英语电影片名的汉译

Movie is a kind of art, which is different from other works. It acts on human’s senses through a variety of media, so the translation of film titles is also different from the translation of other works.On the other hands, as China and Western cultural exchange is strengthened, movies become the tool of inter-cultural communication activity.

As an important means of cultural communication, films play a very important part. They are also one of the most important elements in the world. Since film titles have always been put in an eye-catching place, the translation of English film titles becomes more significant.

Few domestic scholars involved the translation of English film titles, but it has gradually brought to the forefront. He Yuemin( 何跃敏，1997.4，当前本片译名中的问题对策) pointed out the problems of the translation of west films and put forward the corresponding countermeasure. According to the functional equivalence theory and combining with the characteristics of English film titles, He Ying（贺莺，2001，电影片名的翻译理论和方法) put forward the four value standard of film translation, summarized the main methods of the translation. Xiao Lujin（肖陆锦，2001.3，英语影片名汉译技法探讨）analyzed techniques of the Chinese translation of title.

Good titles could attract audience. The quality of translation of film titles has directly determined the fate of the film. In this paper, the author bases on the experience of predecessors, collects the original translated titles of English films, analyses, classifies,

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and discusses the principles, methods and standards of the translation of English film titles.

2. Features of English Film Titles

Film titles are basically characterized by conciseness and vividness. Good film titles may add appeal to the films and contribute a lot to the box-office value. Although films have something in common with other literary forms, they have their unique linguistic aesthetic and cultural features, which translators should pay much attention, in order to provide a better understanding of the study subject.

2.1 Language Characteristic

Generally speaking, as far as their structure is concerned, English film titles are usually very short, concise in language so that they will be easy to read and to remember for the audience. In the view of the form, they employ one or two words which may be the name of hero or heroine, the place or the key year when the story takes place, for instance, Parrton《巴顿将军》. However, in most cases, they adopt various kinds of phrases and prepositional phrases, such as Titanic, Speed, Sound of Music. Only a few titles have some short sentences, for example, Catch Me If You Can and Saving Private Ryan. 2.2 Artistry

Translation can be considered as an art and the movie itself is an art. A good translation must be a good artistic work. In order to well satisfy the audience’s

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aesthetic tastes, film titles generally have the artistic quality. Generally speaking, the aesthetic characteristics of English film titles are closely related to the application of rhetorical devices, such as simile, metaphor, irony, personification, alliteration, and so on. The application of rhetoric devices to film title has been proved effective and powerful. Movie titles can through a reasonable application of rhetoric to achieve its artistic effect. Such as Sense and Sensibility, Old Wives for New, Tiger!Tiger!Tiger!, and so on. Whether the titles have artistic quality influence the evaluation to the whole movie made by the audiences.

2.3 Commercial

As a modern commodity, a movie is excepted to earn a large box office income. Movie titles are inevitably influenced by this purpose. So there are many exciting, passionate, mysterious, and thrilling titles, although some of these titles actually reflect nothing of the original stories. Finding Nemo《海底总动员》is a model.

This movie tells the story of the over-protective clownfish named Marlin, who searches for his abducted son Nemo all the way to Sydney Harbour. The English title translated into Chinese is 《寻找尼莫》, but it is named 《海底总动员》, it becomes more exciting and mysterious. Moreover, in recent years, many movies have good box office,which is named 总动员, such as Cars《赛车总动员》，Toy Story《玩具总动员》. So the translator translates it into 《海底总动员》 for more commercial reasons.

3.The Translation Methods of English Film Titles

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Film is a synthetical art and the translation of English film titles is a branch of non-literary translation. These two factors demand translators to follow some certain translation principles and skills and possess rich cultural knowledge and solid language foundations. English film titles translation is not to translate simply and mechanically, but to be based on the story and consider the similarities and differences between eastern and western culture as well as the acceptance of translation. We should use different translation methods to translate different movie titles.

3.1 Literal Translation

According to the characteristics of the original language and the target language in the translation of movie titles, literal translation can preserve both the content and the form of the original to the maximum. When the functions of the original language and the target language reach higher authorities superposition, literal translation has become the most simple, effective method.

There are four merits of literal translation, firstly, it is simple and direct, such as Ice Age《冰河世纪》, the Sound of Music《音乐之声》. Secondly, it maintains the original style. Harry Potter is adopted from the best-selling fiction novel or fairy tale. If we replace the

renderings, then the audiences will feel strange, and the movie propaganda will defeat. Therefore literal translation can avoid these questions. Then it requests the translation of movie titles and the movie content to be unified. For example, Saving Private Ryan《拯救大兵瑞恩》. Finally, it is advantageous to introduce the new vivid words. Cats Dogs《猫狗大战》, the translator did not translated the title into directly, because it seems that 《猫狗》is so unsuited. In order to make the title become more attractive, and can be

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distinguished from free translation, we should bring some novel and vivid words to enrich the expression of the language.The greatest benefit is the literal translation to maximize the retention of the original title of the form and meaning, to the audience created a familiar feeling.

3.2 Free Translation

“Free translation is also called liberal translation, which does not adhere strictly to the form or the word order of the original. When there exist dissimilarities or great differences between English and Chinese in the sequence of vocabulary, in grammatical structure and artistic devices, free translation should be used.” （黄友义，从中文书名的英译谈起，《中译英技巧文集》，1992，第40页）

To some titles, especially some allusive ones, whose literal translation cannot describe the story exactly and fail to provide information and attract the audience, more details have to be added to make them more explicit. Instead of being chosen randomly, these details should be based on the story and able to help clarify the titles. For example,

Stuart Little《精灵鼠小弟》，we wouldn't know what it about from the title, it just a name.

Maybe it says a story of a little boy or a little girl who named Stuart. However, the movie is a story about a little talking mouse, Stuart Little, born to human parents in New York. Therefore, 《精灵鼠小弟》 is a nice choice, it’s better than 《斯图亚特·里特尔》 or other literal translation.

Another example: Top Gun 《壮志凌云》. It would be translated into《最好的枪》, if the translator does not know that it is the code name of American Navy’s prestigious.

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Actually, the movie praises the school’s spirit--- a high premium placed on the pilots’ will. Thus, 《壮志凌云》 is no doubt the best choice. Similar instances are Oliver Twist《雾都孤儿》, Sister Act《修女也疯狂》, and Charles’ Angel《霹雳娇娃》.

But the fact isn’t neglected that some film titles use free translation to have the opposite effect. A film called Moulin Rouge, which was shown on the year 2001. It is translated in free translation《梦断花都》when it was introduced to China. The translation of this film title discards the meaning of the original film title and ignores the foreign culture. At the same time, the translators who translated this film underestimate the audiences’ plane of understanding the foreign culture. We should translate it into《红磨坊》, which appeals to people who want to further know about the background of this film.

3.3 Transliteration

Transliteration refers to according to the pronunciation of the original title, then directly translated it into corresponding Chinese characters. This method used less, but indispensable.Transliteration is mainly applied to the Chinese audience more familiar with the names, places, events. Such as the Robin Hood sound directly into 《罗宾汉》. Robin Hood is a British Grand Theft Auto-style heroes, folk tales, many of the audience is familiar with his story. Titanic《泰坦尼克号》, Jane Eyre《简爱》, and Hamlet 《哈姆雷特》are also the translation of the Chinese audience more familiar figure. And when some new English words appear, we can’t find corresponding Chinese, we also choose transliteration. Avatar《阿凡达》, it’s a created word, we just translate it according to the pronunciation.

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Although in many cases, we should use transliteration, it has its own advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, it may be keep the foreign flavor to attract the audience’s attention; furthermore, it may promote the cultural communication between Chinese and Westerners. On the other hand, transliteration needs to seek the correspondence, to describe the English syllables through the corresponding Chinese syllables. Due to the intrinsic inadequacy of phonetic correspondence between English and Chinese, sometimes the Chinese people are unfamiliar with the sheer foreign names, so it is unnecessary to use transliteration. Cleopatra is the historical and poetic drama of Queen Cleopatra of Egypt who wants to stabilize her power by making use of the tensions of the two powerful Roman generals who love her. If we translate Cleopatra into 《克里奥佩特拉》 instead of 《埃及艳后》, it will not be easily understood, and cannot attract a large group of audience.

Transliteration should follow two principles, one is to base on the language pronunciation of the host country. Another is to use some conventional name.

3.4 Combination of Literal Translation and Free Translation

Because of the different culture between China and English, the translators sometimes adopt the hero’s or heroin’s names, settings, events as the titles, so we can not only identify the methods, but also add words on the basis of transliteration according to the content of the movie. The movie titles can show the connotation of the movies. Such as animated cartoon Shrek. Shrek is translated into 《怪物史莱克》 which is better than《史莱克》, because we do not know what 《史莱克》is from the surface. The word怪物 is so vivid and interesting ,and show the style of the cartoon, the most

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important, it can cause audience's curiosity. There are some similar examples, Elizabeth《伊莉莎白女王》, Tarzan《人猿泰山》, Philadelphia《费城故事》, Joe Dirt《乔·德特历险记》.

4. Mistranslation

Mistranslation of movie titles is mainly caused by the following factors:

4.1 Lacking a Comprehensive Understanding of the Story

As for a movie title, it is best left untranslated until the translator goes to the movie and fully understands the story. Only with a comprehensive understanding of the story, can he make a right and the best choice among many possible versions. But in many cases, the translator probably has to come up with a version simply from the original English title and a synopsis of the movie, without going to the movie before translating the title.

Bad Company(坏蛋公司/最差搭档), the translation 《坏蛋公司》 sounds not bad, but it

is completely irrelevant to the story. It is about a man who has to “play” his twin brother, an agent having died in his unfinished mission. He makes a lot of troubles to his dead brother’s partner but finally he finishes the mission and plays his twin brother perfectly. Another version 《最差搭档》 or 《临时特工》may be better for the story. The word “company” in the title means partner.

4.2 Misunderstanding of Cultural Information

Culture is the way of life and its manifestations are peculiar to a community that uses

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a particular language as its means of expression. There is usually cultural information in movie titles. If the translator is not aware of it or misunderstands it, he is likely to mistranslate the title. Sometimes, English words with cultural background do not have a corresponding word in Chinese. E.g. “American dream” means the national spirit in USA and refers to the equal freedom and equal opportunities of everyone. However, we do not have a word in Chinese with the same meaning. When we translate the titles, we have to pay attention to these words and expressions.

American Beauty(美国美人/美国丽人) The mainland and the HK versions both have

made a mistake in taking the literal meaning of Beauty. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, “American Beauty” is a type of rose bearing large, long-stemmed purplish-red flowers. And the rose is a profound image in the Oscar winner of the Best Picture in 2001, so the Taiwan version 《美国心》，《玫瑰情》 seems more to the point.

4.3 Influence of Commercial Profits

As we mentioned above, movie itself is a sort of commodity and the movie titles are attractive to draw the audience’s attention and then film producers are able to make a lot of money. The translators are also inevitably influenced in this aspect. As a result, we always see a lot of exciting, passionate, mysterious or thrilling words in the titles though some of these titles actually reflect nothing of the original or the story. Here are some examples: Original Sin《激情叛侣》(原罪), Body Guard《终极保镖》(保镖), Charlie’s Angels《霹雳娇娃》(查理的天使) , All the President’s Men《惊天大阴谋》(总统班底) , Platoon《杀戮战场》(野战排). Extreme words that can arouse people strong emotion, such as 激情，终极，霹雳，惊天 and 杀戮 are used in the translated titles. The reason why these words

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are used is just to make the titles sound exciting and attractive in order to hit a great box office. Another situation of commercial profits is movie star effect. To some extent, a movie star is a guarantee of the box office. So sometimes the translator will translate the titles to remind the audience of the star’s other wonderful movies paying no heed to the irrelevance.

Julia Roberts, one of the most famous actresses, has a successful movie Runaway Bride 《落跑新娘》 and greatly impressed the audience. Another romantic comedy of hers My best friend’s wedding 《我最好朋友的婚礼》 has another version 《新娘不是我》. This

title is quite great and has an connection with Runaway Bride. But it is not suitable translate her Notting Hill 《诺丁山》into 《新娘百分百》. The movie tells nothing about a bride but a story between a movie star and a bookstore owner. The version gives strained interpretation. Maybe the translator think that Julia’s movies always tell a bide story.However, some translators seem to be fond of this kind of trilogy. Enemy of the state《全民公敌》 brings Will Smith great success and also gives the translators great

inspiration to translate Smith’s other movies. I Robot becomes 《机械公敌》 and a romantic comedy Hitch is translated into《全民情敌》 which makes no sense at all.

5. Principles of English Film Titles Translation

The film is a synthesis art, and the translation of film titles has already followed the certain translation principles, that are faithfulness, expressiveness, and elegance. So we must have the rich cultural knowledge and the solid language foundation.

The translation of the movie titles is different from that of books or novels, which

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demands a strict translation of literature for the intention of the author, and for reproduction of vividness. In order to meet the local market, it is permissible to make a change in the movie titles translation. However, we should follow some principles and strategies to translate in the ways of faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance; meanwhile, we should consider the cultural and commercial value.

5.1 Information Value Principle

We can get the information from the movie, we can know the western culture and the differences between China and English language country. The translation of the film titles, “we should be faithful to the content of the original work. The translator must bring out the original meaning both comprehensively and accurately without any distortion or casual addition or the original thought.\" （郭著章，李庆生，《英汉互译实践教程》，2003，第24页）

And we should also make the titles forceful, clear and idiomatic. Different languages have different ways of expression. The translator must try to follow the custom. The film should be created for the audiences, and it must be admitted, appreciated and judged by the audiences.

The audiences always understand the film through the titles, therefore the translations of film titles must be based on audience’s appreciation, with the easiest words and language. For example, the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants《牛仔裤的夏天》,

Stars Wars《星球大战》, Sound of Music《音乐之声》, and so on. These film titles are

accepted by common people.

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5.2 Aesthetic Principle

Film is a unique art of conveying stories and through the visual language of picture and the synchronizing audio speech. And film title is a preview of the film and the artistic adequacy of film title goes hand in hand with the popularity of the film proper. The translators should use the art form of our country language to convey the artistic of image, emotion and language of the original works. According to the content of the film, translator should consider the differences between the east and the west, and acceptability of the audience, in order to not only conveys the film’s information but also show the aesthetic appeal.

The Bridge of Madison County《廊桥遗梦》is believed to be one of the best translated

titles. It is a four-character expression which appeals to Chinese audiences, and the characters in the title contain great meanings. There are more good versions with high artistic quality, Ghost《人鬼情未了》, A River That Runs Through《大河恋》.

5.2.1 Four-character Phrases

Four-character phrases are brief and concise, it fulls of the expressive power. In our Chinese daily life, we often use four-character phrases, we use it to express our special emotion and describe something. The utilization ratio os extremely high in the film title translation. For example, Dances With Wolves《与狼共舞》, Home Alone《小鬼当家》, An Eye for An Eye《逍遥法外》. These translations are terse and smooth and appeal to all.

5.2.2 Rhetoric Technique

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Rhetoric uses language effectively, the translators use rhetoric techniques to make the movie titles more vivid and let audiences feel the elegance. Such as simile: Gaslight 《郎心如铁》, Some Like It Hot《热情似火》; repetition: A Few Good Man《好人寥寥》; oxymoron: True Lies《真实的谎言》; antithesis:The Great Gatsby《大亨小传》, Old Wives for New《旧宠新欢》, Love Me Tenderly《铁汉柔肠》; hyperbole: Past Tense《奇幻追杀》, Fear《致命的危机》, Mars Attack《星战毁灭者》.

5.3 Cultural value principle

“The translation is not only the language exchange process, at the same time is two kinds of cultural exchanges process.” （贺莺，电影片名的翻译理论和方法，《外语教学》，2001，第57页）. Some English film titles will inevitably contain something peculiar to its own culture. As analyzed above, some mistranslations are caused by misunderstanding of cultural information on original titles. Therefore, the translator should understand the content of the original works, the language of the original works, and the foreign culture. And the translator should be aware of such cultural information, fully understand it, and properly translate it to the understanding of the target audience.”For the real successful translation, the translator’s bicultural grounding is even more important than his bilingualism grounding.”（Eugene A. Nida, 1993）

The movie Seven is a thriller. If seven is rendered simply into《七》, the audience will surely be puzzled. In fact, seven refers to the seven crimes which are listed in Holy Bible. So if it specified as 《七宗罪》, the movie will be easily classified as a detective one. Because 《七宗罪》 ingeniously transmit the western religious culture to the Chinese audience who are not familiar with western culture. Then 《七宗罪》serves as a guide to

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the audience.

Besides the western culture, the translator has to know well about the Chinese culture. We Chinese prefer to use some four-character expressions which are compendious and suitable for reading and reflect the traditional Chinese cultural appeal. So we should try to translate the English film titles to some four-character Chinese titles.

5.4 Economical benefit principle

As a modern commodity, the movie is expected to earn a large box office income. The more attractive the title is, the more audience the movie may have and the more profits it will make. So we should consider to the commercial factor when we translate the English movie titles. A well-translated title should be a perfect combination of attractiveness and quaintness, and capable of achieving both commercial and aesthetic effects. If we want to come true the commercial value of movies, at first, we should require translators with full assurance of the language characteristic and the aesthetic appeal, create an attractive movie titles which can beloved by audiences, obtain audiences approval, and let the audiences eager to see the film.

Mission: Impossible has two other renderings, 《职业特工队》（HK）and 《不可能完

成的任务》（Taiwan）.But neither leaves a deeper impression on the audience than does 碟中谍, the three-character title, brief and forceful, full of tension and suspense. Moreover, the movie title must be novel, and good at creating anxious, exaggerating the atmosphere. Some translations of movie titles are very fascinating, It Happens One Night《一夜风流》, Sister Act《修女也疯狂》.

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6. Conclusion

Film has become an important tool for cultural exchange, especially in the past two decades, Europe has been the introduction of a steady stream of good domestic movies. Needless to say, whether the movie titles are attractive to the audience to watch the movie into the theater has a significant impact. As a translator, how a good translation, translation of prospective movie titles become urgent attention. It should be noted that most of the movie title translation is more successful, even in part, want to be good. But there are also many problems, misinterpretation of movie titles directly affect the spread of foreign culture in China. In order to get better translation results, you should adhere to coordinate the faithful, accurate transform for cultural connotations, both commercial value and aesthetic value, focus on the art of title between four principles, using transliteration methods.

The translation of the film titles is a special process of recreation. It isn’t simple to obey the content and the forms of the original titles, but a hard exploration to the film themes, social problems, the ethnic association and national condition. So finding the balance between literal translation and free translation is rational to the translation of film titles. We wouldn’t only see a part of the film and rush into translating it into literal translation or free translation. Translation is also a process of cultural communication owing to the differences of the principles of the translation, the linguistic customs of the foreign countries and the characteristics of the film titles. That is not only to the audience, but also to the translators themselves.

Different film titles require different translation methods. People should take all

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factors into consideration. In all, there are many challenges for us to translate the film titles, thus we should combine the practice of using translation methods. If we master the trick of the translation of film titles, everything becomes easy.

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