3.1.3 Creative Interpretation    １４
3.2 A Special Case of Communicative Translation---Semantic Translation    １５
3.2.1 Transliteration    １６
3.2.2 Literal Translation    １６
3.2.2.1 Word-for-word Translation    １７
3.2.2.2 Adjustment of Word Order or Structure    １７
Conclusion    １９
References    ２１
On English Movie Title Translation from the Perspective of Communicative Translation Theory
Introduction
Movie has developed to be a popular art and an important culture media in intercultural communication since its existence in late 19th. With the development of science and technology, the movie has been affecting human’s daily life because of its wonderful features. When people talk about a movie, they would pay attention to its title firstly. As one of the most important part in the movie, movie title performs four functions which are informative, expressive, aesthetic and commercial. Due to those functions, the movie title translation must be attractive enough to benefit the box office. Hence the research of movie title translation is of great significance.
Bao Huinan has pointed out that movie title is the brand of a movie in his book Cultural Context and Linguistic Translation(2001, p. 92). He says:“A fine movie title is like the name of literature that must summarize its content, show its theme and arouses the audience’s imagination in a simple and clear way”(2001, p. 92). The translation of movie title should conform with language standard and abound in aesthetic fascination. It should be faithful to original content and embody the original cultural characters at the same time(2001, p. 92). Being the brand of a movie, the movie title translation obviously has an important effect on the spread of the movie and its study.
The journal Movie Literature includes many articles about movie title translation. Wang Tianrun researches the movie title translation under the guidance of Nida’s Functional Equivalence in 2009 and concludes that the literal translation should be employed firstly to achieve the equivalence in content and structure(2009, p. 144). In Technology Trend, Dong Lifang concludes that there is no fixed method of movie title translation and the translator needs to adopt the method by his experience. And also, domestication under functional equivalence is also introduced to illustrate the significance of movie title translation(2008, p. 184—185). In 2012, one of the graduates - Gao Minjuan gives a research on the English film title translation from the perspective of sociosemiotics. She draws the conclusion that in the light of sociosemiotics, the translation gives equal attention to the designative meaning and pragmatic meaning. Sociosemiotic translation method helps the translator reproduce the meanings and functions(2012, p.36—38).
In this thesis, I will illustrate the English movie title translation from the perceptive of Peter Newmark’s communicative translation theory. In Approaches to Translation, Peter Newmark says communicative translation attempted to produce on its reader an effect as close as possible to that obtained on the original(2001, p. 39). Of course, communicative translation theory is of great importance to English movie title translation because both of them have the same focus-- the target language and culture. Based on the communicative translation theory, the movie title translators should pay close attention to the content of the movie and pursue that both language readers know the movie in the same degree.
Three chapters are included in this thesis. The first chapter mainly introduces the information about movies and movie titles such as the genre of movie, the functions and features of movie title, and the importance of movie title translation. The second chapter focuses on explaining the theoretic framework—Peter Newmark’s Communicative Translation Theory including communicative translation, semantic translation and the comparison between them. And then the third chapter will focus on the translations of English movie titles under Newmark’s translation theory and the discussions of many examples to exemplify the significance of communicative translation theory in English movie title translation. Communicative and semantic translation serve better to attract more people and benefit the box office in movie title translation. 从交际翻译理论看英语电影片名翻译(2):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_21770.html