ABSTRACT
As a popular art form, film plays a significant role in cultural exchange and communication. Film title is the essential part of films, and also is the first publicity material shown to the audience. Hence, a good translation of film title can not only best attract the audience, but well reflect the translator’s cultural awareness and good command of translation skills. However, as a result of the differences in geographical location, ethnic origin, natural environment, religious beliefs and economic development, the western and eastern people are quite different in their cognitive power, ways of thinking, aesthetic tastes, and consumption concepts. Therefore, it is hard to make film titles translation reflect the original national traits and be in line with target audience’s cognitive habits at the same time. First, this article summarizes the functions, features and current situation of Chinese and English film titles translation, and puts forward the four principles of film title translation. Second, it analyses the concept of domestication and foreignization, then respectively discusses these two strategies’ applications in film title translation by the analysis of examples. Finally, it concludes that the trend for film titles translation is from domestication to foreignization.
Keywords:film title translation; domestication; foreignization
Contents
1.Introduction 1
2. Film title 2
2.1 Functions and characteristics of film titles 2
2.2 Current status quo of film title translation 3
2.3 Principles of film title translation 4
3. Domestication in film title translation 6
3.1 Domestication 6
3.2 Application of domestication in film title translation 6
3.2 Case study 7
4. Foreignization in film title translation 9
4.1 Foreignization 9
4.2 Application of foreignization in film title translation 9
4.3 Case study 10
5.Trend towards foreignization 12
6.Conclusion 13
Acknowledgements 14
References 15