On English-Chinese Translation Of Film Title Based On Polysystem Theory

Film, a unique way of mass communication and media, is playing an increasingly important part inpeople’s daily life. For most people, old or young, it has become an entertainment suitable for both refinedand popular tastes. With the development of globalization, large numbers of western films, especiallyAmerican ones, have been imported to China. Film title, the “eye” of the film, is significant in whether afilm can be popular or not. Therefore, the work of film title translation is very important. A film should notonly bring about provoking thoughts to the audiences, but also can refresh them with new angles to viewthe outside world. At present, there are lots of film titles which were translated very well. Meanwhile, thephenomenon that the same film has more than one translated versions exists commonly.The thesis aims to explore the factors that cause the above mentioned phenomenon from PolysystemTheory. Under the framework of it, in order to find how these factors affect each other, the author puts thefactors which exert the influence on the film title translation into the whole social background. Based onthe theory, the author first analyzes the characteristics of the film title translated versions in the mainland,Hongkong and Taiwan from three aspects, that is, translation strategies adopted in film title translation,linguistic features and commercial characteristics in translated versions. It is found that translators in themainland used foreignization strategy mainly in film title translation in the early time. With thedevelopment of economic and cultural communication with foreign countries, domestication is widelyadopted. In Hongkong and Taiwan, domestication is mainly used in the early times. As for linguisticfeatures, there also exist differences in film title translated versions in three regions. The sensational wordsare seldom found in the mainland versions, which is common in Hongkong ones. In Taiwan, this kind ofwords appeared to be few at first, but now they are frequently seen in the film title versions. Besides, thereis a trend in Taiwan versions that series of translated versions in film title like “魔鬼”,“总动员” are formedin recent years. As far as a commercial characteristic in film title translated versions is concerned, it isshown to be weak in the mainland versions, while the versions in Hongkong and Taiwan express thecharacteristic well. Then the author analyzes the possibility to use Polysystem Theory to the thesis. In orderto reveal the factors that take parts in film title translation, based on the theory, the author analyses thecollected data from the perspectives of politics, morality and ethics, religious belief, economy andpatronage. At last, according to the theory about the position of translation literary, the thesis explains whydifferent translation strategies are used in film title translation in three regions. Through the analysis of the data and examples, the following conclusion will be arrived at: Firstly, it isfound that the factors which influence film title translation are different in three regions. In the mainland,politics and morality take the center position in translating film title and they take a great influence on thetranslators. Because capitalism is the social system in Hongkong, economy is in the center position in thewhole system and is the most important factor affecting on the translators in film title translation. In Taiwan,the condition is different from above two regions. Politics and morality both play important roles in filmtitle translation, at the same time economy also takes a significant part in it because of its social system.These differences make one film have more than one film title translation in three regions. In addition, thedifferent goals of the patronage also contribute to the phenomenon. The aim of the patronage in themainland is to educate and unite people. In Kongkong, their aim is to make economic benefits from thefilm. The patronages in Taiwan are divided into two groups. The aim of one group is to make profits fromfilms, which is similar to Hongkong’s. The other’s is to serve for the Taiwan government by the film.They want to guide the public opinion in this way. Thirdly, as for the translation strategy, because themovements make foreign film culture empty in the mainland, especially American and Britain in differentphrases, the imported film takes different position in Chinese film system. Thus translators do not adopt thesame translation strategy. However, it is not the same condition in Hongkong and Taiwan. Therefore, thetranslation strategies adopted in film title translation in three regions are different.