On The Translation of English Movie Titles from the Cross—Cultural Perspective

高穎?李思捷

Abstract：A movie title is a window for people to understand and become familiar with movies.The paper analyzes the differences between Chinese and western culture on movie titles from cultural perspectives，introduces two principles mainly used in cross-cultural translation and illustrates the translation strategies of English movie titles.

Key words： cross-cultural，English movie，title，translation

Introduction

As a form of culture，a movie can reflects the local customs and practices of a country，the mainstream values of society and the complex and diverse characters of the inner world.A movie title is a window for people to understand and become familiar with movies.A good title translation can make the audience accept the culture of foreign movies without obstacles，and promote cultural diffusion while bad title translation is not only harmful to publicity，but also will lose huge commercial value.Therefore，whether the movie title translation is successful or not to a large extent determines the audience's attitude towards the movie and the influence of the movie.

1 Influence of Differences between Chinese and Western Culture on Movie Titles

1.1 Differences of Way of Thinking

Chinese have a comprehensive way of thinking，integrating all aspects of things together.[楊偉紅，2012：145]They are accustomed to summarize in general，for example，《無間道》，《湄公河行動》.On the contrary，westerns have dispersion thinking，focusing on individuals，and nature，and many movies are named after the hero，like Life of Pie，The Godfather and so on.

1.2 Differences of Social Theme

Chinese movies are mostly based on psychological emotion，regarding morals as sovereign importance.However，English movies are scientific-centred，emphasizing on reasoning things out but not expressing personal feelings.[單迎春，2011：139] Meanwhile，the west has great enthusiasm for the exploration of science，and science fiction movies are very popular among westerner，such as Interstellar，and Divergent.

1.3 Differences of Aesthetic Idea

Symmetry and melodious are always laid stress on in Chinese traditional philosophy and aesthetics，showing the beauty of parataxis，such as the famous movies 《東邪西毒》，《臥虎藏龍》.

But，in western eyes，there is no regularity in naming after a movie，it could be one letter，one word，one phrase，or even a sentence.

2 The Translation Principle of English Movie Titles

2.1 Domestication

Domestication is a translation principle to comply with the current mainstream values of the target language culture，and to cater to local laws，publishing trends and political needs.[夏云，2011：179]It requires translations to reduce the original linguistic and cultural barriers，based on the aesthetic demand and the target language readers' cultural identity.Take Forrest Gump as an example，if it is translated into“福雷斯特·岡普”，it may sounds very rigid to Chinese people.Actually，this movie was translated into 阿甘正傳 in Chinese.The originality of Chinese movie title comes from a famous Chinese novel called “阿Q正傳”.So it is very easy for Chinese to accept the movie title.endprint

2.2 Foreignization

According to Venuti，foreignization is a source-culture-oriented translation which strives to preserve the foreign flavor as much as possible in order to transfer the source language and culture into the target one.Foreignization can promote cultural communication and cooperation，so as to strengthen the understanding between the people of the two sides.[趙昱，2013：153].A literal translation of The Seven Year Itch is“七年之癢”，nowadays，in China，many people use the phrase "seven year itch" refers to the people loving to seventh years may go through a crisis due to dull and boring love or marriage life.

3 The Translation Strategies of English Movie Titles with Case Analysis

3.1 Literal Translation

Literal translation is a translation method that is widely used.It is not only faithful to the original content，but also faithful to the original form.Literal translation strives to reproduce both the ideological content and the style of entire literary work and retain as much as possible the figures of speech and the main sentence structures or patterns.There are many examples like：Her（她），Pearl Harbor（珍珠港），Once（曾經）.

3.2 Free Translation

Free translation is a supplementary means to mainly convey the meaning and spirit of the original without trying to reproduce its sentence patterns or figures of speech.Free translation works from the perspective of the original idea and pay little attention to the details as long as the translation is natural flow，which requires vivid not just similar to the original form.For example：The Notebook（戀戀筆記本），In Her Shoes（偷穿高跟鞋），Moonlight（月光男孩）

3.3 Transliteration

Generally，transliteration is the conversion of a text from one script to another.Most systems of transliteration map the letters of the

source script to letters pronounced similarly in the goal script，for some specific pair of source and goal language.It is often utilized when movie titles are proper nouns involving names of characters，time and places （settings），and especially those very familiar to the majority requires no further explanation.[Wang Haiying，2014：20]For example： Avatar（阿凡達），Gandhi（甘地），Hamlet（哈姆雷特）.

3.4 Adaptive Translation

Adaptive translation is to create a new movie title according to the content of the movie by neglecting the form and content of the original title.It demands translators to completely comprehend the content，theme，further connotations and style of the movie.[楊洋，2016：88].To a large extent，the adaptive translation is a recreation process，which enables the movie title to convey the content of the original language，and also the communicate with audience，possessing a strong appeal and aesthetic value.[刑金鳳，2014：155].For example：Inception（盜夢空間），The Bourne Identity（諜影重重），Escape（金蟬脫殼）.

Conclusion

It can be concluded that this thesis has stated the influence of differences between Chinese and western cultures on movie titles，generalized some translation principles used in translating English movie titles，and then analyzes translation strategies and solutions when translating.From this paper，it can be found that English movie not only can serve as a way of entertainment but also promote cultural transmission and communication.So it is very vital to translate English movie titles in an appropriate way.

Bibliography：

[1]Wang Haiying.On the translation of English Movie titles： from the perspective of communication： [D].Soochow： Soochow University，2014.

[2]Yang yang.Methods of English Movie Title Translation[J].Shen Zhou，2016，（6）：88.

[3]單迎春.西方電影文化及其影名翻譯策略[J].電影文學，2011，（9）：139-140.

[4]夏云.略談文化與審美因素影響下的英文電影片名漢譯[J].太原城市職業技術學院學報，2012，（11）：179-180

[5]楊偉紅.跨文化視角下英文電影片名的翻譯方法[J].電影文學，2012，（17）：145-146endprint