Abstract

Nowadays, watching movies has become one of the most prevalent entertainments. The recent decades have witnessed the rapid development of the film market. And this has ultimately enriched people’s spare time life. In addition to its refined production, the reason why a certain movie can attract so much attention is that it is endowed with a well-chosen and charming title.

The title is the essence of a movie, and an excellent movie title should not only match the theme, attract the audiences’ attention, but also should reach a certain aesthetic standard and agree with market demand. It is already a laborious work to come up with an exquisite and unique movie title, but how to convey the essence of the title to the customers of foreign countries it another tough question. Thus the translation of the movie titles has play plays a most important role.

This thesis aims at exploring the principles in translating the titles of English movies into Chinese so as to find out the Chinese titles which can exactly express the meaning and the soul of original English movie titles. At the same time, the Chinese title should meet the aesthetic standards of Chinese audience in order to arouse audience’s interests about this movie and meet the manufacturing companies’ expectation towards commercial interests. Through putting forward examples which match four different translation principles respectively, I will make some analyses and comparisons to explain in depth the four translation principles: informative value principle, aesthetic principle, cultural value principle and commercial value principle.

Key words: English movie titles, Chinese translation, translation principles, translation methods.