Abstract

The film, a popular art with both artistic and commercial values, is one of the most influential mass media nowadays. Because of China’s large-scale English film importation in recent years and the significance of titles to films, it is necessary to attach importance to English-Chinese film title translation. An excellent version may contribute a lot to the charm of the film and plays an important part in the introduction of a new film. However, film title translation is an area that is far from being explored.
To sum up, for the purpose of offering some help to the translators of film titles, the author hopes that the ideas presented in this paper can draw more and more attention of the people in the field of film title translation, especially in the guidance of Nida’s functional equivalence
Functional Equivalence, raised by Eugene A. Nida, is defined as “in terms of the degree to which the receptors of the message in the receptor language respond to it in substantially the same manner as the receptors in the source language.” Receptors’ response is focused on. So from this point of view, Functional Equivalence could be viewed as the right principle of film title translation.

Key words: Functional Equivalence Theory; film title translation; reader’s response

摘要

作为一种集艺术性和商业性于一体的艺术形式，电影是最具有影响力的媒体之一，加之当今中国大规模引进外国影片，作为外片翻译不可或缺的一部分，电影片名的英汉翻译工作尤其重要。好的译名可以使电影更具魅力，并在新片介绍过程中起到重要作用。遗憾的是，电影片名的翻译研究工作还是远远不够。
奈达提出的功能对等理论指的是“目的语读者对目的语的反应与原语读者对原语的反应在一定程度上是一样的”，重心在读者的反应上。因此，从这个角度来说，功能对等理论应该是指导片名翻译的最佳理论之一。
作者写这篇论文的目的是为了给电影片名译者提供一定的理论帮助，并希望通过这篇文章使人们提高对片名翻译的重视，尤其是提高对奈达的功能对等理论指导作用的认识。

关键词：功能对等理论 ，片名翻译，读者反应