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摘 要

作为电影的重要组成部分，电影片名的重要性自然不言而喻。然而，电影片名的翻译绝非易事，已有众多学者从不同角度进行研究。但目前，鲜有学者从生态翻译学的视角予以关注。生态翻译学以其独特而实用的视角，逐渐受到人们的关注，并已开始运用小说、诗歌、散文、戏剧等文学领域的研究。本文就拟从生态翻译学的视野出发，以“三维”翻译原则为指导，对英文电影片名的翻译进行尝试性研究。

本文首先简要介绍了生态翻译学，电影片名翻译现状以及电影片名的特征与功能。接着，以生态翻译学的“三维”翻译原则为指导，着重对具体电影片名进行分析与阐述。最后得出结论：译者不仅要考虑到电影自身所承载的文化信息，还要考虑到电影市场的生态环境。希望本研究能够对电影片名的翻译以及生态翻译学的应用做一些微薄贡献。

关键词：生态翻译学；电影片名翻译；“三维” 翻译原则

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 2

2.1 A Brief Review on Eco-translatology 2

2.2 Previous Study on Film Title Translation 3

3. Features and Functions of Film Titles 4

3.1 Features of Film Titles 4

3.2 Functions of Film Titles .5

4. Adaptive Transformation from Three Dimensions 7

4.1 Adaptive Transformation from Linguistic Dimension 8

4.2 Adaptive Transformation from Cultural Dimension 8

4.3 Adaptive Transformation from Communicative Dimension 9

5.Conclusion 10

Works Cited 11

1. Introduction

Nowadays, audio-visual media, with their excellent combination of sound and image, are exerting more and more important influences on our social life, and have become a way of entertainment. As the carriers of certain culture, films can be considered as an effective means of enhancing mutual understanding among different people all over the world. Therefore, great importance should be attached to the study of film translation. Like a label of the product, a film title delivers the most basic information of a film to the viewers. It reflects the soul of a film and encourages the audience to take a guess at the possible plot, theme and tone of the film. So, a proper film title is an indispensable part of outputting a film to non-native language speakers.

It is generally acknowledged that it is not easy to figure out a generally accepted version of film title translation (FTT for an abbreviation) and the process of translation is painstaking and laborious. Although quite a few scholars have explored film title translation from different perspectives, few can offer a systematic principle to guide the translation of the film title. For this reason, there exist many problems in the process of FTT, such as mistranslation, the lack of generally accepted version of the title translation, invalid translation, etc, all of which exert negative influences on the film market. If there do exist some papers or theses concerning FTT, they mainly focus on the traditional perspectives or the strategies and methods of FTT so little research on film title translation has been done from the perspective of eco- translatology.

With the improvement of the living standard, more and more people pay special attention to the green household, ecological tourism and ecological food and well-balanced ecological environment. People are trying to turn their cultural concerns to broader living environment. In the academic field, environmentalism has gone beyond the boundary of science, geography and social science into the field of humanity, that is to say, ecology is interwoven with many other disciplines like linguistics, politics, natural science, ethics, etc.. The thesis will try to adopt some perspectives of Eco-translatology to analyze film title translation, in hope of offering some practical improvements and a new prospective for FTT.

The whole thesis is composed of five parts, aiming for the purpose of probing into the FTT from the perspective of the Eco-translatology. Besides the first part,——the introduction here, Part Two presents literature review and Part Three focuses on the features and functions of film titles, which categories the basic knowledge of FTT. Part Four is the core of the paper, which analyzes the adaptive translation from three dimensions. And the last part is the conclusion part which helps readers refresh their memories and review the essentials in the thesis.

2. Literature Review

2.1 A Brief Review on Eco-translatology

Eco-translatology is the reflection of transformation of social civilization in the field of Translation studies. Since the 1960s, the human society gradually transformed from industrial civilization to ecological civilization. In 1962, Rachel Carson called on people to stop the destruction of environment. In Silent Spring, she indicates that people are at the turning point of the survival and development with awful facts and alarming statistics. The famous manifesto of human environment, issued by the United Nations in a conference about environment in 1972, made it a priority to protect the natural environment. Following the global trend, the Chinese government made a basic sustainable policy and put forward the scientific outlook on development which has increased the awareness of protecting environment to cater to the ancient Chinese philosophical thoughts: “harmony between man and nature” (天人合一), “the doctrine of the mean” (中庸之道) and “people oriented” (以人为本) characterized with basic Chinese philosophy which emphasize the harmony among all kinds of creatures in the world. All these ancient treasures contain the ecological wisdom which is the foundation of eco-translatology. When these thoughts apply to the translation studies, it asks translators to follow the rules of ecology in translation and make good use of strategies and skills and to bring their creativity into full play. All the ancient wisdoms are functioned as an important pivot for domestic scholars like Professor Hu Gengshen, who is the main founder of eco-translatology.

21st century witnesses a rising interest in news translation studies in China, one of which is the Eco-translatology. The theory is based on the basis of Darwin’s evolution theory and introduced into China by the Chinese scholar Hu Gengshen at the beginning of the century. It focuses on the macroscopic and holistic research of translation, which offers a novel angle for the translation study. Translation ecology was first proposed by the director of School of Humanities Michael Cronin from Dublin City University in the book Translation and Globalization. Hu holds that translation is a process of unending adaptation and selection in which the translator plays a central role so as to meet various needs, either of source elements(mainly the source text and the writer) or of the target elements (the target culture, reader, translator himself/herself and publishing house, etc). This theory is similar to the Adaptation Theory that proposed by the Swiss linguist Jef Verschueren. Eco-translatology is explained as “an ecological approach to translation study or translation studies from an ecological perspective.”(Hu Gengshen, 2008: 11)

Hence, Eco-translatology is a relatively new and systematic translation theory in recent years. It is an interdisciplinary study that deals with Ecology as well as Translatology. It applies the research finds in ecology into the translation studies which set up a bridge between natural science and social science. Thus, this thesis tries to conduct some tentative research of FTT under the guidance of the “three-dimensional principle” of the Eco-translatology.

2.2 Previous Study on Film Title Translation

It is universally acknowledged that the first film came out in 1895. Since then, it has become one of the most vibrant media for outputting and transmitting different cultures. With the development of technology and the frequent exchange and communication between countries, people nowadays have more access to foreign films. As films are important carriers of cultural heritage, their titles served as the eye-catching “name cards”. When exposed to various kinds of films, people are always overwhelmed by choices. In that situation, a decent film title is extremely crucial. However, there are few systematic principles to guide the film title translation, which results in many problems in the film title translation (FTT for an abbreviation), such as mistranslation, the lack of generally accepted version of the title translation, invalid translation, etc.. This phenomenon has attracted great interest and attention from many scholars and experts. They are dedicated to looking for the better way for FTT. Nevertheless, few essays are written concerning the translation of films, let alone film titles; if there exist some, they mainly focus on the translation strategies and methods from such traditional perspectives as Functionalism, Skopos theory, Reception Aesthetics Contextual Adaption, as well as Semiotics.

From the overview above all, it is obvious that few linguistic scholars in both home and abroad have conducted researches from the eco-translatological perspective, which has begun to be applied in literature translation. Consequently, in the thesis, the perspectives of eco-translatology will be applied into the research of FTT from three dimensions. However, to conduct the research well, we first need to know the features and functions of film titles.

3. Features and Functions of Film Titles

3.1 Features of Film Titles

Firstly, brevity in linguistic form is a distinct feature of the film title. To attract the target audience at their first sight，an eye-catching English film titles should be in a simple and concise structure, yet rich in meaning. From the linguistic perspective, the director and producer from western countries prefer to name its title by characters of the films, by the name of the place, by the plot or by the theme. The exemplifications are as follows: Forrest Gump 《阿甘正传》, using the name of the leading actor; Pearl Harbor 《卡萨布兰卡》, using the place where the story takes place; Saving Private Ryan《拯救大兵瑞恩》, using the summarization of the whole plots. Thus, film titles are often composed of either two or four words, using nouns, noun phrases, preposition phrases, etc..For examples, Psycho, Alien, Warrior, The Graduate, Fight Club, The King’s Speech, Up, In to the Wild, From Dusk Till Dawn and Before Midnight are of this kind.

Secondly, as for culture features, we know films are mainly adapted from the realities in people’s daily life and they both record and reflect ordinary people’s real life. Based on the fact that different people have different educational attachments, living style, thinking patterns and religious belief, it is not always easy for people to comprehend the theme or even the plot of the films. Moreover, most films contain some culture images which can reflect certain cultural value orientation and the view of the world. So we should take the cultural elements into consideration when translating some films. People who are unfamiliar western culture and history will have difficulty in understanding these films like Cleopatra, King Arthur, Original Sin, Robin Hood, Se7en, Troy and The Scarlet Letter. While the non-native speakers will be puzzled at the Chinese film titles like 《刮痧》, 《推手》, 《墨攻》, 《叶问》, 《东邪西毒》 and 《大话西游》.

Thirdly, the film, as a form of artistic work, has its own aesthetic features which can provide moviegoers with aesthetic pleasure and enjoyment via their delicate combination of images and sounds. The director and producer are apt to use rhetorical devices like alliteration, contrast, irony, metaphor, oxymoron, parody, personification, repetition, rhyme and so on. The employment of these rhetorical devices aims at giving birth to a kind of imagination, creating a funny or shocking atmosphere, showing the beauty of the language and finally achieving aesthetic values. Some English film titles are good cases in point of these devices, such as Freaky Friday (alliteration), One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest (metaphor), Back to the Future (oxymoron), Women in trouble (parody), The Grapes of Wrath (personification), Tora Tora Tora (repetition) and Toy Story (rhyme). Besides, numerous Chinese versions of film titles well demonstrate the charm of the Chinese characters, for instance, All about Eve 《彗星美人》, The Great Waltz 《翠堤春晓》, Legends of the Fall 《燃情岁月》, Flipped 《怦然心动》and Before Sunset 《爱在日落黄昏时》.

3.2 Functions of Film Titles

As the basic function of prime importance, the informative function of movie title is reflected by helping the audience to know about some background and relevant information about the movie. That is to say, the informative function can highlight the content or plots of the film so that the audiences can have a better understanding of the film. According to Newmark (2001 a：40), the core of the informative function of language is external situation, the facts of a topic, reality outside language, including reported ideas or theories. That is to say, film titles should convey the essential message to make people have an overall comprehension of the films. Some film titles indicates the main characters of the film, such as Annie Hall, Forrest Gump, Mr. Smith amp; Mrs. Smith, Mary and Max and Shirk; Some describe the place where the story takes place, for examples, Elizabethtown, Notting Hill, Silent Hill, Jurassic Park, Pearl Harbor and Shutter Island; Still others tell the main plot of the film, for instance, How to Train Your Dragon, Saving Private Ryan, The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants and We Bought a Zoo. In other words, the informative function of the film title can help audience choose what they are going to watch confirming to their individual preference and aesthetic tastes.

Aesthetic function is also an indispensible part of an artistic product a film title possesses. In the book titled A Textbook of Translation, Newmark (1988) claims that language is supposed to delight the senses, firstly through its real or imagined sound, and secondly via the metaphors. Good versions of film titles perform the beauty of phonology and artistic conception. Therefore, the target audiences are expected to obtain aesthetic pleasure from the film title equipped with some rhetorical devices such as metaphor, alliteration, personification, oxymoron, contrast, repetition, allusion, and achieve the pleasant entertainment and aesthetic joy. Three typical examples can illustrate this function are The Notebook, Random Harvest and Walk in the Cloud. Both three films are romantic films narrating touching love stories. In terms of creating the romantic atmosphere, 《恋恋笔记本》, 《鸳梦重温》 and 《漫步云端》 are better versions than 《笔记本》, 《意外收获》 and 《在云中走》. Likewise, horror films like Final Destination, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Ruins and House of Wax had better be translated as 《死神来了》, 《猛鬼街》, 《恶魔的废墟》 and 《恐怖蜡像馆》 instead of 《终点》, 《榆树街噩梦》, 《废墟》 and 《蜡像馆》.

Besides, with the increasingly fierce competitiveness in the film market both at home and abroad, whether a film can achieve success or not is judged by the box office to some extent. As commercialization becomes the inborn function of the film, remarkable films should not only be well-received by the public and film critics but also do well in box office. Upon the release of a film, the chief concern of the director and the producer, naturally, comes to the box office receipts. Given the huge amount of capital investment, a successful film title can guarantees the profit to the producer and distributor. Let’s take a look at the following film titles:

The Sliver Linings Playbook－《乌云背后的幸福线》 VS．《派特的幸福剧本》

Before Midnight－《爱在午夜降临前》 VS．《在午夜之前》

It happened one night－《一夜风流》 VS. 《发生在一个夜晚》

The Bridge of Madison County－《廊桥遗梦》 VS. 《麦迪逊之桥》

Anatomy of a Murder－《桃色血案》 VS. 《一个凶案的解析》

Léon/The Professional－《这个杀手不太冷》 VS. 《杀手里昂》

The Mummy－《盗墓迷城》 VS. 《木乃伊》

Thelma and Louise－《末路狂花》 VS. 《塞尔玛和露易丝》

In the above examples, it is obvious that each former version of the film title plays a better role in calling upon the audience because they well cater to the interest and psychological need of the viewers. For those who are keen on romantic films, they will be easily attracted by the former version of the films The Sliver Linings Playbook, Before Midnight, It happened one night and Waterloo Bridge. Also, the former version of the last four thrillers listed above will definitely appear to the audiences who are the fans of horror films.

According to the features and functions of film titles, in the following part, we’ll try to explore how to represent or translate the film titles in the guidance of eco-translatology, especially from three dimensions, namely linguistic dimension, cultural dimension and communicative dimension respectively.

4. Adaptive Transformation from Three Dimensions

In the view of the Eco-translatology, the process of translation includes two stages, one is the stage of translator’s adaptation, and the other is the stage of translator’s selection (Hu Gengshen, 2004: 121-127). Translation is the “cyclical alternations of the translator’s adaptation and selection” (Hu Gengshen, 2008: 1). According to the theory, translation is the translators’ selection activity to adapt to the translational Eco-environment. However, Eco-environment is really an intricate combination of various elements, so it’s not easy for the translator to adjust to all the elements. Thus, some proper translation principles are needed to guide the translation activity. As Professor Hu Gengshen puts it, the translator only needs to adapt to some important elements for the sake of convenience and efficiency, which is called multi-dimensional selective adaptation in Eco-translatology (Hu Gengshen, 2004: 15). In that sense, a translation text can be evaluated in accordance with this standard clarified as “degree of holistic adaptation and selection” (Hu Gengshen, 2004: 144).

According to Eco-translatology, the translation can be described as “three-dimensional adaptive transformation”, that is the transformation from the linguistic dimension, cultural dimension and the communicative dimension (Hu Gengshen, 2004: 22). In order to think out an accepted version of the title translation, translators should take into account the target language culture, target language habit and the appreciation level of audience.

4.1 Adaptive Transformation from Linguistic Dimension

Adaptive transformation from linguistic dimension emphasizes “the translator’s adaptive transformation of the linguistic forms in the translation process” (Hu Gengshen, 2009: 2). Language expressions differ greatly due to the different cultural background, thinking mode, language habits or even religious beliefs. That is to say, translators should unleash their ingenuity, select the appropriate language structure and transform the linguistic form when rendering film titles. As is known to us all, transliteration and literal translation are frequently used in the process of translating, but the abuse of these two methods will lead to ambiguity, confusion or ever misunderstanding. A successful film title shall convey the basic information of the film like characters, places, main plots, themes and so on, which allows audience to have a general idea of the film. However, the abuse of these two methods will lend to ambiguity, confusion or ever misunderstanding. For instance, people may feel puzzled at some version of film titles which are translated literally: Rio 《里约》, Dracula 《德古拉》, Ghost 《鬼》, Up 《向上》 and If Only 《如果》. To conform to the beauty of the language and make viewers a better understanding of the films, the above film titles should be translated as 《里约大冒险》, 《惊情四百年》, 《人鬼情未了》, 《飞屋环游记》 and 《爱再来一次》. Through linguistic supplement or rephrasing of the films titles, the films can better be adapted in the target language, for they can attract the audience from the linguistic dimension.

4.2 Adaptive Transformation from Cultural Dimension

Adaptive transformation from cultural dimension requires the translator to take account of the transmission and explanation of two languages’ cultural connotation during the translation process (Hu Gengshen, 2009: 2). As carriers of culture, films inevitably contain certain culture, customs, national traditions or even ideologies. It is difficult for people who are unfamiliar with foreign culture to figure out the connotative meaning of the film title. Thus, the various versions of film titles do not make sense all the time. Only when translators take account of the language customs and people’s cultural acceptance ability, can the translated title be completely accepted and understood by the audience, and thus box office can be guaranteed. Here is a specific and interesting exemplification. Chinese and Westerners sometimes use different words to indentify the similar things due to the different cultural background. Chinese identify the corpse that rises at night to drink the blood of the living as “僵尸” while Westerns “吸血鬼”. So the Chinese film 《僵尸先生》 which tells the story of the horrible corpses is translated as Mr. Vampire. Other excellent examples are as follows: Batman 《蝙蝠侠》, Waterloo Bridge 《魂断蓝桥》, Se7en 《七宗罪》, Forrest Gump 《阿甘正传》, My Fair Lady 《窈窕淑女》, The Fugitive 《亡命天涯》, Lolita 《一树梨花压海棠》and A Chinese Odyssey: Pandora’s Box 《大话西游之月光宝盒》. In the above title translation, connotative elements are well integrated so that the audience can better understand from cultural dimension.

4.3 Adaptive Transformation from Communicative Dimension

Adaptive transformation from communicative dimension refers to “the translator’s adaptive transformation of communicative intention of two languages in the translation process” (Hu Gengshen, 2009: 3). The film, is one of the prevailing forms of recreation in modern society that caters to different appreciation level and aesthetic taste of different people. They are not only artistic works but also commodities, so film titles concerning the communicative function will contribute to the film’s everlasting reputation.

On one hand, the audience should be kept informed of the main plot and theme of the film. For example, translators translate Inception into 《盗梦空间》 instead of 《奠基》 so that the audience can roughly figure out that the type of the film is a science fiction and the possible content of the film is concerned about dreamland.

On the other hand, an eye-catching translated title can inspire the audiences’ watching desire. For example, 《惊变28天》 for 28 Days Later, 《死神来了》 for Final Destination,《一吻定江山》 for Never Been Kissed and the like which can convey more information to the audience from communicative dimension.

5.Conclusion

Nowadays, it is widely accepted that films have become the most important medium for cross-cultural communication. As a form of artistic works, films have played an increasingly important role in introducing and inheriting different cultures. Thus, an eye-catching title is needed.

In this thesis, a tentative study has been made on the translation of film titles from an eco-translatological perspective approach under the guidance of the “three-dimensional principles”, trying to offer a suggestion in film title translation that translators should take into consideration linguistic dimension, cultural dimension and communicative dimension. Thus, the films can be better adapted in the target language environment and attract more audience. However, as a tentative study, this thesis also has many limitations and deficiencies. Firstly, the theory of eco-translatology is a relatively new theory with few mature study results. It can not solve all the problems appearing in the process of FTT. Secondly, this thesis is lacking of quantitative and qualitative analyses owing to the author’s limited research ability. Thirdly, only a few film titles are listed and analyzed in this thesis, which are far from enough due to the fact that more and more films are springing up both at home and abroad. Hopefully, through the research, the thesis is expected to make a little contribution to the work of film translation.

Works Cited

[1] Hu Gengshen. Understanding Eco-translatology. Paper presented at International

Conference on Translating Cultures. August 11-14 2006 Beijing.

[2] Hu Gengshen. “Translation as Adaptation and Selection.” Perspectives: Studies in

Translatology, 2003 (4): 283-291.

[3] Cronin, Michael. Translation and Globalization. New York: Routledge, 2003.

[4] Cronin, Michael. Translation Goes to the Movie. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2011.

[5] Newmark, Peter. A Textbook of Translation. London: Prentice-Hall, 1988.

[6] Newmark, Peter. Approaches to Translation. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2001.

[7] 蔡东东. 《当代英美电影鉴赏》. 北京：外文出版社, 2000.

[8] 胡庚申. 《生态翻译学解读》. 中国翻译, 2008 (6)：11-15.

[9] 胡庚申. 《翻泽适应选择论》. 武汉: 湖北教育出版社, 2004.

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