Translation Of English Film Titles In Chinese Mainland, Hong Kong And Taiwan-from The Perspective Of Lefevere’s Rewriting Theory

With the continuous development of globalization, cross-cultural communicationis playing an increasingly prominent role in today’s world, and mass media provide uswith a closer world for such cross-cultural communication. Film, a popular art formwith both artistic and commercial values, is exerting more and more influences on thedissemination of information and cultural exchanges. It also influences people’sthinking method and living style. As an indispensable part of the film, film title has itsunique linguistic characteristics and cultural connotation. Obviously, film titletranslation has become a significant research topic.But it is understood that at present, translators in the Chinese Mainland, HongKong and Taiwan are undertaking film title translation work independently, and theyhave formed a situation of tripartite confrontation. Although there are generallyrecognized translation standards in translation field, due to the differences in culturalbackground, historical precipitation and linguistic habits in these three regions, theChinese translated versions of a same English film title remain different on mostoccasions, and each has its own style. By adopting Lefereve’s Rewriting Theory asthe theoretic framework, this study focuses on exploring the specific reasons for thedisunity in the translation in these three areas in China. From the perspective ofRewriting Theory, the present study adopts the method of descriptive explanation andmainly introduces the influences of the ideology, poetics and patronage on film titletranslation. The manipulation of ideology on Mainland film title translation isreflected in the following two aspects: firstly, the trade-off and avoidance of sensitivetranslating contents; secondly, relatively smaller amplitude of rewriting andpreference to literal translation; while the fast-food culture and commercialatmosphere in Hong Kong lead to the preference to liberal translation and manyvulgar expressions in film title translation due to pursuit of commercial effect; as forthe film title translation in Taiwan, it has got both the characteristics of film titletranslation in Mainland and that in Hong Kong. It pursues exaggerated effect whilevaluing traditional Chinese features. The manipulation of poetics on film title translation is embodied in rhetoric devices, aesthetic habits and linguistic features. Toput it specifically, it has got the following manifestation ways: firstly, a word hasdifferent rhetoric meanings in these three areas; secondly, Taiwan tend to use posiesand four-character structures; thirdly, Hong Kong translation versions tend to becolloquial and the appearances of combinations of English and Chinese are common;Taiwan film titles are stylized and colloquial. In addition, the film producers andcensorship also exert influences on film title translation in these three areas.This study finally comes to the conclusion that translation activity is notone-to-one code-switching; it is influenced and restricted by the ideology, poetics andpatronage of the target language. The different versions in these three areas resultfrom the differences in ideology, poetics and patronage in these three areas, and thedifferent translated versions are rewriting of the original texts by the translatorsaccording to the differences in these three factors. Only by doing so, can theinformative value, commercial value and aesthetic value of the translated title beachieved.