英语电影译名本地化中的文化因素研究A study of culture in localization for English movie title translation

论文总字数：34495字

摘 要

随着全球化进程的加速发展，人们的生活质量也日益提升，随之而来的是对精神和物质文明的强烈诉求。作为人文历史地理集一体的文化载体，电影文化应运成为了人们日常生活中不可或缺的一部分。在大量的外国影片流入中国市场的同时，如何使影片吸引消费者，获得商业利润成为了令人思考的问题，如何使用电影译名也成为了首要大事。而如今，翻译界对影视翻译的重视程度远不及文学翻译。目前，国内有关电影片名翻译的研究数量尽管不少，但在研究角度和研究对象仍有局限。

本研究将通过对文化在电影片名翻译中的影响，立足于归化异化理论，结合功能翻译策略，阐述文化在电影片名翻译中的作用和用法。

通过分析英语电影片名翻译的定位，使人们了解到翻译时加入文化因素的意义。同时，比较两岸三地对相同英语电影片名的不同译法，说明翻译过程中文化因素的具体表现，并分析各自的优劣。

希望通过本研究引起翻译工作者和学习者对电影片名翻译的重视，在结合文化因素的基础上，做出正确的翻译选择。

关键词：英语电影片名翻译，文化，商业价值

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements i

English Abstract ii

Chinese Abstract iii

Table of Contents iv

Chapter One Introduction 1

1.1 Background of the Study……………………………………………………...1

1.2 Significance of the Study……………………………………………………..1

1.3 Layout of the Thesis…………………………………………………………..2

Chapter Two Literature Review 3

2.1 Functionalist approach to translation 3

2.1.1 Summary of German Functionalist Approach to translation 3

2.1.2 Introduction to Nord's Function plus Loyalty 4

2.2 Domestication and Foreignization Strategy 5

Chapter Three Research Contents 7

3.1 The position of English movie title translation 7

3.2 Case to analyze culture element in English movie title translation 7

3.2.1 Culture adaption in the process of English movie title translation 8

3.2.2 The analysis of English movie title translation among Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong 8

Chapter Four Conclusion 14

4.1 Summary 14

4.2 Limitations and Suggestion for Further Study 14

References 15

Chapter One Introduction

• 1. Background of the Study

Since the first movie appeared in France, a hot wave—watching movie has been created around the world for people see it as a way to know historical period, different culture and splendid scenery on earth.

As the reform and opening up policy implement in China, we have more chances to communicate with English-speaking countries. A large number of English films have swarmed into Chinese market. For the sake of enabling the audience to understand what the film is talking about and be attracted by the film, a good movie title becomes especially important. English movie title translation is the translating of language and culture and it delivers the most useful information about the film to the audience. How to make the movie title be eye-catching, ear-pleasing and curiosity-stimulating becomes a problem to be solved. And as a publicity, the most urgent requirement is how to bring commercial value and earn money. With the analyzing of culture element in localization translation, the thesis aims to find a balance in English movie title translation and give some idea to translating better in movie title.

1.2 Significance of the Study

As China develops faster than ever in recent year, people have more access to knowing the world. Shown in cinema or on internet, foreign language movie, especially English movie came into thousands of households. English movies helps domestic audience accept fresh things abroad. Western cultures spread through movies. And some of them turn into a new multicultural form. How to make people choose a movie they like from massive movies? That will underlie the help of movie title. For most people, the title is what they care the most when they choose a movie. Therefore, making a good translation of movie title takes the first-concern. This thesis intends to draw readers’ attention to cultural effect on movie title translation, and to make the comparison among different translated versions in Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. So we can find insufficient part of translation and put forward suggestions. As a result, encouraging more people to devote to the course of movie titles, thus foreign movies could get more fondness from Chinese audience.

• 1. Layout of the Thesis

This thesis will be divided into four parts:

The first chapter is the introduction. It is about the background of the study, the significance of the study and the layout of the thesis.

The second chapter is the literature review. It can be divided into two sections. The first section is about theoretical rationale, including the German Functionalist Approach Translation and Nord’s Function plus Royalty. The second section is about the usage of Domestication and Foreignization strategy.

The third chapter, firstly, it analyzes the position of English movie title translation. Secondly, it offers some cases to analyze culture element in English movie title translation, including culture adaption in the process of English movie title translation and the analysis of English movie title translation among the Mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

The last chapter is the conclusions based on the current research and discussions. Finally, some suggestions and limitations of the study will be mentioned.

Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 Functionalist Approach to Translation

2.1.1 Summary of the German Functionalist Approach to Translation

So far, there have been many scholars discussing about the German functionalist approach to translation, Zhang Meifang, Wang Yan are two of the representatives.

Zhang Meifang (2005)pointed out that the well-known representatives of the German Functionalist School are Katharina Reiss, Hans J. Vermeer, Justa Holz-Mänttäri and Christiane Nord. The first three translators are the first genereation of the German Functionalist School. And Nord is the second generation, whose theory is based on the development of the theories of the first generation.

What’s more, Zhang Meifang concluded the theories of the first generation of the German Functionalist School. Reiss, an experienced translator and translation tutor, proposed the text typology. She categorized texts into two kinds: Textypen and Textsorten. In Reiss’s opinion, any types of translation can be reasonably explained in certain circumstances. Literal translation works in the study of contrastive linguistics. Grammar translation works in the study of foreign languages. Translation of special expressions in different languages is very useful in academic research. Therefore, it can be concluded that the analysis of text type helps translator to select appropriate translation strategies. Vermeer, who put forward Skopostheorie regarded translation as an activity of transformation. Since one action results from one certain purpose or aim and results in one result which can be a new situation or event or thing, Vermeer thought that translation has its own purpose (or skopos) too. The key point deciding translation process is the skopos of the translational action. He seldom mentioned the source language in his theory because he thought that the only function of the source language is to provide some of the information for the target readers. Justa Holz-Mänttäri put forward the Theory of Translation Action. According to her theory, translation is defined as a designed and complicated action to achieve certain purposes. The final aim of translation action is to transmit information despite of the language and cultural barriers, which come from the information transmitters cultivated by specialists.

Wang Yan (2011) considered Katharina Reiss as the pioneer of the functional translation. And he mentioned three rules in Skopostheorie by Vermeer: skopos rule, coherence rule and fidelity rule. Of all, skopos rule comes first, which means that the translated texts achieve the purpose of communication. Coherence rule requires the translation texts to be fluent and easily understood by target readers. Finally, fidelity rule lays emphasis on consistency in different languages. Besides, Wang Yan mentioned that the Theory of Translation Action by Justa Holz-Mänttäri emphasizes the translational action, the participants of the action including initiators, translators, target text users and information receivers, and the environmental conditions including time, location and medium.

2.1.2 Introduction to Nord’s Function Plus Loyalty

Zhang Meifang (2005) said that Christiane Nord’s contributions to translatology are of great importance, especially the Function Plus Loyalty. Different from Holz-Mänttäri, Nord did not regard free rewriting as one of the translation practices, so she directly proposed that there was no translation without the source texts. The translator should be responsible for the source texts and the linguistic environment, as well as the information senders and the target readers, which was defined by Nord as loyalty. Nord’s Functionalist Approach to Translation is dependent on two pillars, function and loyalty. Function refers to the elements which help the translated texts understood by the target readers. While loyalty refers to the relationships among the translators, authors, target readers and the initiators. The rule of royalty limits the scope of the functionality of the source texts, but encourages translators and translation initiators to communicate and discuss more about the translation practice and process with each other. The crux of the rule of royalty is that the translator must help initiators, target readers and authors to communicate to find a consensus when the three parties have conflicts in interests.

Tang Li (2013) concluded the key points of analyzing the texts in the model for translation-oriented text analysis by Nord. She divided the points into two kinds: extratextual factors and intratextual factors. The extratextual factors include the information senders, the intentions of the senders, receivers, medium, communication location, time and textual functions. The intratextual factors include the theme, contexts, premise, vocabulary, sentence patterns and so on.

2.2 Domestication and Foreignization Strategy

Ruan Hongmei (2006) said that as the great visual impact of the movie titles on the audience will increase its artistic value as well as business value, and thus transmit culture.

In 1813, Friedrich Schleiermacher in his book On Different Methods of Translation put forward two different methods of translation targeted in source contexts with cultural connotations. The first method is to get readers closer to the authors, and the second is to get authors closer to the readers. In 1995, American translation theorist Lawrence Venuti (2001) defined the first translation method as domesticating method and the second one as forieignizing method. According to Shuttleworth and Cowie (1997), domestication requires the translator to adopt translation strategies to make target readers feel familiar to the translated contexts to the largest degree. It is intended to create a language environment that is similar to the language environment of the target readers to achieve cultural equivalence. On the contrary, foreignization requires the translator to keep the cultural differences between the source language and target language. That is to say, the mainstream values in the target language are not welcome. If necessary, some transformations can be applied in the translation to make the translated contexts foreign to the target readers. So Li Shengai (2010) concluded that domestication means that the translator adopts expressions familiar to target readers, while foreignization means that the translator keeps the original expressions that are unfamiliar to target readers.

Xu Min (2015) put that not every audience knows about the foreign culture results in the barriers for them to understand the movie well. Hence, to avoid such barriers and to make audience clear about the movie at a glance, translation methods based on domestication should be applied. However, to meet the audience’s demand of seeking new and special and to arouse their interest, foreignization helps a lot in translation of movie titles.

Cultural mentality influences the selection of translation strategies too. Zeng Zhen (2013) pointed out four cultural elements influencing the translator’s choice of domestication and foreignization. First, the differences in ways of expression, combining words, making sentences and grammar have a particular effect on the choice of translation strategies. For example, in Chinese, authors are accustomed to using flowery language and modifiers to strengthen tones for emphasis. However, repetitions of meaning in English should be avoided. Therefore, it is recommended that the translator uses domestication and delete unnecessary modifiers. Secondly, values of different cultures differ from each other. The westerners advocate freedom and individuality, while the Chinese uphold collectivism. Thirdly, Chinese and the westerners have disparate customs and habits resulting from cultural accumulation of long history, which makes some of the cultural information difficult or impossible to be translated to another language. Fourthly, as one of the significant components of culture, religious belief should be paid more attention to during the process of translation. The application of foreignization helps maintain the original culture of source language. Finally, Zeng Zhen proposed that domestication and foreignization should become complementary rather than mutually exclusive. When choosing the translation strategies, the translator is responsible to find a balance between domestication and foreignization and keep the original flavor of source language while guaranteeing the translated contexts popular and easy for people to understand.

Chapter Three Research Contents

3.1 The Position of English Movie Title Translation

Different from traditional text translation, English movie title translation does not regard loyalty as its first principle. The function of movie title is to advertise the movie product itself. Translators need adapt to the market. How to give the audience a good service serves as the core concerned in English movie translation. Based on this, translators will have better understanding to create their work.

3.2 Case to Analyze Culture Elements in English Movie Title Translation

3.2.1 Culture adaption in the process of English movie title translation

Consistent selecting and adapting to culture makes well translated movie titles. The adaptions to culture differences in thinking patterns, language expressions, cultural customs and religious belief are of vital importance.

Firstly, Chinese traditional thinking pattern is based on the idea of “oneness of man and nature”, while Westerners pay more attention to personality and individualism. It can also be concluded from the Chinese movies like “天地英雄”(Hero), “天下无贼”(No thief) and foreign movies like “Lolita”, “Ghost”. So, it is recommended that the translator should adopt free translation. For example, the movie Ghost is translated to “人鬼情未了” in Chinese. The movie mainly tells a story of a couple separated by death. If the movie title is translated literally into “幽灵”, the audience might feel horrified and be left an impression that it might be a horror film. Apparently, the title “人鬼情未了” implies the story directly to the audience.

Secondly, language expressions differs due to different values. In the west, people think that “Every man is created equal.” In China, people have moral principles and have to respect the elder. Take the movie Meet the Parents for example, instead of translating it into “去见父母”, the translator paraphrased it into “拜见”, “岳父” and “大人” are typical expressions with Chinese characteristics, attracting more Chinese audience with traditional values.

Thirdly, each country or nationality has its own particular customs. In China, there are many expressions consisting of “龙”, “凤”, “虎”. Chinese parents often say four-character expressions like “望子成龙”, “望女成凤” to expect much from their sons and daughters. However, in westerners’ eyes, dragons indicating holy and dignity in China is the representative of evil and cruelty. The movie Sabrina is about a girl named Sabrina falling in love with two men and finally get married with one of them. So the translated title “龙凤配” sounds vivid and interesting to Chinese audience.

Finally, religious belief has an effect on the choice of translation strategies too. Western culture mainly derives from the Christianity, so many dramas, paintings and movies have much to do with the Bible. When translating movies concerned with Christianity, the translator has to keep the original religious information and make proper adaptions for Chinese audience. For example, The Sixth Day is a movie about cloning. In the Bible, God creates human beings in his own image. It is easy for western audience to understand what this movie is going to talk about because they are quite familiar with the stories in the Bible. When introduced to China, the movie is translated into “克隆帝国”, arousing Chinese audiences interest easily.

3.2.2 Analysis of English movie title translation among Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong

Mainland China

From various translations on market we can obviously see that English movie title translation in Chinese mainland pay much attention on loyalty. And the tendency of translation is neutral as it involved little violent element or exaggerative effect. The reason is that people have been offered education about traditional culture since their childhood. As a result, the English movie translation in Chinese mainland shows more respect on cultural difference. In addition, the strict attitude of mainland translator is another reason that reflects the style of movie title translation in Chinese mainland. Therefore, translators are in favor of using Foreignization as their guiding method of translation. In a way, this method indeed does some help in creating classical English movie title translation, such as “Sound of Music”-音乐之声 and “Rome holiday”-罗马假日. This kind of movie titles shows the beauty of translation and the respect in culture difference. However, excessive Foreignization sometimes makes jokes. Translators give the movie “Ghost” a Chinese name-幽灵, which in Hong Kong translated into-人鬼情未了. The version of translation in Chinese mainland takes less consideration about the content of movie, and turns a romantic story, which describes a man falling in love with a ghost woman, into a scared one. Such as the movie “speed”, when it came onto the Chinese screen, the translation is “速度”, which in Taiwan the version changes into “生死时速”. Easily can we judge the good or bad of these two versions for “生死时速”tells the audience all the detail they what to know in it. Apparently, the version of Chinese mainland is loyal to original text. However, neither can it appeal to audience’s taste, nor can it have good response. Likewise, the Best Picture of Academy Award in 1997-“Jerry Maguire”. In Chinese mainland version, it still a name “杰里·马圭尔”, and no one could understand what the movie is talking about. If you are one of the audience, you will absolutely not choose this movie for it arouse little interest in your mind. The translators in Chinese mainland get used to using transliteration to translate the movie title directly. That seems loyal, but cannot reflect the true movie content.

This phenomenon is caused by two aspects. Firstly, it is because the traditional translation regards movie title translation as a kind of textual translation which ignores the important purpose of movie title-publicity. In Nord function plus loyalty theory, she pointed that translation is a kind of human behavior and each behavior has its own purpose. That the term “Skopos” means-the method of translation depends on the result needed. As an English movie title translation, cultural element needs be considered for attracting audience. The movie title is even more than an understanding of a movie itself. It has the purpose of arousing audience attention and making people have interest in it. Then it makes the audience has motivate to buy the tickets and walk into the cinema.

In recent decade, translators in Chinese mainland make great progress for paying more attention on multicultural effect. Through their deeper understanding on Domestication and Foreignization model and on the commercial market, translators translated much better movie title which is loved by audience. For example, Huaxia Film Company asks the public for naming the movie “The Devil Wears Prada”, though some audience judge that this movie title translation “穿普拉达的女王” in Chinese mainland is not as good as the version in Hong Kong and Taiwan-“穿Prada的恶魔” or “时尚女魔头”. It still considered to be a very successful movie title translation for suiting audience’s taste. On the one hand, China does not have the habit of using E-E translation. On the other hand, in traditional Chinese culture, the devil is inauspicious. That why Chinese people will take little use of words related in translation. Each place has its own culture, if people are concerned about it, they could create better translation.

Hong Kong

When translators in Hong Kong do their work in English movie title translation, they have their unique characteristics. In general, there are three typical characteristics. Firstly, their translation contains lots of dialect. Only people in particular region can understand the exact meaning. Such as the movie “The Princess Diaries” which in Hong Kong version is “走俏老公主”. The movie “Pay It Forward” is translated into “辣扩爱的人”. Secondly, the Great Britain established a colony in Hong Kong for a hundred years. As a result, the British culture gives a new nutrition on Hong Kong land. The translators are familiar with English as their second language. So when they create movie title translation, they can take E-E translation into consideration and never be afraid that people cannot understand. For example, the movie “The Other Sister”-“爱情DIY” and the movie “Zootopia” was translated into “动物metropolis”. Thirdly, as the foreign culture spreads around Hong Kong, it seems that their translations focus more on commercial purpose. They create English movie title translation in an emotional way by using attractive verb and adjective. Like the movie “Bullets Over Broadway” whose translation is “子弹横飞百老汇” in Hong Kong and in Chinese mainland named “百老汇上空的子弹”. The adding verb flying makes the whole title full of association. And the movie “Nixon” becomes “惊世谎言” in Hong Kong version while “尼克松” in Chinese mainland. The movie “Emma” shows up as “艾玛姑娘要出嫁” in Hong Kong while becomes “艾玛” in Chinese mainland. The advantage of this kind of translation is that it shows the content of a movie in a vivid way and arouse audience interest.

The movie “The Italian Job”, for instance, named “偷天换日” in Hong Kong. If the translators use the literal meaning-“意大利行动”, the audience cannot get any information from the title and feel boring. On the contrary “偷天换日” not only depicts the brief outline of the movie, but shows the type of movie as well. And it illustrates the cheating element in this movie. Audiences can easily know that it’s a movie of crime type. In addition, “偷天换日” is an idiom in Chinese culture which will get familiar with people born in China. However, sometimes this kind of movie titles adapt to audience taste. However, the translators in Hong Kong show excessive attention on using the Domestication strategy as the guiding method, this makes the English movie title translation in Hong Kong, to some degree, has no relationship with the meaning of the original title. For example, the American movie “a night to remember” in Hong Kong version is translated into “勾魂摄魂”, which totally turned an action movie into a terrified one. So this problem remains to be concerned when translating a movie title. The different culture of Chinese mainland and Hong Kong forms different version of translation in movie title. Therefore, this “Made in Hong Kong” characteristics have a tight relationship with its environment and culture.

Since the First Opium War in 1895, the UK has controlled this place for half decade. That is why eastern and western culture generate and formed in a unique Hong Kong style of culture. With open mind, People in Hong Kong take more inclusiveness for alien culture element. Any kind of culture that contained national characters can be accepted in Hong Kong. And the city will assimilate them as its own character through years. The mark of culture in Hong Kong is its dialect-Cantonese. Including lots of vocabulary and usage from other dialects such as Mandarin, Cantonese becomes a kind of culture more than a dialect itself. This phenomenon shows in the same way in music. Singers in Hong Kong, as usual, will release their album in both Mandarin and Cantonese. This culture effect has turned into a life style and affects their ways of thinking.

The culture of Hong Kong underlies the economic development for it grows up under a commence environment. What people pursue is the economic efficiency. As a developed region, it is required to offer post-modern culture. A culture which can let people feel relaxed after the high efficiency work and face-paced life. Therefore, the movie title translation in Hong Kong seems disjoints from the reality. Though it may be judged as superficial creation, it gives a great shoot for audience’s need.

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