功能对等理论指导下电影片名的翻译
【关键词】电影片名；功能对等；翻译方法
on the translation of movie titles under the guidance of functional equivalence
chen li-li
（school of foreign studies, suzhou university, suzhou anhui 234000, china）
【abstract】movies, as a kind of important medium of communication, plays an important role in cultural exchanges between china and the western countries. the translation of movie titles is closely related to the popularity of the movie. this paper, based on nida’s functional equivalence, puts forward to translation methods of movie titles. it is concluded that some methods like literal translation, transliteration, and free translation should be flexibly used in accordance with target audience’s understanding and acceptance.
【key words】movie titles; functional equivalence; translation methods
0 introduction
the translation of movie titles is considered as a crucial and creative job, for a good or bad translation will
definitely affect the popularity of the foreign movies, and the movie title is the first step that makes the audience be aware of movies. many scholars, such as, nin zhishou[1], lin qun[2], he ying[3] have focused on this topic and put forward some translation methods. however, the studies have more or less shortcomings and those methods seemed so general that they could not include all of the translation strategies and methods and other approaches on the movie titles translation were ignored. on the basis of the previous studies on this field, this paper, firstly indicates some problems of the movie titles translation, then analyzes the features of the translation of movie titles, and at last, based on nida’s “functional equivalence”, provides three main approaches, including literal translation, transliteration, and free translation.
１problems of the translation of movie titles currently, one of the most prevalent problems in the translation of movie titles is that a movie possesses several translated titles, which causes the translation of movie titles in a state of disorder. since the differences in social environment, cultural background and mode of thinking, there are different versions in translating movie titles between
the mainland, hong kong and taiwan. for examples, sound of music is literally translated into《音乐之声》in the mainland, 《仙乐飘飘处处闻》in hong kong, and《真善美》in taiwan; also, american beauty is respectively translated into《美国丽人》、《美国有罪》、《美国心玫瑰情》in the mainland, hong kong and taiwan respectively.。