Metaphor Translation Under The Relevance Theory

Recent years evidence a surge of studies on subtitle translation.Compared with other linguistic phenomena,metaphor is what poses more challenges to translators.Metaphor is defined as the fundamental characteristic of human language and thinking.There are universal metaphors due to the similarity of human practice but also unique metaphors resulting from geographical,religious,historical differences,etc.Therefore,how to translate a metaphor is the real challenge that faces translators.The Irishman,directed by Martin Scorsese and released on Netflix in 2019,portrays a series of historical events that shake the post-World War Ⅱ US politics and society,with gang families and politicians playing behind the scenes.According to the mapping conditions of metaphors in Source and Target Language,metaphors are classified into four groups to facilitate this study.The Relevance Theory holds that human verbal communication is an ostension-inferential process.This thesis is aimed to study the translation strategies and evaluate the specific effects within the framework of the Relevance Theory to provided suggestions for translating metaphors.On this basis,this thesis finds that the Relevance Theory can evaluate the effects and quality of metaphor translation in subtitles since it considers translation as a secondary communication and focuses on contextual effects,reasoning efforts,and relevance of the Target Language.Moreover,this thesis also provides insights for improving the quality of translation,which enables the Target Language audience to overcome the cultural barriers and achieve the same effects as the Source Language audience.