Functionalist Translation Theory And Film Title Translation

Nowadays, many English films poured into China’s markets, at the same time, more and more Chinese films were entering the world markets. The basic reasons have two aspects about appearing the above circumstance. One is the rapid and further development of China’s opening-up and reform to the world. Another is the development of the cultural communications between China and English-speaking countries. The movie generally has two kinds of features, that is the artistic value and commercial value, so, it is strongly favored by people throughout the world because of its special glamour. However, how to introduce the Chinese film to the world and enter English films into China. It is rather important to promote the exchange of the intercultural action. Many translators have noticed this field and done great contributions. As the label of the film, film titles play an important role in identifying the work and developing the film’s popularity, because it can promote the success of the film and increase a big box office. Therefore, film title translation has become rather important and outstanding part when people produce the study of the translation. It seems as if the film title translation is easy, in fact, it is not an easy work. A good film title translation should not only be concise, memorable and respect both languages but also be honest to the whole content of the film. Generally speaking, it should have the same character as the original and be full of artistic charm. So, the film title translation should be pay attention to the feeling of the audience and be judged by the standard if it helps audience to understand the content of the film and the appreciation of the film when the audiences go to the cinema. However, film title translation is not easy work because it needs creative abilities of the translators, and by now, the suitable systematic and feasible principle which can guide the translation of the film title is not appeared, why? We all know, film title translation is a challenging job, therefore, it is highly necessary to conduct a comprehensive study of the film title translation.People usually regard the traditional equivalence translation theory as the guiding ideas about the studies and researches of film title translation. The result of doing this is that translation is liberated from the yoke of form bondage, but, it appears two situations, one is that it can’t make film title translation get rid of the bondage of ’equivalence’; another is that translation methods which are based on traditional translation theories can’t explain why the translations of the film titles are fantastic in practice, however, they are against the traditional’equivalence’ standard in theory. Therefore, the traditional equivalence translation theory is not able to conduct successfully translation practice.The author of the present thesis tries her best to make a deeply study about film title translation according to the perspective of Skopostheories, and requires firmly some the methods and strategies of film title translation which are based on audience-oriented. According to the translation action of the functionalist theory, the film title translation is a kind of activity which embodies a certain purpose, meanwhile, it is an interpersonal interaction and intercultural translation action. The ultimate purpose of film title translation is to render translated film titles appealing to target audience. That is to say, the excellent film title translation can appeal to the audience’s interests and induce target audience to see the film. From the above, we all know Skopostheories broke the traditional translation theory, and offered translation interaction which was not a code-switching operation, in fact it was a purposeful activity, at the same time, it was an intentional intercultural communication; this enriched the translation theory and gave a new perspective to the study of the film title translation. The purpose is the core of the functionalist theory; therefore, it emphasizes the purpose when people conduct translation activities. According to Skopostheories, translation methods and strategies are decided by the skopos and function of the target texts. The purpose of this article is to analyze the translation of film title according to the functional perspective, meanwhile, the author elaborate the application area of Skopostheorie and tries to find out a theory which can guide the film title translation, and manage to do some work descriptively to seek the suitable principles and the feasible skills. In the end, the translators can adopt any strategies and methods to achieve the ultimate purpose of film title translation.The thesis includes five parts which consists of the whole paper. The first part is an introduction, including the research background, writing purpose, theoretical framework, research questions and methodology. The second part is literature review, a theoretical framework of the whole thesis. In this chapter, the author talked about German functionalist translation theory, including the background of the emergency of the Skopostheorie, and gave the basic concepts of the theory, and the theory of action is introduced. Meanwhile, an overview of the film title translation is also introduced. This chapter serves as the foundation for future analysis on translation methods and policies.The third part tells a general analysis of film and film title, including film genres, naming approaches of film title, features of film title, and functions of film title and so on. Chapter Four is the highlighted body of the thesis; it is mainly concerned with the functionalist translation theory influence on the film title translation. The author does a detailed analysis on film title translation and explains deeply how the suitable approach is adopted to film title translation based on the guidance of the functionalist approach. At the same time, the methods and strategies of film title translation are taken in the course of film titles translation. Chapter Five, that is the last part, draws a conclusion about the whole thesis and points out some suggestions. Including the limitations of the paper and some suggestions for further study.