English Film Titles: Features And Translation

The film,a special kind of art, functions not only in education and entertainment but also in commerce. Compared with other kinds of literature works, films function more efficiently in the broadcasting of information and spreading of culture as they have a much wider scope of receivers and usually it takes less time for people to learn something through films rather than through novels. But it doesn't follow that films deserve less attention from the translators when introduced to non-native audiences. On the contrary, more needs to be taken into account, as people now want films to be not only"aesthetic"but also"economic".The most typical part, as an illustration of this point, is actually the translation of film titles because on one hand, the title reaches the audiences in the first place as a brief summary of the film and on the other hand, the title is not so strictly constrained by the setting as the sub-titles are, which leaves more room to the translators for the sake of commerce.In translating films titles, priority should be first given to"faith", one of the fundamental functions of films to communicate message. But due to the difference between Chinese and English language and culture,"functional equivalence"naturally becomes the principle of film title translation and the standard for the evaluation. What's more, as a receiver of the message, the audience deserves no less attention. And therefore the analysis of the audience's psychology should serve as a basis for translation of film titles. Anyway, film titles vary as they have different focus. Therefore it is not expected to find exactly the same principle behind each translation. But what we should strive to achieve is a harmonious coordination among all of the factors mentioned above by applying various kinds of translation methods.