Application Of Functionalist Skopostheorie To E-C Film Titles Translation

As a kind of art form with artistry and commercial quality, film is one of the most influencial mediums. With a history of over one century, film has been a kind of common way for entertainment. As one of the most common form of popular culture and a favorite form of recreation and eniertainment, film takes an espcially important role in this interactive stage. Nowadays more and more foreign films are getting into the lives of Chinese people and Chinese films are also steadily flowing into foreign countries, the both way transmission of which immediately gives rise to the prosperity of film translation and the study on it. As one indispensible part of film, the film title, has its own distinct language characteristics and national culture connotation, which is the core reflection of film's artistry and commercial quality. Based on this, the film title is a bridge which connect the film and the audience together.Translation of the film title has become more and more important in the field of translation. A good translated title can deliver the most important information about the films to the audience. They can grip the attention of the audience at their first sight and stimulate their association with the plots. The past twenty or thirty years has witnessed the development of film titles' translation, a lot of study papers were published on every kinds of academic journal and periodicals, but, most of them were directed by"equivalence"theory. Although they broke the restrictions of form, they were not realized getting rid of the restrictions of"equivalence", they could provide a theoretical explanation for some translated film titles that are suceessful in practice but against traditional"equivalence"standard. Therefore, they cannot effectively conduct translation practice. The present thesis tries to, from the aspcets of the functions and skopos of film titles, make an analysis of the translation of film titles. Skopostheorie as a newly developed theory, is adopted as the theoretical background of this thesis. Functionalism provides new viewing angle to the field of translation, especially to the application texts' translation. It reflects a shift from traditional linguistic and formal translation theories to a more functionally and socio-culturally oriented concept of translation. In this thesis, the author applies the functonalist skopostheorie to explain the phenomena of English film title translation into Chinese. It proves the rationality and applicability of the functionalist approach and probes into the translation strategies of translation of English film titles under the guideline of functionalism. This thesis will be divided into five part in all:Part 1 as the introduction of the thesis, mainly introduces the research background, objectives and significance of the thesis, data recourses and structure of the thesis; chapterl is a beief introduction of film titles, includes gemes of film, features of film titles and functions of film titles; chapter 2 is literatural review, which includes origin and development of functionalism in abroad, main conceptes of skopostheorie, three principles of skopostheorie, brief introduction to the research in China, brief introduction of translation and previous studies on English film titles translation; Chapter 3 is the application of functionlist skopostheorie to E-C film titles translation, wich mainly includes allalysis of the pheomena of film title translation, skopos of film title translation, a functional analysis of English film titles translation, translation strategies adopted in English film titles translation, requirements for translators of E-C film titles translation and its summary; part 5 is the conclusion of this thesis, which will point out the main summary and conclusion of the research with the limitations and suggestions of the research.