Abstract
Film is an art form with artistic and commercial features, and it is one of the most influential media until now. With the reform and opening of China and increasing cultural exchange between China and Western country, a growing number of Western movies were introduced to China. Film title, as a "business card" of the film, has played a pivotal role in the translation. Therefore, it is necessary to comply with the language specification for the Chinese translation of English movie title, also the translation should reflect the linguistic features and culture connotation of the original title, moreover , it is significant to take care of the aesthetics features of film titles. Generally speaking, trnaslation should achieve film title’s four functions: informative function, cutural function, aesthetic function and commercial function. The core theory of functionalist theory is skopos theory, and the translation of English film title should obey the three basic rules of skopos theory.

This thesis makes research of the film title translation from the functional perspective, It adopts content analysis and case study as research methods. In the thesis, the author uses the relevant principles of functionalist approach especially the skopos theory and the translation requirements with specific cases to explore the embodiment of English film title translation. Under the three skopos rules, the translation should realize film title’s four functions, and the translator should choose the reasonable translation methods to satidfy the skopos of the title translation. Besides, this thesis will make a comprison of different translated versions among Mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The aim of the comprison is to achieve the best translation method.

The thesis contains five chapters. Chapter One presents the research background、methodology and sources、structure of the thesis. Chapter Two is Literature review. It introduces the history and development of functionalist translation theory and talks about skopos theory. Chapter Three offers more information about English film titles. It contains various titles and four functions. Chapter Four studies the application of functionalist translation theory to the translation of English film titles. It includes two parts. The first part introduces translation strategies. The second part makes a comparison between different translated versions of Mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Key words: functionalist theory, film title translation, skopos theory, translation strategies