A Brief Study of English Movie Title Translation
Contents
I. Introduction
II. Present Situation of English Movie Title
Translation
1. Only a few good renderings
2. Mistranslation
(1)Lacking a comprehensive view of the story
(2)Misunderstanding of cultural information
(3)Influence of commercial profits
3. Different renderings for one and the same title
III. Characteristics of English Movie Titles
1. Brief and concise
2. More descriptive titles than allusive ones
3. Heroes’ or heroines’ names as titles
4. Settings as titles
IV. Principles of English Movie Title Translation
1. Faithfulness
2. Cultural awareness
3. Combination of commercial and aesthetic effects
V. Techniques of English Movie Title Translation
1. Transliteration
2. Literal translation
3. Explicitation
4. Adaptation
5. Providing a new title
VI. Future Development in English Movie Title Translation
I. Introduction
With the increase in cultural exchanges between China and the rest of the world, especially with the Western countries, the movie has gradually stood out as an important media of communication in its own right.
Movie titles are always the first thing that the audience come to know about new movies. Thus a right choice of movie title translation is of great importance to the successful release of a movie. A properly-translated English movie title into the TL can fulfill the following functions:
1. Providing information about the story for the audience by summarizing the main plot, revealing the theme, or offering some clue.
2. Adding attraction to the movie and stimulating the audience’s interest and desire for viewing.
3. Saving trouble for the cinema, the audience, film reviewers and other research workers in their publicity, choice of viewing, comments and studies.
As a branch of non-literary translation, the translation of English movie titles, like many other forms of non-literary translation, has not yet received due attention despite their importance. Peter Newmark has called on the translators to bring their attention to “two underplayed aspects of translation”, one of which is “the approach to non-literary translation.” Nida also called for more attention to exploring new fields in translation. (林本椿,2000:34-36)
This paper, based on an analysis of the present situation of English movie title translation and the characteristics of English movie titles, will introduce principles and techniques of English movie title translation.
II. Present Situation of English Movie Title Translation
Despite the importance of movie titles, translators have not paid enough attention to their translation. The present situation of English movie title translation allows of no optimism.
1. Only a few good renderings
There have been very few good renderings since English movies first landed in China. Whenever we refer to good renderings, it is always the few titles that jump into our mind immediately---Waterloo Bridge魂断蓝桥, The Bathing Beauty出水芙蓉, Sound of Music音乐之声, Legend of the Fall燃情岁月, Madison County Bridge廊桥遗梦, A Walk in the Clouds云中漫步etc.
Among these renderings, many were translated decades ago, such as the first three. In recent years, there are relatively fewer good renderings while there are more crude ones misleading the public.
2. Mistranslation
Mistranslation of movie titles is mainly caused by the following factors:
(1) Lacking a comprehensive view of the story
“A title is best left untranslated until the rest of the assignment is completed.” (Newmark, 2001:148) As for a movie title, it is best left untranslated until the translator watches the movie and fully understands the story. Only with a comprehensive view of the story, can he make a right and the best choice among many possible renderings.
Sample 2-1 The Silence of the Lambs沉默的羔羊
Anyone with a modest knowledge of English will translate it into羔羊的沉默 rather than 沉默的羔羊.And the movie does tell something about the Silence, not the Lambs. But it is ironical that the “wrong” version sounds more appealing than the “right” one, and has enjoyed high popularity since its coming into being.
Sample 2-2 The Cable Guy王牌特派员
On seeing this title, the audience may mistake it as an espionage film. It also has two other renderings线鬼衰人and有线电视狂, both of which may leave an impression of horror films. But actually it is a very touching story about seeking for friendship despite Jim Carrey’s exaggerated act in it. Maybe another rendering, replacing the misleading特派员with安装员,---王牌安装员is better.
Sample 2-3 Bad Company坏蛋公司
The translation sounds not bad, but it is completely irrelevant to the story. It is about a man who has to “play” his twin brother, an agent having died in his unfinished mission. Another rendering 最差搭档or临时特工may be better for the story.
(2) Misunderstanding of cultural information
Culture is “the way of life and its manifestations that are peculiar to a community that uses a particular language as its means of expression.”(Newmark, 2001:94) There is usually cultural information in movie titles. If the translator is not aware of it or misunderstands it, he is likely to mistranslate the title.
Sample 2-4 American Beauty美国美人/美国丽人
The mainland and the HK versions both have made a mistake in taking the literal meaning of Beauty. According to the American Heritage Dictionary (William Morris, 1980:42), “American Beauty” is a type of rose bearing large, long-stemmed purplish-red flowers. And the rose is a profound image in the Oscar winner of the Best Picture in 2001, so the Taiwan version美国心，玫瑰情seems more to the point.
Sample 2-5 First Wives Club大老婆俱乐部
大老婆is not the Chinese equivalent to “first wife”; rather it may offer a wrong indication that there are二老婆，三老婆in America just as in old China where polygamy was popular. Actually Americans have not experienced the period of plural marriage except that some Mormons had practiced it before 1890. In English, “first wife” refers to the first woman a man marries. So原配夫人俱乐部or首任妻子俱乐部may be a better alternative.
(3) Influence of commercial profits
The movie, as a modern commodity, is expected to earn a large box office income. Movie titles are inevitably influenced by this purpose. So there have emerged a good many exciting, passionate, mysterious or thrilling titles. But some of these titles actually reflect nothing of the original or the story.
Sample 2-6 Backtrack赤面煞星
A woman witnesses a murder. She then becomes the next hunted by a killer sent by the murderer. But the killer falls in love with her and finally helps her through the crisis. Does the rendering 赤面煞星, a thrilling title with much commercial flavor, offer the audience anything about such a story?
Sample 2-7 The Shawshank Redemption 刺激1995/月黑高飞/肖申克的救赎
Actually the hero’s escape from Maine’s Shawshank State Prison is not all at刺激, but quite shocking, inspiring and moving, nor does this movie has anything to do with 1995 except that it was released in 1995. 月黑高飞 is a relatively better choice. 肖申克的救赎 is by far the best of all.
Sample 2-8 The Matrix黑客帝国/骇客任务/22世纪杀人网络
In this movie, the real world is not where we live now, but somewhere in the future, while the real world in our eyes is a program designed by people living in the future. So far none of Matrix’ renderings is capable of clarifying the puzzle.
3. Different renderings for one and the same title
Hong Kong, Taiwan and the mainland often have different renderings for one and the same English movie title. Here are some examples:
HK/Taiwan Mainland
Pulp Fiction 黑色通缉令/危险人物 低俗小说
Shakespeare in Love 写我深情/莎翁情史 恋爱中的莎士比亚
English Patient 别问我是谁/英伦情人 英国病人
Pretty Woman 风月俏佳人/麻雀变凤凰 漂亮女人
Moulin Rouge 情陷红磨坊/梦断花都 红磨坊
Original Sin 激情叛侣/枕边陷阱 原罪
Body Guard 护花倾情/终极保镖 保镖
Charlie’s Angels 霹雳娇娃 查理的天使
All the President’s Men 惊天大阴谋 总统班底
Platoon 杀戮战场 野战排
Lolita 一树梨花压海棠 洛丽塔
From the above comparison, we can see that the HK/Taiwan versions are much more fanciful than the mainland ones. They are apt to use inflammatory words that can arouse strong emotion, such as倾情,霹雳,惊天,俏佳人.Apart from an undeniable fact that translation theories and practice of the mainland are more developed than those of HK and Taiwan, another primary reason, which should not be neglected, is that HK and Taiwan, with their special social system, pay more attention to commercial effects, even to the extent of excessiveness, while the mainland is more faithful to the original, taking both commercial and aesthetic effects into account.
A third reason is that HK and Taiwan have their own habitual usage of words, especially some words in their dialects. When these dialects are used, titles sound more attractive to the local audience.
HK/Taiwan Mainland
Space Jam 太空也入樽 空中大扣篮
Multiplicity 丈夫一箩筐 复制丈夫
The Runaway Bride 走佬俏佳人 落跑新娘
Titanic 铁达尼号 泰坦尼克号
Schindler’s List 舒特拉的名单 辛德勒的名单
In addition, the development of mass media and technology, including movie magazines, the Internet etc., together with the rampant piratical VCDs and DVDs, enables these different renderings to spread quite quickly and uncheckedly.
III. Characteristics of English Movie Titles
Movie titles, with the function of providing information about the story for the audience, often summarize the main plot, reveal the theme or offer some clue. And English movie titles, conditioned by some features of English, usually demonstrate the following characteristics:
1. Brief and concise
English movie titles are usually concise and to the point. More than 70％ of them consist of only one or two key words (Pronouns and all the lexical words are included.), such as Man in Black, Minority Report. Short sentences, such as It Happened One Night, Everyone Says I Love You and the like, occasionally appear in movie titles.
Despite the briefness of English movie titles, they are capable of carrying much information and can be remembered easily, because nearly 90％ of them are made up of nouns or noun phrases. Only a marginal part is left to verb phrases like Catch Me If You Can, Kill Bill.
2. More descriptive titles than allusive ones
Peter Newmark divides titles into two categories: descriptive and allusive. Descriptive titles “describe the topic of the text” directly while allusive titles “have some kind of referential or figurative relationship to the topic.” (Newmark, 2001:57) There are more descriptive movie titles than allusive ones. Almost for every six titles, there is only one allusive.
From a descriptive title, the audience can easily get a general idea of a story. Maid in Manhattan曼哈顿女佣,a modern Cinderella-style story, tells of a beautiful mistake and an unexpected romance that have fallen on a hotel maid. Gangs of New York纽约黑帮 narrates a story in the New York City of the middle 19th century about a young man who seeks vengeance against the man who killed his father in a conflict between the powerful Manhattan gangs.
As for an allusive title, the audience cannot tell the main plot of the movie from it, but it necessarily bears some relationship with the story. Take True Lies真实的谎言for example. The original title, an oxymoron, vividly depicts the double life of a CIA agent starred by Arnold Schwarzegger. Another example of this sort is The Hours, which has been rendered into小说人生,时时刻刻and流光碎影. The movie is made up of stories of three women, living in different times, and their stories are strung together by one novel---Mrs. Dalloway.
3. Heroes’ or heroines’ names as titles
In a Chinese movie, usually only heroes or VIPs are privileged to have their names as movie titles. But an English movie does not always go this way. Even if its heroes or heroines are ordinary people, it would have their names as titles---Evelyn, Dr. Dolittle, Stuart Little, Thelma and Louis, and even when its heroes or heroines are negative characters, it will do so as well, such as Hannibal, Frankensten, and Goldfinger.
4. Settings as titles
English movies often choose settings, i.e. where the story occurs, as titles, such as Air Force One, Pearl Harbor, Titanic, Battleship Potemkin, Dogville, Grand Hotel and Barbarshop. By providing a special circumstance for the development of the story, these settings, grand or humble, are usually significant to the theme of the story or have profound meanings for the heroes or heroines.
The movie, Ararat阿拉若山, was released in 2002 and directed by Canada’s Atom Egoyan, the son of an Armenian immigrant family. The Ararat, the highest mountain in Armenia, is a symbol of the noble spirit of the Armenian nation. The director chooses it as his movie title because it was the witness of Armenia’s miserable history during 1915 when more than 1.5 million Armenians were massacred by the Turks, which is still denied by today’s Turkish government.
IV. Principles of English Movie Title Translation
“According to Bűhler, the three main functions of language are the expressive, the informative and the vocative functions.” (Newmark, 2001:39) And the function of movie titles falls into the third. “The core of the vocative function of language is the readership, the addressee.” The term “vocative” is used “in the sense of ‘calling upon’ the readership to act, think or feel, in fact to ‘react’ in the way intended by the text.” (Newmark, 2001:41) In the translation of vocative texts, equivalent effect, i.e. “to produce the same effect (or one as close as possible) on the readership of the translation as was obtained on the readership of the original,” “is not only desirable, it is essential.” (Newmark, 2001:48) In the case of movie titles, they are intended to stimulate the audience’s interest in the movie and the core of them is to draw the audience’s attention. Thus, in the translation of movie titles, in order to achieve an equivalent effect, the translation must keep to the following principles:
1. Faithfulness
As one function of movie titles is to provide information for the audience, the translation of titles should be always faithful to the story of the movie. Here “faithfulness” does not necessarily mean full respect for the original titles. “If the SL title adequately describes the content, and is brief, then leave it.” (Newmark, 2001:P.56) True Lies---真实的谎言---is fine. Otherwise, the translator can discard the original for the sake of faithfulness to the story, such as The Mask---变相怪杰. Of course, it is perfect to be faithful to both. But if it cannot be made at once, faithfulness to the original title then has to give way to faithfulness to the story.
2. Cultural awareness
Due to cultural differences between the SL and the TL, some English movie titles will inevitably contain something peculiar to its own culture. As is analyzed in Part II, some mistranslations are caused by misunderstanding of cultural information in original titles. Therefore, the translator should be aware of such cultural information, fully understand it, and properly translate it into the TL, to the understanding of the target audience.
Sample 2-1 Amadeus莫扎特
Meaning “gift of the God” in Latin, if transliterated into阿玛迪斯,it would leave the audience bewildered “who on earth this guy is.” But if the translator knows that it is the middle name of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, he will render the title as莫扎特 without hesitation, for莫扎特 is much more familiar and famous than阿玛迪斯 in China, though actually they refer to the same person.
Sample 2-2 Top Gun壮志凌云
It would probably be translated into最好的枪, if the translator does not know that it is the code name of American Navy’s prestigious fighter weapons school. 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.
Sample 2-3 Rabbit-Proof Fence漫漫回乡路
What is a rabbit-proof fence and how is it related to the way home? From 1901 to 1907, the Australian government built two long fences to prevent the rabbits from entering the cropland and eating crops. In the movie, our little heroines who are forced to leave home have walked home along the shorter fence.
3. Combination of commercial and aesthetic effects
The translation of movie titles should also take into account both commercial and aesthetic effects. On the one hand, the more attractive the title is, the more audience the movie may have and the more profits it will make. But on the other hand, the title should not go too far to the point of fanciness and vulgarity to call the attention of the audience; instead, it should offer an aesthetic feeling within the understanding of most ordinary people. A well-translated title should be a perfect combination of attractiveness and quaintness, and capable of achieving both commercial and aesthetic effects.
Sample 3-1 Gone with the Wind乱世佳人
The movie is adapted from a book with the same title Gone with the Wind, and the Chinese title of the book is飘. But 飘 is too elegant and abstract for a movie and the one-character title is not so powerful and easy to read aloud in Chinese as the four-character phrase乱世佳人, a most frequently-used pattern in Chinese.
Sample 3-2 Mission: Impossible 碟中谍
It has two other renderings:职业特工队(HK) and不可能完成的任务(Taiwan). But neither leaves a deeper impression on the audience than does碟中谍(Mainland), the three-character title, brief but forceful, full of tension and suspense. The mainland version has been widely praised for its originality and novelty.
V. Techniques of English Movie Title Translation
Techniques of English movie title translation mainly fall into two categories: showing respect for the original title (transliteration, literal translation, explicitation) and discarding the original one (adaptation, providing a new title). No matter what technique is employed, one fundamental and vital principle that should never be forgotten is that the translation must be related to the story in one way or another.
1. Transliteration
As English movies often have their settings, heroes’ or heroines’ names as titles, transliteration, i.e. borrowing the sound of the SL, can be employed when titles are place or personal names, especially when these names are familiar to the target audience---Chicago芝加哥, Casablanca卡萨布兰卡or of historic or cultural importance---Gandhi甘地传, Aladdin阿拉丁.Through transliteration, the sound effects, i.e. the rhythm of the SL, can be preserved, which will entertain the audience with a strong exotic flavor, such as Titanic泰坦尼克, Oliver奥利弗 and Nodding Hill诺丁山.
2. Literal translation
By converting the SL grammatical constructions to their nearest TL equivalents, literal translation can preserve both the content and the form of the original to a maximum. In occasions when a title matches the story of a movie perfectly---Driving Miss Daisy, Saving Private Ryan, Around the World in 80 Days, and if the TL equivalents---为黛茜小姐开车, 拯救大兵瑞恩, 环游世界八十天, not sounding awkward or unnatural, are capable 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 Roman Holiday罗马假日, Gladiator角斗士, Man in Black黑衣人and Dances with Wolves与狼共舞, are applicable to this technique. And so are a small part of allusive ones like Scent of a Woman女人香, Braveheart勇敢的心.
3. Explicitation
To some titles, especially some allusive ones, whose literal translation cannot describe the story neatly and thus 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 polish the titles.
Sample 3-1 Bambi小鹿班比and Shrek怪物史莱克are more lovable than班比and史莱克.小鹿and怪物 bring out the loveliness of the characters.
Sample 3-2 In High Ice冰峰抢险队 and Speed生死时速, both抢险队and生死 highlight the tension of the story.
Sample 3-3 If Seven is rendered simply into七, the audience will surely be bewildered. But if specified as七宗罪 (lust淫欲, vanity骄傲, wrath愤怒, sloth懒惰, envy嫉妒, gluttony暴食and avarice贪婪), the movie will be easily classified as a detective one.
Sample 3-4 Nikita女囚尼基塔 and Scarface疤脸大盗 reveal the identities of our heroine and hero through the added information女囚and大盗. Then the audience will wonder what has happened or will happen to her or him?
Sample 3-5 JFK刺杀肯尼迪 and Ghost人鬼情未了further specify the main plot of the story by explicitating the two titles through 刺杀and 人……情未了.
Sample 3-6 In the translation of Waterworld未来水世界, 未来tells the audience that it is a sci-fi movie, so it is no wonder that the world is full of water.
Sample 3-7 The title, Piano, offers a clue to the story. And either钢琴别恋 or钢琴课 is more vivid and appealing than its literal translation钢琴. The Taiwan version goes even further---钢琴师和她的情人.
4. Adaptation
Adaptation is to change the cultural references. Bearing in mind the principle of cultural awareness, the translator must first understand the cultural information within movie titles, and then exert himself to find proper Chinese equivalents, which can be understood, accepted and appreciated by the Chinese audience easily.
Sample 4-1 Salt of the Earth
The original is an allusion in the Gospel According to Matthew, referring to any person or persons regarded as the finest, noblest. This metaphor could not be well received by the Chinese audience if the title is literally rendered into 地球的盐. Instead, 社会中坚 can be better understood by the Chinese audience.
Sample 4-2 Chickpeas
A group of Beirut immigrants strive to start an undertaking in America. However, under the cultural impact, they are caught in a dilemma, just like the peas squeezed in the pods, not knowing whether to accept the American way of life or not. But this could not be effectively expressed by Chickpeas’ literal translation 鹰嘴豆. The translator has done a good job in discarding the original, and choosing a concept more familiar to the Chinese audience---美国梦, through which the audience can easily understand the theme of the movie.
Sample 4-3 One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
The Taiwan rendering of this title is飞越杜鹃窝, the literal translation of the Cuckoo’s Nest. In fact, in English “cuckoo” is also a slang word, meaning a foolish or crazy person, for cuckoos always lay their eggs in the nests of other birds. And the Cuckoo’s Nest refers to the madhouse. So it is proper to render it into飞越疯人院.
Sample 4-4 2001:A Space Odyssey 2001年漫游太空
Hercules 大力士
The Poseidon Adventure 海神号历险
Most Chinese people know little about the allusions of Odyssey, Hercules, and Poseidon. Here it is necessary to convert them into references---漫游,大力士and海神---that are familiar to the audience.
5. Providing a new title
Language in movie titles is creatively used. Certainly there are titles to which the four techniques above are not applicable. Thus the translator sometimes has to provide a new title for the movie and rely on his own intuition and taste to choose one good translation among all the possible translations. The new title should factually and accurately describe the story.
Sample 5-1 We Were Soldiers
The movie is adapted from the memoir of a veteran who once served in the Vietnam War and suffered much from it. The rendering征战岁月exactly expresses the past tense in the original---Were, reveals the identity of our heroes---Soldiers, and more importantly, appropriately conveys a mixed feeling for that war.
Sample 5-2 Forrest Gump
If it were simply transliterated into富瑞斯特·岗普, surely, a good many audience would not have liked the movie when they first come to know the title. But阿甘正传, a parody inspired by Lu Xun’s阿Q正传, which is rather well-known in China, sounds more appealing and will immediately arouse the audience’s desire to watch the movie.
Sample 5-3 The Professional
The title refers to the hero of the movie, Leon, a killer, very skillful and cool. One of its rendering is杀手莱昂. Appropriate to the identity of our hero as it is, it does not reveal another important side of Leon, which the rendering这个杀手不太冷vividly carries---his tenderness and affection towards our heroine, a little orphan girl.
Sample 5-4 Rain Man
The mainland rendering is雨人, which makes no sense to the Chinese audience, for in Chinese there is no such thing as 雨人. The movie is named so because one of our hero in the movie, the older brother Raymond Babbitt, an autistic, always fails to pronounce his own name Raymond right, but makes a sound of Rain Man. The HK rendering手足情未了is more suitable to the story.
VI. Future Development in English Movie Title Translation
In the future, the translation of English movie titles will be inclined to respect the original title and the source culture for the following reasons:
1. The publicity of movies is released much earlier than they are actually finished. Thus in many cases, the translator, probably without viewing the movie before translating the title, has to come up with a rendering simply from the original English title and a synopsis of the movie. A good way to avoid mistranslation here is to transcribe the English title until the movie is officially released and there is a generally accepted translation.
2. Our society is more open and more tolerant of foreignness. Some words, originated from movies or titles, are so common that they have already entered the Chinese vocabulary, such as兰博(Rambo), 第一滴血(The First Blood)，异形(Alien), 蝙蝠侠(Batman),七年之痒(Seven-year Itch) and第三类接触(Close Encounters of the Third Kind).
3. The overall intellectual standards of the audience have been raised.卡萨布兰卡has replaced北非谍影for a long time as most audience today know that Casablanca is in northern Africa, or rather, the biggest city in Morocco. As there is a great upsurge in learning English across China, now some movie titles with certain English words untranslated are acceptable to the audience, such as Trueman Show---真人Show, X-Men ---X战警 and X-Files---X档案.
The movie will continue to enjoy a high popularity both as an important media of cultural exchanges and as a modern commodity. During the translation of English movie titles, in order to achieve an equivalent effect, the translator should always bear in mind principles of faithfulness, cultural awareness, and combination of commercial and aesthetic effects, and employ techniques appropriate to different titles. Only by doing so, will the titles fulfill their functions.
posted on 2005-04-19 15:59
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