On Translators' Subjectivity In English-Chinese Film Title Translation

As a mass media, films are widely accepted out of its special glamour. China has been practicing the opening-up policy about thirty years. During this period, the communication, including film communication between China and other countries, has increased a lot. On one hand, China is introducing Chinese films overseas; on the other hand, many foreign films are introduced into China every year. For this reason, film translation is becoming an important field of translation. As the name of a film, a film title not only conveys certain information to the audience, but also has an artistic attraction. Therefore, the translation of film titles is very important. A translator, as the subject of translation, plays a crucial role in this process for the translation of a film title can affect the success of its box office. In faithfulness-oriented traditional translation theories, the role of translators has always been neglected. With the development of translation theory, the role of translators has been paid more and more attention to. This paper tries to discuss the display of translators'subjectivity in English-Chinese film title translation from the perspective of Skopostheorie and attempts to explain how translators display their subjectivity on the basis of understanding original titles through different translation strategy choices. With certain purposes, translators understand the original English titles through stereotypical relations in the original culture. Considering the accepting ability of Chinese audience and coherence with original titles, translators usually adopt the same stereotypical relations in two cultures. For the unfamiliar and different ones, translators compensate or adapt them in order to establish stereotypical relations that are familiar to target audience in translated titles in order to be loyal to the target audience. Translators display their subjective initiative through translation strategy choices. The target audience understand the translated titles through stereotypical relations in the target culture. If they are attracted by the translated titles, the translation purposes are fulfilled. Though translators have rights to take their subjective initiative, translators' subjective doesn't mean arbitrariness. It is still bonded by translation purposes and the target culture.The structure of the thesis is organized in the following way.Chapter One mainly introduces the reasons, purposes and research methods of this thesis.Chapter Two reviews the situation of film title translation and its research so far. Film has gone through more than one hundred years'development since its birth. Taking the Hollywood films as example, this chapter introduces the main genres and naming tendencies of films. It mainly reviews the film title translation researches and finds out that present research mainly concentrate on translation methods like literal translation or free translation. The theories that have been adopted in film title translation research are mainly Skopostheorie and communicative translation theory of Newmark. So far, research on translators'subjectivity in film title translation from the perspective of Skpostheorie is seldom seen.Chapter Three introduces the connotation and development of translators'subjectivity in history. Translators'subjectivity has been neglected long in faithfulness-oriented traditional translation theories and finally has been paid proper attention to in modern translation theories. Translators finally walk to the front of the scene from behind. This chapter mainly studies the main ideas of faithfulness-oriented traditional translation theories, modern hermeneutics and deconstruction theory to review the development of translators'subjectivity. Thirdly, it reviews the development and important rules of Skopostheorie. Fourthly, it makes a simple comparison on the main ideas of these translation schools. Finally, it points out that since the concentration of film title translation lies in its function; therefore, ideas on translators'subjectivity in Skopostheorie are much more suitable in analyzing this phenomenon. Chapter Four firstly introduces the characteristics and functions of film titles to conclude the principles that must be abided by in translation process. Secondly, the display of translators'subjective initiative has been discussed. The cognitive tool of translators is supposed to be stereotypical relations in this thesis. Translators display their subjectivity through translation choices. Translation process can be explained in this way: with certain purposes, translators understand the original English titles through stereotypical relations in the original culture, and make choices on the stereotypical relations with consideration of the accepting ability of Chinese audience and coherence with original titles. Translators try to compensate or adapt the original titles with the stereotypical relations that are familiar to Chinese audience in order to be coherent with the audience's situation. Then the limits of translators'subjectivity have been analyzed. The chaotic situations in the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan from the perspective of translators'subjectivity and possible solutions have been discussed. Finally it talks about the standards of good Chinese translated titles and cases of translators display their subjective initiative incompletely and overly.Chapter Five sums up the problems discussed in the four chapters and answers the questions raised in Chapter One. The display of translators'subjectivity is obvious in film title translation. However, translators get rid of original text finally, they are still bonded by translation purposes and the target culture.