[Abstract] Film titles always give audience a general impression about the genre of a movie, and so, are believed to be one of the most influential factors affecting the box office, that is why production houses always take film titling serious. Nowadays, the quality of film title translation is considered more significant as more movies are released internationally under the effect of globalization .So how to translate the film titles and how to make the translation attractive to the audience so as to improve its box office become a question that the translators should consider during translation. Base on the above ideas, the passage aims at discussing some basic principles of the translation of the movies titles and some features of it.

[Key Words] Film title; attract; principle; feature 

Contents

1.    Introduction…………………………………………………………………………….2

2.    The principles of the translation of movie titles…………………………………2

2.1   Informative value principle……………………………………………………………2

2.2   culture value principle…………………………………………………………………3

3.   The features of the translation of the film titles…………………………………..4

3.1   The translation should be loyal to the theme of the movie………………………...5

3.2   The translation should be artistic …………………………………………………….5

3.3   The translation should be brief and easy to understand…………………………...5

3.4   The translation should take the culture difference into consideration…………...6

3.5   The translation sometime should be creative………………………………………...7

4.   Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………….7

致谢语………………………………………………………………………………………………..8

引用文献……………………………………………………………………………………………..8

中文摘要……………………………………………………………………. ……………………….9

1. Introduction

Movie is a kind of art that can be shared by various people whose hobbies and social status are different. A good movie that attracts thousands of audience involves many reasons: the acting techniques of the actors and the actress, the wonderful dialogues in the movie, the spectaculars and grant pictures of the movies. Besides, the splendid and memorable title also plays a vital part in the success of the movie. As the vital part, the titles usually aim to show the theme and the general ideas of the movie.

2. The principles of the translation of movie titles

A good title often functions as a good adventure for the movie and it always requires a wide range of knowledge and deep thinking of the people who produces the titles though it seems to be a collection of several words. So a good translation of English movies titles can always catch the heart of the Chinese movie fans and numerous English learners. As a result, some basic translation principles should be followed during the translation of cross-culture and cross-language of the movie titles.

2.1 Informative value principle

The translation of the movie title is not just to find some equivalent words and put them into use. It should be loyal to the relevant information of the movie itself, that is, the style of the title translation should be connected with the content of the movie. Meanwhile, the cultural difference and acceptability of the translation should be taken into consideration as well so that the information and the aesthetics of the movie can be shown to the audience. Mr. Nida, the American translation theorist thought: “Language is a particular mark system, and the most important part of language system is semantics for it shows the function of language.” (1963:164) Whereas, Mr. Newmark, the British translation theorist thought that language contains six functions, they are: “expressive function, informative function, vocative function, aesthetic function, phatic function, metalingual function, among these functions, the former four are major ones.” (1988:101)As a proper noun, the movie title is able to summarize the theme and the main idea of the movie as well as to stimulate the reader to watch the movie. So the title mainly has informative function, vocative functions and aesthetics function.