浅析英文电影名的翻译

浅析英文电影名的翻译 题目:A Brief Study on Translation of English Movie Titles into Chinese 院系:外国语学院 班级:080802 学号:080802109 姓名:郭宁 A Brief Study on Translation of English Movie Titles into Chinese Abstract Movie is an art and as well as a commodity. With the deeper and deeper trend of globalization, Chinese audiences can enjoy more and more English films. Before watching the movie, the audience should pay attention to the movie title. The movie title is an integral part of the movie which conveys the story to the audience to attract them. Movie titles are often compared to the door lintel of movies, as they not only reflect the central thought of movies but also attract the audience with brief and novel forms. should be accurate and embody the So the translation of movie title commercial values. This paper will study the features of English movie title and discuss the skills of translating English movie title and summarize the translation principles. Key Words: English movie title’s translation, features, principles, skills. 2 第 2 页 共 12 页 浅谈英文电影名的汉译 摘要 电影是一门艺术，同时也是一种商品。随着全球化趋势的愈演愈烈，越来越多的英文电影走进中国观众的视野。在欣赏这些英语电影之前，中国观众首先需 。影片名是影片的重要组成部分。电影片名把电影情节传递给观众，要理解影片名 从而吸引观众。有人曾将片名比作影片的门楣，既要反映影片的中心思想，又要简短、新奇，吸引观众。因此英语电影名的翻译既要做到翻译上的准确，也要突出电影作为商品的商业价值。这篇论文将研究英文电影片名的特点，并总结英文电影片名翻译的技巧和原则。 关键词:英文电影片名翻译，特点，技巧，原则。 3 第 3 页 共 12 页 Table of Contents ?. Introduction ......................................................................... 5 ?. An Overview of English Film Titles .................................... 5 1. Features of English Movie Titles ...................................... 5 1.1 Linguistic Features .................................................... 5 1.2 Aesthetic Features ..................................................... 6 1.3 Cultural Features ....................................................... 6 1.4 Commercial Features ................................................. 6 2. Skills of Movie Title Translation ...................................... 7 2.1 Literal translation ...................................................... 7 2.2 Transliteration ........................................................... 7 2.3 Free translation. ......................................................... 8 2.4 Adaptation ................................................................. 9 3. Principles of English movie title translation ..................... 9 3.1 Faithfulness ............................................................... 9 3.2 Reflection of culture ................................................ 10 3.3 Aestheticism ............................................................ 10 3.4 The principle of economic interest .......................... 11 ?. Conclusion ......................................................................... 11 ?. References ......................................................................... 12 4 第 4 页 共 12 页 ?. Introduction The movie, a popular art with both artistic and commercial values, is one of the most influential mass media nowadays. With the success of China’s Reform and Opening up Policy and the strengthened economic and cultural communication between China and English-speaking countries, recently, we have seen a large flow of English movies go into Chinese movie market. English movies are being continuously translated to meet Chinese audience’s growing needs. Title is the most informative part of a film. The film title, being short in form but rich in meaning, has its own cultural, linguistic, aesthetic features. A properly translated movie title should be concise, condensed and compact, which can grip the attention of the audience at their first sight and stimulate their association with the plot, reveal the theme or offer some clue. A successful translation of it can guide receptors to the threshold of the original message. How can this success be achieved? Besides Mr.Lin Yutang’s criteria, “faithfulness, fluency, and beautifulness”, which are developed from Mr. Yan Fu’s “faithfulness, expressiveness, and elegance” (马会娟，2003:28). As an indispensable part of the English films, the translated film titles build up a bridge over the initial connection between the films and the audience. Therefore, film titles’ translation has become a more and more significant part of translation studies. Hence, this paper will introduce the skills of English movies, the general features, and functions of English movie titles, then set out four methods of translation, and a set of principles followed by the translation, then sum up movie title’s translation should be combined with the translation practice, and continually improve in the practice. ?. An Overview of English Film Titles 1. Features of English Movie Titles 1.1 Linguistic Features English movie titles usually contain only one or two key words. Most of the titles are brief and concise. In the view of the form, they employ 5 第 5 页 共 12 页 one or two words which may be the name of hero or heroine, the place or the key year the story takes place, for instance, Ali《拳王阿里》, Parrton 《巴顿将军》and so on. However, in most cases, they adopt various kinds of phrases as titles, namely, noun phrases, verb phrases, adjective phrases, adverb phrases and prepositional phrases. Examples are On Golden 《金色池塘》, 《走出非洲》, Dance with Wolves《与狼Out of AfricaPond 共舞》, 《变脸》are all titles of this kind.( Lynn，A.2003:139) Face off 1.2 Aesthetic Features As mentioned before, movie is a typical form of the modern art, which has its own aesthetic values and features. Being the part which first greets the audience’s eyes, the title of a movie can well reflect such aesthetic features. Generally speaking, the aesthetic characteristics of movie titles are closely related to the application of rhetorical devices, such as simile, metaphor, irony, personification, alliteration, and so on. For example: The Elephant Man《象人》(metaphor), Crystal Heart《心 如水晶》(simile), True Lies《真实的谎言》(oxymoron), What Price Glory 《光荣何价》 (rhetoric question), The Science of the Lambs《沉默的羔羊》 (allusion). 1.3 Cultural Features Movie titles are closely related to various aspects of societies, such as religion, history, philosophy and so on. More often than not, cultural features are closely related to the quotation of idioms and allusions, which convey rich cultural meanings. For example, movies such as Seven《七宗罪》, Original Sin《原罪》 are enveloped in strong Western color, and clearly show the great influence upon English movie titles exerted by western religious culture. A movie is a mirror and conveyer of a specific culture as the social context, cultural phenomena and ideology are shown and implied in it. This feature of movies can be reflected at the level of movie titles, which are inevitably branded by the typical national characteristics and cultural values. Chinese people can gradually get familiar with western cultures by getting in touch with English movies and fully understanding the titles with cultural-loaded words. 1.4 Commercial Features As a popular artistic form, movies are products of commercialization. To some extent, it is justified in saying that a movie will be meaningless 6 第 6 页 共 12 页 if it cannot attract the public attention and bring large profit. Therefore, film titles should always be eye-catching and be tinged with commercial color. In a sense, such characteristic can help to boom the movie industry. However, this does not mean that one can merely pursue large commercial profit by providing some queer titles with no regard to the connotation of the original. 2. Skills of Movie Title Translation After we know the features of English Movie Titles, this part will focus on the different strategies for English film title translation. Namely, literal translations, transliteration, free translation, and adaptation. 2.1 Literal translation Literal translation is frequently used in film title translation. By converting the source language grammatical constructions to their nearest target language equivalents, literal translation can preserve both the content and originality in most cases. In occasions when a title matches the story of a movie perfectly--- Saving Private Ryan, Around the , and if the target language is similar---《拯救大兵瑞World in 80 Days not sounding awkward or unnatural, are capable 恩》，《环游世界八十天》 of describing the story, literal translation can be adopted. As most English movie titles consist of nouns or noun phrases, literal translation is the simplest and most effective technique used in movie title translation. Most descriptive titles, such as a Beauty and the Beast 《美 , Gladiator 《角斗士》, The Butterfly Effect 《蝴蝶效应》, Rambo: 女与野兽》 , Schindler’s List 《辛德勒的名单》, Anna and First Blood 《第一滴血》 《安娜与国王》, Roman Holiday《罗马假日》, The Age of Innocence The King 《纯真年代》, The Shawshank Redemption 《肖申克的救赎》, Sleepless in 《西雅图未眠》,and so on. Seattle 2.2 Transliteration As we have mentioned above, a lot of western movie titles are the heroes’ or heroines’ names and the settings. In film title translation, transliteration means to seek phonetic correspondence, that is, to take names of proper settings, hero or heroines’ names as titles, or the historical events as titles. By means of transliteration, the translated versions in the target language can retain the characteristic of the film titles and achieve the expressive function and fulfill the vocative 7 第 7 页 共 12 页 function by giving the audience a sense of exotic flavor. Although not widely used in the translation of film titles, this strategy turns out to be indispensable. When the names of persons or places involved in film titles are very familiar to the Chinese audience or full of historical and cultural connotations, they should be handled by means of transliteration. In particular, the names in film titles adapted from world-famous novels should be transliterated, because such titles are already familiar to the viewers who have already read such classical novels. JFK(肯尼 迪),Gandhi(甘地),Aladdin(阿拉丁),Ali(阿里) are well-known around the world, so the Chinese audience can easily understand the main idea of the story. Titanic(泰坦尼克号), the greatest ship at that time, sank in her first sail. Also, the Chinese audience knows Casablanca is a city in Morocco and Chicago is a city in east America. Through transliteration, the sound effects, i.e. the rhythm of the SL, can be preserved, which will entertain audience with a strong exotic flavor. However, if the heroes’ or heroines’ names and the settings are not famous, transliteration should not be used. For example, if the movie Selma and Louise is translated into 塞尔玛和路易斯, audience will just know it is a story about two women named Selma and Louise. But what happened and why they are special? The audience can not figure it out. In this case, we have to give up transliteration and use other skills which will be introduced later. 2.3 Free translation. To some titles, especially some allusive ones, whose literal translation cannot describe the story exactly and fail to provide information and attract the audience, more details have to be added to make them more explicit. Instead of being chosen randomly, these details should be based on the story and able to help clarify the titles. For example, Top Gun《壮志凌云》, it would be translated into 《最好的枪》, if the translator does not know that it is the code name of American Navy’s prestigious. Actually, the movie praises the school’s spirit---a high premium placed on the pilots’ will. Thus, 《壮志凌云》is no doubt the best choice. Similar instances are: Oliver Twist 《雾都孤儿》, Sister Act , Mission: Impossible 《碟中谍》, Charles’ Angel 《霹雳《修女也疯狂》 , Armageddon 《绝世天劫》(This word come from Bible, means end of 娇娃》 the day, good and evil decisive battlefield), War 《游侠》.( 赵化 勇,2000:89) 8 第 8 页 共 12 页 2.4 Adaptation Adapted translation is the last resort in translating English movie titles. It occurs sometimes to the translator that neither literal nor liberal translation works in some cases. Adaptation is very creative in that it completely abandons the form and content of the original film title and makes a fresh start based on the content of the film. That is to say, by using adaptation translators place more emphasis on the content of the original film than on the title itself. This method aims not only to transfer the informative value, but also reproduce the aesthetic and appellative value of the film. A case in point is the film The Shawshank 《肖申克的救赎》is the Mainland version, which is strictly word Redemption for word translation bringing confusion and ambiguity. 《刺激1995》is the Taiwan version, which is by no means related to the title or the film. Comparatively, Hong Kong version 《月黑高飞》is more creative and faithful to the story. It vividly echoes the plot. Meanwhile, this version is better in the aesthetic charm. It borrows an allusion from a Chinese poem《塞 下曲》by Lu Lun, in which a sentence describes a general escape in a dark and windy night(月黑雁飞高, 单于夜熏陶).( 包惠南、包昂,2004:125) In summary, taking all translation methods into consideration, which one gets the upper hand and thus is preferable in English movie titles translation? As demonstrated above that each one has two sides. It is unrealistic to advocate literal translation or liberal translation or even adaptation as the sole recommended method of titles translation. It can be found from the previous analysis and examples that there is no definite contradiction among the methods. For many versions, it is hard to tell exactly what specific method is employed. 3. Principles of English movie title translation With the analysis of the characteristics and functions of English movie titles, the translation skills and causes of mistranslations, we can summarize the principles of English. 3.1 Faithfulness The all-important principle in film titles’ translation is faithfulness. Film titles’ translation should be faithful to the film content, delivering the right information and realizing the equivalence of the information. In other words, the translation should be consistent with the original film content and avoid misleading the audience. For example: the Sound of Music(“音乐之声”) was translated in Taiwan as 9 第 9 页 共 12 页 “仙乐飘飘何处闻”, which almost can be applied to all types of music pieces; True Lies(“真实的谎言”), was once translated as“魔鬼大帝”, which is ridiculous for it has nothing related with either the original title or the film content. Translation disregarding accuracy is actually not translation. 3.2 Reflection of culture There are great differences existing between Chinese and western cultures. Sometimes very brief English film titles may contain a good deal of information. So the cultural differences must be considered in the translation of English film titles. Take the film One Flew Over The Cuckoo’ as an example, it was once translated as“飞跃杜鹃窝”, but in fact s Nest the cuckoo’s nest has the meaning of bughouse in English. This film actually tells a story which is related to the bughouse, so the right translation should be“飞越疯人院”. Another example which is caused by misunderstanding of the western culture is the film American Beauty. In mainland China this film is translated as“美国美人”, in Hong Kong as “美国丽人”. Unfortunately, these two translations are both wrong. According to the American Heritage Dictionary，American beauty is a kind of rose with big violet red flowers and long leaves, which stands for holy love. In this film, the director uses this flower to symbolize a girl's love. Therefore, the translation in Taiwan“美国心 玫瑰情” is more suitable. (包惠南, 1957:35) 3.3 Aestheticism Film is a kind of art, so is translation. The translation of film title certainly should obey the principle of aestheticism. Film title translation must take the audience's aesthetic expectations into account. The title should not affect the audience's understanding of the film or harm the audience’s feelings of aesthetic, not too provocative or too rude. A good translation of film title should be catchy and keep the beauty of rhythm, thus it will not only have commercial and aesthetic effects, but also looks attractive to the audience. Usually four-character idioms or phrases are frequently used to achieve the desired effects, for example, Gone With The Wind, a well known film adapted from the famous novel with the same title, which is translated as“飘”, but it is too abstract for the audience to understand. From the aesthetic point of view, “乱世佳 人” is more appropriate as the film’s title. More examples: Bathing Beauty 出水芙蓉 Die Hard 虎胆龙威 浮生若梦 You Can’t Take It With You 10 第 10 页 共 12 页 The Legend of The Fall 燃情岁月 Prelude To A Kiss 一吻倾情 披星戴月 Moonlight 3.4 The principle of economic interest Film is a form of art with distinct tang of commerce. Different from literary works, film production is very costly. For this reason, a film is more like a kind of merchandise that needs to be consumed. To some extend, whether a film title is translated well or not will affect the box office. So the economic interest should be concerned in the translation of film titles. To catch hold of audiences’ curiosity and win the market, an attractive and vibrant translated film title is surely necessary. Let’s take Italian Job as an example:If it is translated straightly as“意 大利工作”, the Chinese movie-goers may think that this is a job-related story happening in Italy, nothing surprising, and there is no need to see the film. Although this translation is faithful to the original, it may only leads to a substantial reduction of the number of people going to the cinema. Another translation“偷天换日”is much more satisfying, for it is not only consistent with the storyline but also increases the attractiveness to the audience. More examples: In the Bedroom 不伦之恋 魔鬼总动员 Total Recall The Net 网络惊魂 It Happens One Night 一夜风流 二见钟情 While You Were Sleeping 时尚女魔头 The Devil Wears Prada These translations are very natural and consistent with the movie content, full of suspense. They can meet the different tastes and requirements of the audience, which can be seen as the perfect combination of artistic value and commercial effect. Prelude To A Kiss 一吻倾情 披星戴月 Moonlight (Lynn，A.2006:57) ?. Conclusion The translation of the film titles is a special process of re-creation. It isn’t simple to obey the content and the forms of the original titles, 11 第 11 页 共 12 页 but a hard exploration to the film themes, social problems, the ethnic association and national condition. So finding the balance between literal translation and free translation is rational to the translation of film titles. Owing to the diversities of the west and the east, the westerners’ opinions towards the translation are naturally different from the easterners. We wouldn’t only see a part of the film and rush into translating it into literal translation or free translation. This act is irresponsible. Translation is also a process of cultural communication owing to the differences of the principles of the translation, the linguistic customs of the foreign countries and the characteristics of the film titles. That is not only to the audience, but also to the translators themselves. Translators should make every effort to benefit the entertainment culture of the public and thus to benefit the translations of film titles. After all, the purpose of the film is to satisfy the audience. Different film titles require different translation methods. People should take all factors into consideration. In all, there are many challenges for us to translate the film titles, thus we should combine the practice of using translation methods. If we master the trick of the translation of film titles, everything becomes easy. ?.References Lynn，A.(2006). Appreciating Cinema. Beijing:Foreign Language . Teaching and Research Press Lynn，A.(2003). Language Teaching and Research Press. 包惠南.《文化语境与语言翻译》.北京:中国对外翻译出版社，1957 包惠南、包昂.《中国文化与汉英翻译》.北京:外文出版社，2004 马会娟. A Study on Nada’s Translation Theory. Beijing: Foreign ， 2003 赵化勇. 《译制片探讨与研究》. 北京:中国广播电视出版社,2000 12 第 12 页 共 12 页