A Study On Film Title Translation From The Perspective Of Sociosemiotics

With the development of science and technology, as well as frequent exchanges anddeepening of world economy and culture, films as the world’s eighth biggest art form, is one ofthe important means of intercultural communication. As the film title and symbol, film titletranslation often plays the important roles, such as highlighting film content, conveying themeinformation, establishing emotional tone, attracting audience’s eyes and so on. Since languagebelongs to a kind of symbol, then film title translation cannot be separated from the use ofsymbols, and integrated approach is needed for research. Besides, semiotics has a profoundphilosophical foundation and it also has the function of cascading theories. This thesis, from theperspective of sociosemiotics, combining the characteristics of film titles, makes use ofsociosemiotic approach to probe into principles of film titles translation to be followed, andsummarizes film titles translation methods with examples.The film title translation takes language activities as a core, but strictly speaking, it belongsto semiotics, is the significance transformation between two sets of language symbols. In the past20years of the film title translation study, there have been mostly the study of film titletranslation strategies and methods and other issues from the pespective of reception aesthetics,skopos and so on. Throughout the theories that film title translation has used, such as: Yan Fu’stheory of "faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance", Lu Xun’s “faithfulness rather thanexpressiveness”, Jiang Chunfang’s "equivalent translation" theory, Qian Zhongshu’s principle of"transmigration", Fu Lei’s “spirit likeness”, Lu Xun’s “rather be faithful than be not elegant”,Jiang Chunfang’s “equivalent translation” theory, Qian Zhongshu’s "transformation" theory, FuLei’s "likeness" theory, British famous translation theorist Theodore Savory’s Readers analysistheory(functional translation theory). Comparatively speaking, Eugene Nida, a famous Americantranslation theorist, proposed the sociosemiotic translation method and creatively appliedsociosemiotics to the study and practice of translation. According to the theory of sociosemiotictranslation method, as a kind of social symbol, films and television programs are naturally a kindof combination of meaning, style and function. Therefore, when translating films and televisiontitles, it is necessary for translators to grasp the social phenomenon which the works reflect,namely, denotative meaning; the plot of the work, namely, linguistic meaning; the theme of thework, namely, pragmatic meaning. Meanwhile, translators should take into account the multiplesocial functions, such as the audience’s receptiveness and business value. At present, the study of related sociosemiotics and translation is on the rise. Accompaniedby the film industry to flourish in China, introducing sociosemiotic translation of movie titles isexpected to be able to provide practical guidance to film title translation and provide newperspectives to our translators and theory researchers.