A Study On The Translation Of Movie Titles——from The Perspective Of Communicative Translation Theory

Movie is a popular art form that highbrows and lowbrows alike could enjoy, it's the epitome of culture. As a significant carrier of cultural communication, the translation of movies is a problem which should not be ignored, especially the translation of movie titles. The name of a movie is like its trademark which has strong guiding effects. Undoubtedly, an intriguing and piquant film title can attract the eyes of global audiences at the first time. However, it is not optimistic concerning the status quo of movie title translation. The phenomenon of a movie title corresponding to multiple translated versions exists everywhere. Whether the translation of movie titles should strictly obey the faithful principle according to semantic translation, or it's their responsibility to consider audiences' acceptance and favor as the most essential criterion under communicative translation theory, it's still a controversial issue. The goal of communicative translation theory is to make target language readers share the same feelings with source language readers from the target text and original text. Based on the characteristics of communicative translation theory and particularity of movie titles, this paper will mainly study the application of communicative translation theory in movie title translation through methods of literature research and case study, and come to a conclusion that during movie title translation, it is necessary to try to maintain the characteristics of the original title and fully consider the cultural backgrounds of target language audiences, and communicative translation theory should be adopted to leave audiences appropriate hints and room for imagination.This thesis is composed of five chapters. Chapter One serves as a brief introduction, presenting research background and structure of the study, clarifying the purpose and significance of the study. Chapter Two is a review of the main achievements of communicative translation theory in the west and mainland, and introduces research status of movie title translation. Chapter Three describes the main concepts of communicative translation theory and introduces principles and three influencing factors of movie title translation. Chapter Four introduces features and functions of movie title translation and conducts a comprehensive analysis of coping strategies of different cultures appear in movie titles from communicative translation theory. Chapter Five serves as the conclusion of the thesis.