Methods of English Film Title Translation

Methods of English Film Title Translation

【Abstract】Film title translation is a hot issue in practice because of China’s large-scale English film importation in recent years and the significance of film title in film. Although film titles are usually short with four to five words on the average, film title translation is not an easy task. This paper tries to analyze the translation methods commonly used in English film title translation, namely, transliteration, literal translation, free translation and adaptation.

【Key words】English film title；Chinese translation；Ｔranslation method

1.Introduction

Film titles,which are the first thing the audience come to know about new films,are of great importance.The film title delivers the most important information about the films to the audience.A good film title can grip the attention of the audience at their first sight and stimulate their association with the plots, moods and other elements shown in the films.It not only attracts eyeball but also helps the film win an everlasting fame.Therefore,the proper translation of film titles is particularly important and even to the degree of helping decide whether the films are well accepted or not within other countries or cultures.An excellent translation may contribute a lot to the charm of the film and plays an important part in the introduction of a new film.It should have both cultural savor and good commercial appeal，not only be faithful to the original, but also cater to their aesthetic taste of the target language spectators and satisfy their psychological needs.As we all know, there exist many translation methods and no one single method can solve all problems of translation. Therefore,Film title translation is in fact a very complicated and problematic matter,not as easy as some non-professionals think it to be.It has its own stylistic, linguistic and cultural features,all of which need our attention while doing translation.This paper tries to analyze the translation methods commonly used in English film title translation,namely,transliteration,literal translation,free translation and adaptation.

2.Transliteration

Transliteration is to seek phonetic correspondence in terms of the translation of proper names and some other special nouns.Transliteration attempts to use a one-to-one correspondence, so that an informed reader should be able to reconstruct the original spelling of unknown transliterated words.

Transliteration could reserve the sounds of the original to the largest extent, keep its rhythm and attract the audience’s attention with strong exotic flavor.This method is not widely used in the translation,but it is indispensable.Many English films are