Communications in Humanities Research
- The Open Access Proceedings Series for Conferences
Communications in Humanities Research
Vol. 2, 28 February 2023
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A Relevance Theoretical Approach to Translators’ Subjectivity in Subtitle Translation
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Abstract
While translation is always indispensable in international communication and exchange, the value of translators always seems to be underestimated. As an intermediary between the source and target language, translators can and should play their subjectivity in the translation practice. The translators’ subjectivity can be further interpreted from a relevance theoretical approach. This theory believes that translators are responsible for leading the way of comprehension of the audience by building a most identical cognitive environment and avoiding misunderstanding. Translators also play the main role in the two ostensive-inferential communication processes between the author and the translator and between the translator and the audience. Specifically, this paper uses the relevance theory as a foundation to analyze how translators’ subjectivity is manifested in subtitle translation. It picks out three examples from the lines of a popular American sitcom and finds out that translators do use amplification, conversion, and other strategies to make the ostension in the target language more acceptable for the Chinese audience. From the theoretical basis, the author also gives suggestions for optimizing the translation to retain the same comic effect.
Keywords
relevance theory, subtitle translation, translators’ subjectivity, translation practice
References
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Data Availability
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.
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- Volume Title
- Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Educational Innovation and Philosophical Inquiries (ICEIPI 2022), Part III
- ISBN (Print)
- 978-1-915371-11-9
- ISBN (Online)
- 978-1-915371-12-6
- Published Date
- 28 February 2023
- Series
- Communications in Humanities Research
- ISSN (Print)
- 2753-7064
- ISSN (Online)
- 2753-7072
- DOI
- 10.54254/2753-7064/2/2022663
- Copyright
- © 2023 The Author(s)
- Open Access
- This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited