Term Paper on Translation
On the Translation of English Movie Titles
I. Introduction
Nowadays, more and more overseas movies are introduced to Chinese movie market. As movies play a significant role in culture communication, proper translation to overseas movies is very important. The title is a soul to a movie. The audiences read movie titles before they enjoy the movies. So good title translations can easily attract people’s attention. Therefore, how to translate the film titles well is an important course in movie translations.
This paper will focus on the translation of English movie titles and is composed by two parts. The first part will be an analysis on the features of English movie titles, then the second part will part will be an exploration on the translation techniques of English movie titles.
II. The Features of English Movie Titles
There are mainly three features of English movie titles.
The first is linguistic features. Generally speaking, English film titles are usually very short and concise in language so that they could be easily remembered by the audiences. A lot of movies use the actor’s or actress’s name as the movie titles, for example: Forrest Gump, Jane Eyre, Harry Potter etc. Some movies also name the titles according to the place where the story begins, such as Grand Hotel, Pearl Harbor etc. Besides, there are many movies named by a noun phrase, such as the Sound of Music, Finding Nemo etc.
The second is artistic features. Film titles often used rhetorical means such as personification (e.g. Dance with Wolves), repetition (e.g. Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!), oxymoron (e.g. True Lies), alliteration (e.g. Pride and Prejudice) and so on. The application of rhetorical means on the naming of movies makes the titles vivid and attractive.
The last but the most important feature of movie titles is the culture feature. Movies often contain specific cultural meanings, so movie titles often closely related to various cultural aspects, such as history, philosophy, social
I. Introduction
Nowadays, more and more overseas movies are introduced to Chinese movie market. As movies play a significant role in culture communication, proper translation to overseas movies is very important. The title is a soul to a movie. The audiences read movie titles before they enjoy the movies. So good title translations can easily attract people’s attention. Therefore, how to translate the film titles well is an important course in movie translations.
This paper will focus on the translation of English movie titles and is composed by two parts. The first part will be an analysis on the features of English movie titles, then the second part will part will be an exploration on the translation techniques of English movie titles.
II. The Features of English Movie Titles
There are mainly three features of English movie titles.
The first is linguistic features. Generally speaking, English film titles are usually very short and concise in language so that they could be easily remembered by the audiences. A lot of movies use the actor’s or actress’s name as the movie titles, for example: Forrest Gump, Jane Eyre, Harry Potter etc. Some movies also name the titles according to the place where the story begins, such as Grand Hotel, Pearl Harbor etc. Besides, there are many movies named by a noun phrase, such as the Sound of Music, Finding Nemo etc.
The second is artistic features. Film titles often used rhetorical means such as personification (e.g. Dance with Wolves), repetition (e.g. Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!), oxymoron (e.g. True Lies), alliteration (e.g. Pride and Prejudice) and so on. The application of rhetorical means on the naming of movies makes the titles vivid and attractive.
The last but the most important feature of movie titles is the culture feature. Movies often contain specific cultural meanings, so movie titles often closely related to various cultural aspects, such as history, philosophy, social