1.2 Research Purpose

Due to the great prosperity of the TV and films, many foreign film subtitles are introduced to our country. Our country’s academic study to the subtitle translation is not as good as the west, but we have gradually paid more and more attention to the film subtitle translation. Now, however, subtitle translation researches are still not mature, need to be studied further in translation skills and usage. They need appropriate theoretical support, too.

This thesis, as the circumstances mentioned, focuses on an analysis of Chinese -English film subtitle translation under the guidance of relevance theory so that to overcome the space and time constraints in translating and help the audience rule out the language barrier and convey more accurate information. The study aims to make the films better understood and attract more viewers.

1.3 Theoretical Framework

This study discusses the film subtitles translation in Great Expectations under the framework of relevance theory. Relevance theory is a theory of pragmatics of the west which has had a huge impact in recent years; there is a great deal of explanatory power to the translation studies which provides a new theoretical framework. The reason why we studying the research are to list reasonable uses of relevance theory so that to assist the translation of foreign film subtitles, and to improve the quality of translation and promote the communication between different culture and prosperity.

1.4 Structure of the Thesis

This thesis was consisted of some chapters: firstly, it is the briefly introduction about the background, purpose, theoretical framework. Chapter Two is about a survey of subtitle in order to make the people to know the subtitle translation first. Charter three is about the relevance theory and subtitle translation which is the basis of the Charter Four and to know more knowledge of the theory’ effect in subtitle translation. Chapter Four is about a case study of subtitle translation in Great Expectations. Conclusion is the last Chapter.

2. Literature Review

2.1 Relevance Theory

Relevance theory (Seperber&Wiison, 1986: 158) was the interpretation of the language communication theory newly developed in the field of philosophy of language in the 1980s. Relevance theory thinks communication is a process of ostensive-inferential. “The communicator evaluated (assessment) on the hearer/reader’s cognitive environment and communicative situation and on the basis of the assessment, the communicators convey (including express or implied) their communicative intention to the hearer through discourse. At the same time, the hearer combined what the communicators provided with the associative discourse context information, decoding and reasoning under the relevance principle. The last step is to realize the final communicative intention of the cognitive” (He Ziran, RanYongping, 2001:32).Relevance principle is widely regarded as one of internal constraints in human psychological structure.  We are always subconsciously assumed that communicating people is following the relevance principle in the process of communicating. However, as we known that optimal relevance is the key to successful communication. The deep of the relationship relies on processing and contextual effect. The relative concept can be expressed in formula is: the correlation between = contextual effect/processing effort. Under the same circumstance, the smaller the processing effort, the greater the contextual effect, the stronger the correlation.

Relevance theory is applied in very broad field, after the founder starting the study; many Chinese scholars were made to verify the efforts of the relevance theory. Relevance theory was firstly introduced in an article written by Shen Jiaxuan(1998 (3):7-10) called “rapidly and the correlation of cognitive”, and compared the Relevance theory and the theory proposed by Grice. Gui Shichun(1991 (3):11-13) also cited the relevance theory in the context of “cognition and language”, to explain the psychological problems of language learning and think the human cognitive activities always tries to take the least amount of effort to get the greatest cognitive effect. So we need to focus on the most relevant information. The relevance theory research in China started in 1994, a book review about the correlation and the translation in “Chinese Translation”. The domestic pragmatic books published in recent years regularly have some special chapters to introduce relevance theory, like: Zhao Yanchun (1999 (3):16), and He Ziran (1997:136), etc. The research on the current relevance translation theory in China involves many subjects, such as: teaching, news, technology, literature, culture, religion, advertising, literature, humor, drama, metaphor, intersexuality, coherent, idioms, translatability, and so on. For example: “The Relevance Theory in Humor and Its Translation Interpretation Force”, “Relevance theory and the translation of Chinese slogan,” (Nie Liya, Lin Xia, 2005 (9): 9-13) and so on.