists of three parts:introduction, main body and conclusion. The introduction presents the background, significance, research questions and the structure of this thesis in order to stress the importance and necessity of studying subtitle translation of the 86th Academy Awards. The main body includes three chapters. Chapter one mainly focuses on the literature review which reviews the previous studies on subtitle translation from abroad and home. Chapter two makes a detailed analysis of the relationship between relevance theory and subtitle translation. Relevance theory is the theoretical foundation of this thesis and has strong explanation for translation. According to relevance theory, translation is regarded as interlingual interpretive use, and translators should make their intentions meet people’s expectations. Accordingly, relevance theory can also be used to guide subtitle translation. Excellent provided subtitles can usually help the target language audience gain the optimal relevance, that is to say, they can get adequate contextual effects without unnecessary processing efforts from good subtitles. In chapter three, some effective methods commonly used in the subtitle translation of the 86th Academy Awards are analyzed in detail from lexical, syntactic, and cultural aspects to demonstrate how relevance theory has a positive effect on this subtitle translation and how optimal relevance is yielded in these examples. The conclusion makes a summary of the major findings of this thesis, presents its limitations and offers some suggestions for the future study on subtitle translation of TV programs like the Academy Awards. |
