On-English-Film-Title-Translation.doc

On English Film Title Translation- From the perspective of the Theory of Reception Aesthetics Abstract: The present paper sets out to explore the film title translation from English to Chinese with an attempt to introduce appropriate methods and techniques of film title translation. Reception Aesthetics is adopted as the theoretic base of this paper. Film is an art form linked with a film of commercialization. The translated version should have both cultural savor and good commercial appeal. It should not only be faithful to the original, but also cater to the aesthetic taste of the target language audiences and satisfy their psychological needs. Thus, the audience-oriented approach is more acceptable and feasible to the E-C film title translation.Key words: film title translation, Reception Aesthetics, the audience-oriented approach1. Introduction With the process of globalization and the increasing exchange between Chinese and western cultures, there are more and more cultural communications as well as cultural shocks. Film, as a special and important medium in cultural exchange, has begun to attract every nations attention, and plays an important role both as an access to the foreign culture and as a significant way of spreading the native culture. Taking the American films as an example, they have influenced the worldwide peoples life in a broad way, especially the Hollywood films.Just as a book has a book title, the film title is often the first face that a film shows to the audience. However, unlike the title of the books or newspapers, the film title cannot tell the audiences the plot of a film until they buy the tickets and go into the cinema. For this reason, the film title undoubtedly becomes the initial factor that attracts them. Zhao Chunmei (1998) contends that the translated film is a kind of cultural product and to some extent a commodity. Therefore, the translated film title also plays an indispensable part to make sure the success of the film in the target language culture. A well-translated film title is able to attract more audience in order to not only to achieve the artistic value but also to fulfill the box office value. In Chinas 60-some-year history of translation, English film title translation once held a very important position. Many classic English films attract the Chinese audience of different ages and different educational levels. Apart from the attractive plot of film and the significant performance of the actors and actresses, the translated film title also leaves an embodied impression to the Chinese audiences. For example, Waterloo Bridge is translated into 魂断蓝桥. The English film Waterloo Bridge describes a tragic love story between a young army officer and a beautiful ballet actress. In the film, Waterloo Bridge is the place where the two young people meet and also the place where the heroine ends her life. Therefore, Waterloo Bridge is the key information in the film. However, if the English film title is literally translated into 滑铁卢桥，the audiences may not know it is actually a bridge in London nor feel the tragic atmosphere of the film but link it to the Waterloo Battle in the French history. Therefore, the Chinese title not only conforms to the plot of the film but also points out its tragic theme. In this aspect, it can be considered to be elegant. Whats more, “蓝桥” stems from a beautiful ancient legend “蓝桥相会”, bearing colorful cultural characteristics of China, which is much easier to be accepted by Chinese audiences. The present paper will make tentative study on the English film title translation from the perspective of the theory of reception aesthetics. It will begin with the study of the English film titles including the film genres, functions of English film title and its naming approaches. Then Reception Aesthetics will be introduced as the theoretical base of this thesis from the aspect of its influence on translation and English film title translation. Next chapter will analyze the E-C film title translation in detail with the guidance of Reception Aesthetics and offer the appropriate translation strategies. The following chapter is the part of conclusion which summarizes the whole paper with the significance of audience-oriented film title translation and the applicability of Reception Aesthetics to film title translation.2. General introduction of English film titles2.1 Film genresJust as other kinds of literary works, film can be divided into three types, that is, documentary film, science and educational film and feature film. The first two types take the information transmission or popularity of science as their main purpose, which requires they be plain in style and formal in wording, such as One Survivor Remembers, Stories from the Quit and so on. In the other hand, feature films are more vivid and attractive not only in wording but also in style, and they are usually intended to reach wide and varied audience. Limited by space, the present paper will confine the study only to the feature films. According to its function, the feature film is further divided into four types.The first type is the adventure films, which include disaster film, Kungfu film, spy film, gangster film and so on. “The titles are mainly to highlight the soul- stirring film” (He Ying, 2001). For example, Mission Impossible, the Day after Tomorrow and the Silence of the Lambs. The second type is the fantasy films which are more motion pictures presenting an idea or a technology that is not yet, or may never be, scientifically possible. The titles of these films are intended to expose the novel idea of the films and to attract the audiences attention, for example, Star Wars and Jurassic Park. The third type is the comic film. The titles of this kind are imbued with comic flavor, such as the Nutty Professor and Beverly Hills Cop. The last type is the lyric films including musical, love stories, family moral films and war films. These kinds of film titles are quite close to the style of prose, plain in wording yet rich in lyric flavor, for example, Golden Pond, Watch on the Rhine and so on.2.2 Functions of English Film TitleHere the author of the present paper is taking Buhlers functional theory of language as adapted by Jacobson (Newmark: 2001) as the one that is most usefully applied to translating. The English film titles generally bear four principal functions, namely, informative function, expressive function, aesthetic function and vocative function. 2.2.1 Informative FunctionThe core of the informative function is the facts of a topic and reality outside language. It is supposed to give prominence to the plot of film and to give hint to what is going on in the story, thus helps the audience to understand the film more easily.2.2.2 Expressive FunctionThe core of expressive function is the mind of the speaker, the writer, their originator of the utterance. They express their thoughts and feelings irrespective of the response. The language with expressive function is normally self-expressive, creative, figurative and subjective (Newmark 2001:39). The expressive function of film title is to set the feeling tone for the film thus to create either a touching, horrifying or exciting effect on the audience. For example, Legends of the Fall is a tale of love, betrayal and brotherhood with a tragic ending. The title well sets the tone of the film because “autumn” has an associative meaning of sadness and gloom.2.2.3 Aesthetic Function This is language designed to please the senses, firstly through its actual or imagined sound and secondly through its metaphors. The rhythm, balance and contrasts of sentences, clauses and words also play their part. Their sound-effects consist of onomatopoeia, alliteration, assonance, rhyme, meter, intonation, stress (Newmark 2001) Good film title can also perform aesthetic function in the way to provide the audience aesthetic enjoyment through colorful words with musical sound and the application of rhetorical devices. Titles with aesthetic function please the sense of the audiences with their smooth language and charm-embedded image. 2.2.4 Vocative Function “The core of the vocative function of language is the readership, the addressee” (Ibid, 41). Newmark uses “the term vocative in the sense of calling upon the readership to act, think or feel, in fact to react in the way intended by the text” (Ibid). According to these explanations, we can conclude that a good film title can also “call upon” the audience to see the film, or to react in the way intended by the producer- buying tickets to fulfill the great box office value.2.3 Naming approaches of English films In order to have a better understanding of the nature of the film title, it is necessary for us to know about how English films are named. It is also an indispensable presupposition to translate the film titles appropriately and acceptably. Generally speaking, the naming approaches of English films fall into the following four aspects.2.3.1 Hero and Heroine A large proportion of films are named after the main characters in the films. Some films add adjectives describing their characteristics or personality in front of the characters name, and the other use the names of characters directly. Examples like Forest Gump, Mulan, the Lion King, Rain man, etc can well demonstrate this point.2.3.2 Plot Plot of films is another source of the English film titles. These kinds of titles, which are usually brief but meaningful and thought-provoking, provide enough information of the stories to arouse the audiences imagination and longing for watching the movies, such as Deep Impact, Battle of Midway and Death on the Nile.2.3.3 Background Another popular naming approach of English film title is the indication of the background where the main plot takes place. The background consists of several aspects, such as time, place and environment in which the story happens. A host of film titles of this kind could be got, Titanic, Waterloo Bridge and Casablanca.2.3.4 Theme Some films are named in an attempt to provide the audience the information of the main theme of the film. Audiences are supposed to get the gist of the film through the film title. At the same time, desire to know what is really going on in the film will be aroused by such thought-provoking titles. Examples like Brave Heart, As Good as It Gets, Indecent Proposal, etc can illustrate this point well.2.4 Summary In this chapter, the profiles of film title and film including film genre, function and naming approaches are illustrated in detail in order to help us to have a good understanding of the nature of English film title. Also it can provide necessary background information for further film title translation. The next chapter will talk about the theoretical base of the present study.3. Reception Aesthetics and its influence on film title translationAs a newly developed discipline, Reception Aesthetics advocates turning to reading and reception of a literary text, which demands the subjectivity of readers should be centered during the process of literary translation. The present paper will not talk about the various and complex theories of Reception Aesthetics in detail for that would be meaningless. But a brief introduction will be made to illustrate the fundamentals of Reception Aesthetics and its influence upon translation and on English-Chinese film title translation in particular. Based on those illustrations, the author will point out that it is more acceptable and reasonable to adapt the audience-oriented E-C film title translation approach. 3.1 Reception AestheticsReception Aesthetics is commonly used to designate a school in literary criticism in West Germany during the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is developed by professor and students at the University of Constance and Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser are the representatives. Based on phenomenology and hermeneutics, this theory turns to center on reading and reception of literary texts. “Reader-oriented theory” becomes its theoretical core. Having reflected upon the previous literary theories, Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser hold that both the external research of the literary works (author-centered) and the internal research (text-centered) cut the literary work from the readers, thus either is one-sided. Besides, a literary work is not an object that sands by itself but an unfinished literary structure without independent significance as a literary work. Readers reception is the only way to realize the significance of a literary work. Therefore, we can say that a literary work is co-produced by both the author and its readers.3.1.1 Readers role and positionFrom the perspective of reception theory, the historical life of a literary work is unthinkable without the participation of the readers. A text can only to come to life when it is read, and if it is to be examined, it must therefore be studied through the eyes of the readers. The literary work becomes an aesthetic object only when it is read or completed by the readers.What is more, the readers do not accept the text passively, but actively. There always exists a “gap” or “void” in the text, where the reader is called upon to build his own bridge. It is quite impossible for the text itself to fill in the gaps. By leaving open gaps for the reader to fill in, it invites or even demands reader participation. Therefore, the meaning is not contained in the text itself, but rather is generated during the reading process. The reader, by filling the gaps or indeterminacies, completes the literary work and participates in the producing of meaning. This process of filling in the gaps is called concretization.3.1.2 Horizon of expectation and fusion of horizonsHorizon of expectation is one of the core concepts of the reception theory, which is developed from the “pre-understanding” of Heidegger and the “horizon” of Gadamer. It is defined as “our situatedness in the world, our necessarily perspective and limited knowledge, concerns, activity or interest” (Gadamer). It should not be conceived in terms of a fixed or closed standpoint; rather, it is something into which we move and which moves with us. The horizon of expectation plays a very important part in reception theory. The distance between the literary work and the horizon of the reader measures the artistic merit of a given work. “If the expectations are not disappointed, then the text tends to be boring; if on the other hand, it breaks through the horizon, then it will be a work of high art”(Hu Jingzhi, Wang Yuechuan,1994).As to fusion of horizons, Gadamer holds that a fusion takes place between the past experiences that are embodied in the text and the interests of its present-day readers, to discuss the relation between the original reception of a literary text and how it is perceived at different stages in history up until the present. Perhaps the most important is Gadamers concept of understanding as a process of fusing ones present horizon with a past horizon. “Horizon of fusion doesnt mean that people should give up themselves completely, they can set out from themselves, join in the horizon of the text, consequently enlarge and enrich their original horizon continuously, finally form a new holistic consciousness where the past and present, the tradition and nowadays, the text and the self can communicate and complement with one another” (Wang Qinling).3.2 Influence of Reception Aesthetics on translationAs a new voice out of the literary theories, Reception Aesthetics provides a new perspective for the translation studies. Its essence has been rethought and then widely borrowed. The most significant influence of Reception Aesthetics on translation is its turn to the receptors.Traditionally, we laid great emphasis on the original text and author as soon as it comes to translation or translation studies. The original text only belongs to the author and the important part of the readers is neglected for such a long time. As to the translation standard, “Faithfulness” possesses the super position and the greatest power to value the literary translation. It is reception theory that supplies new avenue for translation study. It calls our attention to the transference of our efforts from the text to the reception of the potential readers. The translated text enriches and refreshes the original version, and equally the significance of a literary work cannot be realized without the reading and examination of readers. Therefore, the translators should always take the readers into consideration before beginning translation.In addition, based on the reception theory, translation is a process of translators understanding and explanation. That is, translators firstly act as the readers of original text, then producers of the translated version, thus translators subjectivity is inevitable in the process of translation. 3.3 Influence of Reception Aesthetics on film title translationReception Aesthetics provides us with a new perspective of the relationship between film and its audience. As mentioned above, the significance of an art form cannot be fully realized without the presence of its receptors. The ultimate receptor of a film is the audience. Thus the translator should bear the potential audience in mind when doing translating. The same thing is true of film title translation.As a popular art, film is linked with a film of commercialization. In some sense, a successful film should be the one that can attract people to see the movie and bring great box office value. As mentioned above, the ultimate receptor of film is its audience. A successful translated film title could fulfill its introductory function and contr