A Study Of The Translation Of Hong Kong Film Titles From The Perspective Of Semantic Translation And Communicative Translation

A qualified film title can suggest the major narrative,central protagonists,essential motif and aesthetic style of the film.It plays a significant role in the promotion of the film,the shaping of the director’s style,the delivery of cultural information and the realization of both commercial and aesthetic values.In order to study the methods and techniques applied in the translation of film titles from Chinese into English,the thesis presents a descriptive analysis of Hong Kong film titles from the perspective of semantic translation and communicative translation.The massive materials and high quality of Hong Kong films provide great convenience for the research on movie title translation.On the basis of the released data from the Hong Kong Film Archive and the annual box-office records from the online database of Mtime,the thesis lists 1,500 Hong Kong films produced from the 1970s to the 1990s with their Chinese and English titles accordingly.Based on British translation theorist Peter Newmark’s theories of semantic translation and communicative translation and the observation of the research data,the thesis classified the translation methods and techniques into transliteration,literal translation,free translation,omission,variation translation and recreation.The application of every translation method in the three decades is discussed from definition,exemplification and data analysis,so as to demonstrate the preference of Hong Kong translators.The discussion involves both the high-quality exemplary titles and the cases that are worthy of consideration.The research reveals that communicative translation has always been the major strategy and recreation is the most significant method in the translation of Hong Kong film titles from Chinese into English from the 1970s to the 1990s.Particularly,in the 1990s,more than half of the research films applied recreation to translate titles on the basis of film texts.Hong Kong translators are not constrained by the language and contents of the source film titles.Instead,they explore approaches to omit,change and even recreate film titles to convey the film stories and attract the target audiences.The application of communicative translation fully exemplifies the flexibility of Hong Kong translators and their consideration for the English audience.The study of translating Hong Kong movie titles from Chinese into English helps to provide guidance for the improvement of movie title translation in China in the future.