The Study Of English Film Titles Translation From The Perspective Of Sociosemiotics

As a popular art with both artistic and commercial values, film is one of the mostinfluential mass media as well as a significant part of culture. The film title, which gainsthe audience’s frist attention, has become the first factor having audience make decsions onwhether they choose to watch a film or not. Sociosemiotics, as a brunch of semiotics, isabout the study of science of sign systems in the context of society, and extends the studyfrom mere linguistic field to human society in EFTT. As Nida put in Language and Culture,"The most pervasive and crucial contribution to an understanding of translation is to befound in sociosemiotics, the discipline that treats all the systems of signs used by humansocieties."(2001)After a careful study of various theories related with semiotics and sociosemiotics, thethesis is intended for the study of EFTT under the guidance of sociosemiotic approach. Byanalyzing some classical EFTT practices, the thesis explains how to achieve the criterionof correspondence in meaning and similarity in function in the course of translation fromthe three aspects of meaning respectively, namely, designative meaning, linguistic meaning,and pragmatic meaning.Finally, the author draws conclusions that are in the light of sociosemiotics, thetranslation practice proceeds from meanings and functions of language and gives equalattention to the designative meaning and pragmatic meaning. Together with importanceattached to the functions of language and the linguistic meaning constructed by the innerrelation between verbal signs, sociosemiotic translation method can help translatorsreproduce the meanings and functions at various levels, and make every effort to find thebest combination of the three kinds of meanings, then finally achieve "correspondence inmeaning and similarity in function" by means of various of translation strategies andmethods. What’s more, the approach also reveals the dialectical relationship betweentranslatability, which is translators are bound to be confined to various socio-culturalsettings, they cannot reach the absolute faithfulness, and the obstruction of the signtransmission can decrease gradually, but will never vanish. Therefore, further research isstill welcomed to find more inspiring ideas and insightful thoughts on EFTT.