A Study Of Subtitle Translation Of Metaphors In The Big Bang Theory From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Nowadays,more and more excellent American dramas have entered the domestic market.Watching American plays is a process of cross-cultural communication.Because of the cultural differences at home and abroad,the audience may not be able to accurately understand the content that the plays want to express.Therefore,the subtitle translation industry emerges as the times require.These subtitling groups transform incomprehensible language into Chinese and obscure semantics into popular language in the market,which makes it easier for Chinese audience to understand.They build a bridge for cross-cultural communication.Due to the different translation styles,different subtitles will give audience different watching experience,so more and more scholars begin to study the translation techniques of subtitles.The Big Bang Theory is one of the most popular TV shows in China and has been nominated for a variety of awards and multiple Emmys.At present,the play has been updated to the 11th season.Its lines contain a lot of rhetorical devices such as humor,metaphor,exaggeration,irony and euphemism,among which metaphor accounts for the largest proportion.However,at present,most of the studies on the translation of the play are based on humor translation,and the studies on metaphor translation are relatively few.The study of metaphor has gone through a long history of development.It is deeply rooted in human everyday language and more abstract cognitive thinking and behavior.Language is inseparable from culture,and cultural differences influence and restrict cross-cultural communication.Therefore,metaphor translation is a difficult point in cross-cultural communication.The audience will have a strong sense of presence if the metaphor translation is good,and the poor translation will mislead the audience and thus produce ambiguity,which is not conducive to cross-cultural communication.German scholar Gutt was the first to apply Relevance Theory to translation.He regards translation as communication and puts forward the theory of relevance translation.According to Gutt,translation is a tripartite communication activity among the author,the translator and the reader.In this activity,the translator and the reader must go through a dual ostensive-inferential process to complete the process of translation communication activity.Gutt points out that the key to the success of translation lies in whether the translation can provide sufficient contextual effects and whether it can achieve optimal relevance.This thesis analyzes the translation of subtitles in The Big Bang Theory by employing Relevance Theory,studying the metaphor translation techniques in the subtitles of latest season in order to explore the translatability,difficulties and translation methods of metaphor from the perspective of Relevance Theory.The thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter One is an introduction,which includes the research background and the significance of the research.Nowadays more and more people have realized the importance of metaphor.Metaphor makes our life more harmonious.It helps to shape our logical thinking pattern and enhance our understanding capacity.The collection of corpus is achieved by using an app called Yee-Caption,which is a subtitle translation app.Since it's also machine translation,the author double checked all the subtitle and translation.All the examples analyzed in this thesis are chosen carefully in order to best fit the situation,and the necessary summary is made after the analysis.By using the latest corpus,this thesis explores the specific application and guiding role of Relevance Theory in metaphor translation in the hope of enriching and deepening the existing research on metaphor and metaphor translation.Chapter Two is the literature review,which comprises three aspects,n namely the previous studies of metaphor research,metaphor translation as well as the subtitle translation development of The Big Bang Theory.At the beginning of this chapter,necessary definitions and classifications are illustrated.The study of metaphor can be traced back to 2000 years ago,and has been revised and supplemented by numerous scholars.It has evolved from a rhetorical device into a cognitive thinking mode of human beings.The study of metaphor extends from rhetoric to psychology,anthropology and so on.However,a complete system of metaphor research has not been formed yet.In recent years,the number of books and papers related to metaphor has been increasing.With the development of metaphor translation,more and more translation techniques have been put forward.Chapter three is the theoretical framework,which describes the main contents of Relevance Theory and its application in translation.Relevance Theory reveals human communicative behavior from a cognitive perspective and points out that human communication is an ostensive-inferential process and that successful communication is inseparable from contextual effects.In addition,Relevance Theory puts forward the optimal relevance from the two principles of cognition and communication.Based on Relevance Theory,translation is a process of dual ostensive-inferential.The translator must understand the cognitive context of the source language and the target language and achieve cross-cultural communication through optimal relevance.In this chapter,the translation analysis model is based on Relevance Theory and the implementation methods of optimal relevance are proposed.Chapter four is the main part of this thesis,taking the subtitle of The Big Bang Theory as an example to analyze and study metaphor translation from the perspective of Relevance Theory.Based on the theoretical framework proposed in the third chapter,this chapter explores the translation techniques of different metaphors,and investigates the techniques of metaphor translation proposed by predecessors.Firstly,based on the classification of cognitive metaphor by Lakoff and Johnson,this chapter analyzes the translation process of ontological metaphors,container metaphors and orientational metaphors under the ostensive-inferential mode;secondly,the author analyzes the translation process based on the source and target language oriented translation principles.Using the metaphors in the subtitle of The Big Bang Theory,the author analyzes the translation strategies under the contextual effect;finally,taking the optimal relevance as the direction and metaphor as the ostensive stimulus,this chapter analyzes the metaphor translation from two aspects:contextual effect and processing effort,in order to achieve the optimal relevance so that the translation can provide the audience with the best experience of watching the play.Chapter five is the conclusion,in which the author summarizes the whole thesis and puts forward various techniques of metaphor translation.For example,in the ostensive-inferential mode of Relevance Theory,metaphor can be used as a stimulus to achieve better ostensibility,thus greatly shortening the information processing time of the audience and enhancing the sense of presence;Since the translation of metaphor is flexible,the translator should adjust the context according to the actual situation and create the best contextual effects for the audience.The optimal relevance can be achieved by noting the background knowledge on the screen and conducting appropriate free translation when the subtitle is obscure,so long as they are complete and can convey the message to the audience accurately,it is a successful translation.In the end,this thesis discusses the problems faced by metaphor translation and the shortcomings of the present study,and puts forward some suggestions for the research in related fields.Through theoretical studies and case studies,this thesis explores the cognitive process and translation methods of metaphor in The Big Bang Theory,and further affirms the importance of metaphor in our daily life and the guiding role of Relevance Theory in translation.