Popular Methods of Movie Title Translation

The movie， with its artistic quality and popularity， is called today’s most influential art form. With the industrialization and commercialization of the movie industry， the translation of movies， especially of movie titles will draw more attention. So some proper methods should be used in movie title translation.

1. Literal Translation

Literal translation， word for word translation， keeps most of the original information of a english movie by keeping the version almost same as the original title in vocabulary， meaning and order. With this method， it is necessary to use concise and accurate words and keep a reasonable order， making the sematic accord with the standard modern Chinese style. Literal translation is the most common method in movie title translation. For example， The Mummy Returns to “木乃伊归来”， City of Angles to “天使之城”， Sense and Sensibility to “理智与情感”， Roma Holiday to “罗马假日” and so on. Among those versions of movie titles， there is no missing information in the transition between the two languages， presenting the important information shown by the original movies in the first time.

2. Transliteration

Transliteration， just as its name implies， will change the phonetic form from the original language to the purpose language in the process of language transcription. This method of translation is widely used in the situation that the movie title contains some specific names from history and culture or names of person and places. For example， Harry Potter to “哈利波特”， Jane Eyre to “简爱”， Romeoaned and Juliet to “罗密欧与朱丽叶”.This method can keep the rhythm and exotic features of the original title.

3. Liberal Translation

Due to the differences between English and Chinese， it is sometimes difficult to present the particular inner meaning of the original language by using literal translation， so liberal translation would be a better choice. Commonly， liberal translation is partly or wholly separated from the literal meaning of the original title， and titles a new name. Getting the feeling but dropping the form is the best description of liberal translation. For example， Cheaper by the Dozen means “成打的更便宜”， but was translated to “儿女一箩筐”； Home Alone means “独自在家”， but was translated to “小鬼当家”； The Italian Job means “意大利任务”， but now it is “偷天换日”. Among the translation of examples above， by using the liberal translation， the theme of the movies is clearly expressed and the audiences also can easily get the point.

All the methods above are used in different situations to meet different requirements. You can use them in your translating work.

作者简介：白芳，女，出生年月日：1990.12.05，籍贯：辽宁沈阳、学校学院：沈阳师范大学外国语学院，学位：本科、专业：英语