A Functionalist Approach To The Translation Of Film Titles

This thesis aims to analyze the translation of film titles from the functional perspective in the hope of elaborating the application area of functionalism and finding a guiding theory for FTT (film title translation) between English and Chinese. Over the past years of reform and opening up, audiovisual culture has held a very important position in the cultural exchanges with foreign countries. Nowadays more and more foreign movies are shown on the screen and more and more Chinese movies are exported to foreign countries, which gives rise to the prosperity of film translation. Although film translation has been developing quickly in the past two or three decades, most attention was given to the content translation, that is, audiovisual translation. Being a special and significant part of film translation, FTT is a far less explored field. Up to now, few have ever offered a practical principle for translators. Translation strategies based on traditional translation theories can not provide a theoretical explanation for some translated film titles that are successful but against traditional 'equivalence' standard. In fact, film title translation is a purposeful activity. When analyzing the basic strategy of the translation of film titles, translators should take the special purposes of FTT into consideration.From the aspects of the functions and purposes of film titles, the author makes an analysis of the translation of film titles. Skopostheorie, a newly developed theory, is adopted as the theoretical background of this thesis and an audience-oriented film title translation approach is highly advocated. As an important complement to translation studies, the functionalist theory has given a new perspective to the study of the translation of film title. According to Skopostheorie, translation strategies are determined by the purpose (Skopos) of the target texts.On the basis of the above theoretical study, the author begins from analyzing the characteristics of film titles. It is pointed out that the ultimate purpose of FTT is to induce the audience to see the film. But unlike commercial advertisement, the film title is not only a commercial product, but a spiritual product as well. In order to...