On The Translation Of English Movie Titles In The Light Of Reception Aesthetics

With the vigorous development of the world movie industry, a large number of English movies are introduced into China every year, which helps enhance international cultural exchange, makes the western culture more accessible to the Chinese, and enables them to enjoy a more diversified cultural life. Translation plays an important role in this introduction of foreign movies. In order to attract eyeballs, the translation of the "guide" to the movie, the movie title, is among the top priorities in movies translation. At present, the quality of movie title translations is uneven and mistranslation and improper translations are very common. As the movie title is the audience's first understanding of an unknown movie, the quality of the movie title's translation really affects the movie directly in different ways including its box office value.Traditional translation theory tended to treat the movie title translation as ordinary informative text translation. The author believes that the movie title translation belongs to category of advertising translation, with emphasis on the publicity effect of the target version. The purpose of movie title translation is helping propagate the movie. According to the Reception Aesthetics Theory, letting the audience understand and accept the translation is the starting point and purpose of movie title translation. The Reception Aesthetics Theory was put forward in the 1960s by Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser, based on phenomenology and hermeneutics. It achieves the transformation of the center of literary study from the text to the reader and improves a systematic study on "writer—text—reader". The theory holds that translating is a dynamic process, in which the translator produces a target version creatively after reading and understanding the source text. During this process, the translator plays a dual role:a special reader of the original text and a translator of it, considering the readers' needs and ability to accept.The thesis holds that translation criteria are not unchangeable. The applying of translation criteria is dependent on the type of text and the purpose of translation. Rather than the traditional "faithfulness to the author and the source text", the Reception Aesthetics provides us with a new point of view on the relations between movie title translation and the audience. As a special text, the movie title's basic functions are the informative function and the aesthetic function. The informative function concerns not only the information carried in the title but also that contained in the entire movie, including the movie's theme and style. The aesthetic function involves using original forms and language to inspire the audience's imagination to a great extent and attract them to watch the movie. Nowadays culture is not only associated with books, but also associated with movie or TV screens with popular music, a form of culture which is called "image culture". The study on the translation of movie titles must adapt to this change. The focus of the translating work is no longer using a linguistically equivalent text to replace the original text, but rather conveying the functions of the original text and suit the target audience. Consequently, in translating movie titles, the translator should consider the needs of the potential audience, including their horizon of expectation, aesthetic taste, pre-knowledge, and psychological need traits.The writer of the thesis analyzes the ways of naming movies, the characteristics and functions of movie titles, and the mistranslations or improper translations of movie titles in the last sixty years. Using Reception Aesthetics as a theoretical frame, this thesis advances the following translating methods on movie titles translation:literal translation, free translation and creative translation. The writer insists that the prerequisite for movie title translation is passing on the informative and aesthetic function, and the main purpose is the business values and the international cultural exchange. The writer hopes the study can help in some small way toward solving the problem of lacking common criteria and rules for the translation of movie titles.