Abstract

Due to the astonishing speed of development of China’s movie market, the cultural exchange between China and western countries becomes increasingly frequent, with more and more foreign movies flooding into China. There’s no denying that the diversity of movie can satisfy people’s spiritual demands for the most part, while at the same time, the quality of movie title translation declines to some degree, thus leads to the appearance of many problems which need to be addressed in no time.
This study aims at exploring movie title translation from the perspective of Yan Fu’s criteria. Firstly, this paper reviewed the development and main content of Yan Fu’s criteria, as well as an overview of previous studies on it. Then it described the development of China’s movie market, and states the existing problems in the current movie title translation. Thus, under the guidance of “faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance”, it detailed conditions of the application of each translation principle through analyzing the past accomplishments our Chinese scholars have made in translating movie titles.
To be specific, the principle of “faithfulness” is a necessity in translation; when the application of “faithfulness” can be ensured and can not express the movie content well, we can take advantage of the principle of “expressiveness” to better express the information of the original; and when the other two principles are applied, a movie title translation can be perfected under the guidance of “elegance”.
Through discussing the conditions of the application of Yan Fu’s criteria, this paper can offer scholars some guidance to follow when handling some translation problems so as to improve the quality of their work. Therefore, it would be conducive to prevent such kind of money-oriented practices and other problems in today’s movie market and make a contribution to regulating the translation of foreign movie titles in China’s film market.

Key words:  movie title, translation, Yan Fu’s criteria

摘要   

由于中国电影市场的飞速发展，中国与西方国家的文化交流越来越频繁，致使越来越多的外国电影涌入中国市场。不可否认，电影的多元化能极大地满足中国人民的精神需求，但同时，这也导致了在一定程度上电影名翻译质量的下降，引起了许多亟待解决的问题。
本文旨在从严复的翻译标准来研究电影名的汉译。本文首先回顾了“信达雅”的发展历程及主要内容，同时综述了学者早前对其的研究和评价。接着本文描述了现代中国电影市场的发展及电影名汉译中仍存在的问题。最后，在“信达雅”的翻译标准的指导下，通过分析中国学者在西方电影名的汉译工作中取得的成就，本文详细说明每一翻译标准的适用条件。
具体来说，“信”的标准在所有翻译里是必须要遵循的；当“信”这一标准已经被应用于电影名翻译，但出来的效果并不能很好地表现电影内容时，我们可以运用“达”来更好地传递原作的信息；而当一个电影名能兼具“信”和“达”时，我们可以运用“雅”来完善它。
通过探讨严复翻译标准的适用条件，本文能在处理翻译问题上给予翻译学者以一定的指导，从而有效改善其译作的质量。因此有益于遏制当今电影市场上存在的拜金行为及其他问题，为英文电影名的汉译在中国电影市场上的规范化做出一定贡献。

关键词：电影名，翻译，严复的翻译标准