The Chinese Translation Of English Film Titles From The Skopos Theory's Perspective

With the further widening process of China's opening up and increasingly frequent exchanges with foreign countries, more and more English films have been introduced into China. English film titles have gradually become a new issue on which English language researchers focus. As the first impression of a film, its title has functions of sending message, showing esthetic feeling and attracting audiences. Generally, English film titles are relatively short, but it is rather difficult to translate them into Chinese. Therefore, it is very important to study film titles'translation.The present researches on film titles translation are mostly from the viewpoints of translation principles, translation methods or translation strategies, etc. combined with a certain translation theory. And they didn't do the further researches on the translation of English film titles systematically. For example, many scholars usually conduct the studies of film titles'translation in the light of traditional Equivalence Translation Theory, but which could not explain why some film titles in violation of Equivalence Criteria are proved still quite successful through practice.Distinguished from traditional"Equivalence"Translation Theory, Skopos Theory holds that translation act is not merely an interlingual transformation but an intercultural communicative activity with purposes. Skopos Theory breaks through the traditional translation theory. And it does not emphasize the translation at the linguistic level only, but also focuses on the cultural background and the skopos of the target text."The end justifies the means"is Skopos Theory's most distinctive characteristic which allows much"room"for the choices of translation strategies. It also gives a new perspective to the study of film titles'translation.This paper argues that Skopos Theory is an appropriate translation theory to conduct English film titles'translation, because it is able to broaden the theoretical research field of English film titles'translation, enables the translator to have enough room for creation and provides a theoretical basis for achieving the commercial value of a film and winning box office. This paper, based on Skopos Theory, analyzes some translation phenomena of English film titles combined with many examples. This paper also puts forward three translation strategies based on Skopos Theory (literal translation, free translation and creative translation) in the process of Chinese translation. It is hoped that this paper is able to better display the artistic spell of a film.