An Analysis Of The Moive Title Translation In Functional Approaches

This paper is dedicated to serving as a descriptive analysis of the translation of movie titles in functional approaches.The first part of this paper is designed to clarify how the title functions as an indispensable part of a movie. Firstly, the paratext system will be introduced, and then the functions of a movie title will be accordingly elaborated.The second part is a detailed introduction of the translation theories which is to be mostly applied in the later argument. These theories, elaborated in a chronicle order, are the main sources that support and justify my point of view in movie title translation, including Reiss's text typology, Manttari's translational action and Vermeer's skopos theory.The third part falls into three sections, or to be specific, three case studies, discussing some major problems involved in the translation of movie titles. Case Study I is an adaptation of Reiss's text typology. By giving a lot of examples, it firstly classifies the movie titles according to their nature, and then discusses the translation strategies adopted for different types of titles. Case Study II is a research dedicated to the introduction of the discrepancies in movie title translation between mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The using of Chinese language varies from regions to regions, which results in the distinctive features of movie title translation in these three areas. Also there will be plenty of examples given to describe such features. Case Study III, a supplementary study, discusses how the Chinese movie titles have been translated into English, which is also related to regional features.In the ways stated above, a panoramic view of movie title translation will be proposed to the readers for their further analysis and survey. And this is also the skopos of my thesis.