On Subtitle Translation Of Documentary From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

With the appearance of the Global Village and the development of technology, the mass media has provided a more convenient way for the culture communications of different countries. Nowadays, people can know the world at home by different types of videos. In recent years, many great foreign videos have been introduced to China and got people’s good comments. In comparison, the Chinese video materials which have been spread are very few, and in the subtitle translation, the culture import is more than the culture export. The author takes the Chinese great documentary The Palace Museum 100 as the example in the thesis paper and makes a study of the subtitle translation. The Palace Museum in Beijing is the top one of the five largest palaces in the world. It’s also a famous historic resort and has been listed in the World Cultural Heritage. The Palace Museum 100 was produced by CCTV and the Palace Museum. It has 100 series with 6 minutes each series. The video introduces 100 spaces in the Palace Museum, involving Chinese traditional cultures such as the Confucianism, the ancient centralized monarchy and the ancient architectural style. Therefore, the study of the subtitle translation of the documentary is not only good for the spread of Chinese great culture and making the world know China better, but also brings some translation strategies for the subtitle translation of documentary and certain reference values for the study of the subtitle translation.The thesis paper takes the relevance translation theory which was put forward by Gutt as the guide. The relevance translation theory put forward that the process of translation involves two processes of ostension——inference. The standard of translation should be the same as that of communication, which is to achieve the optimal relevance. The successful translation should make the target readers get the same informative intention as that of the source readers. In translating the subtitle of The Palace Museum 100, the author always takes it as the goal to achieve the optimal relevance and tries to seek for the relevance in semantics, culture and recipient so that the target readers can get the same informative intention and the content and cultural connotations as those of the source readers in watching the documentary.The thesis paper is divided into six parts. The first part is an introduction. The second part is literature review. It introduces relevance theory and subtitle translation. The third part is the overview of relevance theory. The fourth part is the overview of documentary and its subtitle. It introduces the characters of documentary and subtitle translation and some other contents. The fifth part is a case study. The author takes seven different translation strategies and makes some case studies of the translation. The last part is a conclusion.