On The Film Title Translation From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence

Film now becomes an important part of modern life. An excellent film title can not only provide the information about the film plot and genre to the audience but also arouse audiences'imagination and curiosity towards the film, so as to attract people to buy the tickets to see the film. Since the reform and opening up policy was practiced, a number of English films have been imported to China. Because of the significance of film title, translation of film titles is considered increasingly crucial in translation practice. However, in practice, there appear many problems:firstly, several translations for one film and low quality of translations lead to the market disorder; secondly, the academic studies of English film title translation are always focused on the translation strategies such as literal and liberal translations, which limits the study to linguistic level, while the translation process and the evaluation criteria of E-C film title translation are never studied extensively.After reviewing the significant term "functional equivalence" put forward by Nida, the author attempts to apply Nida's functional equivalence theory to English film title translation in this thesis. To begin with, the intercommunication is not hindered despite the divergence in language form; secondly, the similarities between Chinese and British culture lay a foundation for effective communication and help the translators obtain the equivalent expression; thirdly, the receptor's similar reaction in both cultures will give a clue concerning the reasonable translation.Then with an analysis of film titles'features and functions, four translating techniques are suggested:transliteration, literal translation, liberal translation and adaptation. Whichever technique is employed, the good film title translation is evaluated by the equivalence, namely, the source receptor's response to the source text is supposed to be similar to the target receptor's response to the target text.