功能翻译理论视角下英文电影片名汉译的研究.pdf

山西财经大学 硕士学位论文 功能翻译理论视角下英文电影片名汉译的研究 姓名：王静 申请学位级别：硕士 专业：外国语言学及应用语言学 指导教师：郭乃照 2011-05-31 iii 摘 要 随着中国改革开放和国际间文化交流的深入，影视翻译逐渐成为一个新兴领 域，得到了一些翻译研究者的关注。据有关资料记载: 国内大规模的影视翻译开始于 2 0 世纪 8 0年代的改革开放时期。作为影视翻译研究中的一个重要领域电影片名翻译的 研究，也是近年来刚刚兴起的，国内外研究的专著很少，没有得到太多的重视，而且在 电影片名翻译的领域中还存在着一名多译的混乱的现象， 致使观众看了以后不知所云感 到困惑，也导致了电影市场的混乱局面。一些学者也针对此现象作过讨论，但没有提出 具体的理论来解决此问题。 因此， 作者认为对电影片名翻译作一番研究还是很有必要的。 本文试从功能对等翻译理论来对英文电影片名的汉译进行考察研究与探讨， 并试着 为此问题找到一个解决的方法。由于电影具有艺术性、娱乐性和大众性等特点，其次观 众的社会心理、 审美情感和文化取向以及接受能力因素都直接或间接地影响着译者对电 影片名的翻译，所以英文电影片名汉译应该以中国电影观众的感受为重点，以观众的审 美期待和文化心理为出点，以观众是否理解接受乃至喜欢为主要衡量标准，应该充分考 虑到影响译者择翻译策略的因素。全文共分六章：第一章是引言，提出了本文所要研究 的问题，介绍了研究的背景，研究的目的和研究意义。第二章回顾了电影片名的翻译现 状。本章以美国好莱坞奥斯卡获奖电影作为电影产业的代表，介绍了从译者的角度和美 学接受角度电影片名的翻译的现状，并指出了电影片名汉译的一些问题。第三章是全文 的理论框架部分， 重点介绍了功能对等理论和最贴近自然理论指导下电影片名翻译以及 读者和观众对于电影片名翻译的影响。第四章提出了本文的研究问题、研究方法并说明 了有关数据收集的相关问题； 第五章对英文电影片名汉语译名进行共时和历时的比较分 析，发现电影票房、观众的社会心理、审美情感和文化取向以及译者的品味和审美因素 都直接或间接地影响着电影片名的翻译。第六章对全文进行了总结概括，并指出了其局 限性以及需要进一步研究的方面。 关键词: 电影片名; 功能对等；共时; 历时; 读者; 观众 i abstract with the influence of china s policy of reformation and opening and international cultural exchanges, film translation is becoming a new study field which attracts some translators attention. it is reported that a large scale of film translations in our country can be traced back to 1980s (the reform and open period). film title s translation, as an important field of film translation, is also arisen in recent years so that there are few monographs about it at home and abroad and only several chapters in some monographs have some study on it. thus study on this field is few. this thesis carries on the inspection to study and discuss the english film titles chinese translation from a comprehensive point of view. through the inspection we find that because the films own the characteristics of aesthetic and entertainment and public, so the audience s social psychology, the esthetic emotion and cultural orientation are the factors which all affect the english film titles the translation directly or indirectly. in other words, the translators should pay more attention to chinese audiences feelings, aesthetic expectation and cultural psychology during the translation. whether the audience understand the translated titles and accept them should be the main weight standard and during the translation the translators should consider fully about the factors which will affect the translation methodologies. at last the thesis proposes the problems existing in the translation of english films titles for a long time and provides some methods to solve the problems that there are many translated names for a film exist in the translation. in this age of globalization, in the development of culture, movies play an increasingly critical role as culture media. title is the sign of movie, as well as the first impression on audience. the film will be much less attractive with a inaccurately translated name. the study of english film title translation began in 1990s. great achievements were made in the research of english movie translation, but deficiency still exists. film title translation is still in its initial stage, which means the further study has a great prospect. eugene nidas theory of “functional equivalence“ can serve as the theoretical basis of english film title translation, ii and it provides guidance to the translation. the essence of the theory of “functional equivalence“ is that translator should not rigidly adhere to the language structure or form correspondence, but rather place emphasis on the meaning and spirit of the original. translators should use proper translating skills. because of the divergence between chinese and english language, chinese audience on various levels of english, and lack of understanding of western culture, translators should flexibly handle the differences and conflicts of languages in order to avoid cultural misunderstanding. on the basis of original title, translator can add some cultural information, or emphasize the storys meaning and spirit regardless of the language structure. the structure of the thesis is organized in the following way. chapter one is mainly about introduction, including the background, purposes and significance of the research. chapter two reviews the situation of film title translation and its research so far. taking the hollywood films, most of which were honored oscar, as example, this chapter introduces the film title s translation from the translator and anesthetic s perspective. it also points out the english films chinese translated titles existing problems. chapter three lays the theoretical frame work for the whole thesis. functional equivalence theory and closest natural equivalence theory are being emphasized. the author proposes that the factors of reader and audience could affect film title s translation. chapter four puts forwards the research questions, research methodology as well as the process of data collection of this study. chapter five analyzes english- chinese film title translation from diachronic and synchronic perspectives and finds the characteristics of aesthetic and entertainment and public, so the audience s social psychology, the esthetic emotion and cultural orientation are the factors which all affect the english film titles the translation directly or indirectly. chapter six is the conclusion, giving the summary of the whole thesis and points out the limitations of the present study and the suggestions for the further researches. key words: film title; functional equivalence; diachronic; synchronic; reader; audience 0 山西财经大学 学位论文原创性声明 本人郑重声明：所呈交的学位论文，是本人在导师的指导下，独立进行研究工作所 取得的成果。除文中已经注明引用的内容外，本论文不包含任何其他个人或集体已经发 表或撰写过的作品成果。对本文的研究所做出重要贡献的个人和集体，均已在文中以明 确方式标明。本人完全意识到本申明的法律结果由本人承担。 学位论文作者签名： 日期： 年 月 日 山西财经大学 学位论文版权使用授权书 本学位论文作者完全了解学校有关保管、使用学位论文的规定，同意 学校保留并向国家有关部门或机构送交论文的复印件和电子版，允许论文 被查阅和借阅。本人授权山西财经大学可以将本学位论文的全部或部分内 容编入有关数据库进行检索，可以采用影印、缩印或扫描等复制手段保存 和汇编本学位论文。 本学位论文属于保密，不保密。在 年解密后适用本授权书。 （请在以上方框内打“” ） 学位论文作者签名： 指导教师签名： 日期： 年 月 日 日期： 年 月 chapter one introduction 1 chapter one introduction 1.1 research background the movie, born in the 19th century, is called “ the mechanical and artistic goddess” by people, which is the minion of the science and art. since the movie came out, it is deeply loved by mass audience and has gradually become the main entertainment in people s daily life. the movie could directly reflect all sorts of problems of the time, the history as well as the realistic society; it could enormously affect peoples sense organ and psychology; it could also make the audience understand different people s different life styles, which are in the different regions, under the different cultures and survival conditions and from the different social backgrounds. so the movie plays a very important role of cultural dissemination and medium. along with china developing foreign economy rapidly, more and more english movies entered the chinese market and came into chineses visual field. english films opened a window for chinese audience to understand exterior world. when chinese audience watch english movie, they gradually knew and understood there had been different ideas, different cultural psychology and different national characteristics. to a certain extent the movie has enriched the chinese common people s entertainment life. the audience knew a movie firstly through its title. the film s title, just like movie s brand, summarizes and releases the movie primary coverage. a very attractive and popular translated title will attract the audience to appreciate the movie and can also bring advertisement effect to the movie. otherwise, a film with a bad translated title, no matter how attractive the plot is, it may lose the audiences interest and shatter their expectation. so the author attempts to make a complete analysis of english- - chinese translation of film titles through the perspective of cultranslation, so as to provide a new angle for the future study of movie title translation. whether a translated film title can faithfully express its original content, transmit its culture, have its especial thing to attractive audience to watch, satisfy audiences anticipation psychology and the esthetic emotion and promote culture dissemination, they are all important factors during translating these english film s titles. a study of e- c film title translation from the perspective of functional translation theory 2 therefore, the english film title s translation seems simple, indeed, it is not. most of the introduced foreign movies are american hollywood films winning oscar honor, many of whose chinese titles deeply moved chinese people s heart. so what kind of characteristics do they have and what forms these characters will be this research s important questions. what important role do the nida s functional equivalence translation theory and “ the reader and the audience” factors play? what kind of factors affect english movies titles translation? 1.2 research purposes this research will carry careful inspection and full description on the chinese translated titles, adopting diachronic and synchronic method to analyze them. under the instruction of translation theory, it will summarize the characteristics of these translated films titles through description and explanation. this research will integrate translation theory and practice together, which make people understand the importance and characteristics of the chinese translated films titles. 1.3 research significance first, through the research on the chinese translated films titles, people will comprehensively understand the chinese translated films titles situation in our mainland, hong kong and taiwan area under a diachronic perspective and characteristics in a synchronic perspective. next, because of the movie s artistry, entertainment and integrity and popularity, the translator will directly or indirectly affected by public psychology, aesthetic emotion , cultural orientation, acceptable ability and so on. this thesis will clearly make people know the requests on the translator and what kind of methods will be chosen during translating these titles. chapter two literature review 3 chapter two literature review 2.1 english- - chinese film titles general situation with the influence of china s policy of reformation and opening and international cultural exchanges, movie translation is becoming a new study field which attracts some translators attention. it is reported that a large scale of movie translations in our country can be traced back to 1980s (the reform and open period). film title s translation, as an important field of movie translation, is also arisen in recent years so that there are few monographs about it at home and abroad and only several chapters in some monographs have some study on it. thus study on this field is few. according to the findings from various journals in cnki, there are few articles about film title s translation before 1995. the first article is study on english- - chinese movie titles published in chinese translators journal in 1995 by wu min who pointed that there are three basic translation methods of film title s translation: literal translation, liberal translation and literal with liberal translation. this article is the only published one i can find before 1995. there is also one article in 1996 - - - survey on movie titles of foreign language written by lin qiuyun published in shanghai journal of translators for science and technology. in 1997 there are two articles published: problems and countermeasures of current films in translation by he yuemin and on film title translation by ning zhishou, after that, similar articles appeared on various domestic journals and especially the study of english film title s translation gradually became more and more. therefore, the period of 1990s is the official starter for film title s translation studies in china. although the movie title translation study is one of the emerging studies in recent decades, current articles and papers on his research are still rare. the researches on the film title translation only appear in some individual chapters of some original articles, in spite of that, we cannot deny some results which have been achieved. as culture and translation(1999) by guo jianzhong and contemporary british film appreciation(2000)by wei dongdong and across culture communication translation(2002) by jin huikang and translation dictionary(2004) by fang mengzhi and film introduction(2004) by zhou xing and television dubbed introduction(2005) by ma zhengqi and foreign new movie a study of e- c film title translation from the perspective of functional translation theory 4 translation and research (2006)by gu tiejun and so on. these articles only at a certain degree referred to the film and dubbing film translation problems, but one article cultural context and language translation (bao huinan, 2001) carried detail study and discussion on the film title translation from a practical translation s perspective. among the successively published articles about film title translation in our translation circle, scholars study and discuss the translation of film titles, especially translation of english film titles, from different angles, different levels and different ways. each own his characteristics and each has his focus. 2.1.1 the instruction of national translation standard and foreign translation theory lin qiuyun (1996) held the idea that nobody had proposed the full translation theory about film title translation in western countries and he, according to his collected information on hand, made a conclusion that there were only two ways which were literal translations and modifies translation of movie title translation in foreign countries. bi geng (1999) discussed the principles and methods of the movie title translation in his article and meanwhile he put forward his own opinion “ translation should be in accordance with one s likes” . qian shaochang (2000) thought that during the during the film translation the “expressiveness” was most important of the principle “ faithfulness” , “expressiveness” , and “elegance” for translators. mao xianhui (2001) concluded that generally there were four ways about film title translation: literal translation, liberal translation, literal or liberal translation and transliteration. he ying (2001) proposed the four values in the f ilm title translation and summarized the principal method for the translation of the film title: transliteration, literal translation, liberal translation and free translation. xia ni (2002) explored the translation of english film title and added two specific methods: addition and omission. xu lin (2005), combining the perspective of functional linguistics and cultural translation theory, analyzed the english film titles and introduced the main methods and strategies about english film title translation. chen lingdi (2008) applied the principle of “ faithfulness” , “expressiveness” , and “elegance” to english movie title translation. wang jianjun and fang wenli (2007) discussed the basic principle of movie title translation on the basis of communication translation theory proposed by english translator peter newmark. tian xia (2007) involved the “ gold bach s conjecture” in the translatology chapter two literature review 5 to the movie title translation and explored the strategies of the movie s translated title. jiang hong (2007), based on the skopostheorie theory proposed by katherina reiss, thought that the translators can create the title of the movie in a diversified manner. wang lin (2008) explored the methods of film title translation under the skopostheorie theory which was made by famous germany translated theorists hans j.vermeer and katherina reiss. zhou xinwu (2008) pointed that translation should comply with reality, comply with taste of people and comply with appreciation level on the basis of theory of adaptation. deng long (2008) used relevance theory proposed by english linguistics spether and wilson to discuss english movie title translation. yang yang (2005) takes the movie lolita as an example to analyze the english film title translation and proposed some translated methods. wang shuwen (2005) takes the movie american beauty as an example to propose five translation methods. li dapeng (2008) probed the reason of failure use the principle of faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance from the analysis of american beauty, the whole nine yards, etc. zhang mei (2008) studied what principle the film title translation should follow from the analysis of the heart of prince. 2.1.2 the cultural phenomenon during the translation wen hong (2007) said domestication and alienation are not contradictory but relatively complemented and thus he pointed that the trend is domestication going to incline to alienation. li cheng (2007) from the perspective of restructuring and conversion of the chinese and western cultural image, resolved the film titles translation and pointed out that the translation of film titles was not only the switch of two languages but also the reconstruction and transformation of different cultures, languages and cultural images. zhong keyuan (2007) thought different thinking patterns of eastern and western people led to the flaws in translation and proposed the methods of transliteration and modifing translation. xu jianguo (2008) discussed the application of the theory of domestication and alienation in the film title translation and took the english chinese film titles as examples to explain the two languages cultural differences and try to find the way to bridge them. yu wen (2008) compared the practical application of the domestication theory with alienation theory in the film title translation and he also listed four principles: information, culture, art and a study of e- c film title translatio