Skopostheorie And Western Movie Title Translation

With the rapid development of China's economy and the gradual increase of cultural exchanges between China and western countries, the Chinese audiences have more chances to enjoy the western movies. As a vital part of a movie, movie title plays the role of "providing the essence of information and attracting the eyeballs of audiences". Movie title can not only highlight the movie content, convey the motif to the audiences, manifest the emotional tone of the movie, but also trigger the aesthetic awareness to the audiences, arouse their desire of appreciation and increase the box-office rate. However, the levels of literacy, appreciation and comprehension on the part of the Chinese audiences are quite different and the extents to which they know about western culture are not the same. If they are allowed to directly enjoy the western films in the original, most of them can not possibly understand the contents of the movies. Therefore, translation plays an essential role and movie title translation appears even more important. Thus it attracts close attention and keen anticipation from the movie fans and English amateurs in China.There are two reasons why the topic about movie title translation is chosen for the present study. Firstly, with the progress of globalization and the process of international economic integration, the intercultural communication between different countries and peoples will be advanced to a new stage. The traditional translation concepts, such as "loyalty" and "equivalence", can no longer meet the demands of the flexible movie title translation because of the differences in languages, modes of thinking and the ideological values. The translators are required to exercise creative treason to achieve genuine loyalty to the original. Secondly, the research about movie title translation has already reached a certain scale in quantity, but it is far from satisfactory in depth and breadth. Some articles and essays published in the academic journals either discuss the translation methods and techniques of the movie titles, or analyze the impact of differences of cultures and modes of thinking on the strategies of movie title translation. They have not been able to put forward or find a corresponding and applicable theory to guide movie title translation. The translated movie titles must accord with the language habit in the target market and the cultural and aesthetic psychology of the target audience. This thesis attempts to employ the core theory of functionalism—"Skopostheorie", put forward by a German translator called Vermeer, as the supporting theory of the study of western movie title translation. Skopostheorie lays its emphasis on such factors as the functions of the target text, the recipient communicative situation and the media, etc. It challenges the traditional translation theories. This thesis stresses that the translators must strive for the realization of multiple value-added translation of movie titles, including that of cultural, aesthetic and commercial values.This thesis is not only designed to help the translators to master the procedures, features and regulations of movie title translation under the guidance of Skopostheorie, but provide them with a new way and a new perspective of movie title translation. The Skopostheorie can give a proper explanation to the "disloyalty" and "unequivalence" in movie title translation practice. Movie title translation requires the translators to shake off the yoke of original text, grasp the essence, and the aesthetics of the original movie titles and exercise their artistic creativity. The translators must make full use of the artistic forms to convey the images, emotions and the style so that they can pass on the aesthetic sense to the target audiences. Through the analysis on a large number of examples of movie title translation in our real life, this thesis is meant to help the translators conquer the different cultural shock and try to achieve the multiple values of movie title translation so as to promote the exchanges between western people and eastern people. The ultimate purpose is to deepen their mutual understanding and smooth away what stands between different people living in different areas with different cultural background by offering them movies to watch.This thesis is divided into five parts. Part I introduces the research background and the rationale of the research. With the gradual increase of the imported western movies in the Chinese market, movie title translation has already become a hot issue in translation community. Part II concentrates on the discussion of the functions, the roles and the requirements of movie titles and the Skopos of movie title translation. Part III introduces some concepts of Skopostheorie and its contribution to movie title translation. It is meant to combine Skopostheorie with the research of movie title translation and to guide the movie title translation practice. Part IV illustrates that the traditional translation methods can no longer meet the requests of movie title translation and proves that Skopostheorie can effectively direct movie title translation and it furthermore sets up a tentative model for movie title translation. On the basis of the discussion in the previous chapters, part V draws a conclusion that movie title translation is a process with special purposes and only under the guidance of Skopostheorie can it achieve the intended purpose so as to attract the audiences' attention and increase the box-office rate. The defect of this article lies in that it does not classify the movie titles and let Skopostheorie guide the translation of all the movie titles, which requires a further study on the part of the author in the near future.