Abstract

The title of a film is its mark of identity, giving the first impression to audiences. Film titles play an important role in promoting films and attracting audiences. With more and more foreign films pouring into China, the problem of how to translate film titles comes into prominence in the context. The translation of film titles is different from literary translation, for film titles usually carry some characteristics of advertisements. They possess more artistic quality. So it is not easy for translators to render film titles appropriately.
This dissertation studies the translation of film titles from the perspective of Reiss’s Text Typology. The dissertation first introduces the theoretical basis of Reiss’s Text Typology and reviews the history of Text Typology. The forth part is the main body of the dissertation, providing a systematical analysis of the naming approaches, functions, language dimensions and translation methods of film titles. The author argues that film titles can be classified into informative texts, operative texts and expressive texts. In translating informative film titles, literal translation is a better choice and free translation is a better candidate for rendering operative film titles. The translation methods of expressive film titles need more study. At last, the author also puts forward some problems which can not be solved by Text Typology in film title translation. These problems also need more study.

KEYWORDS:Text Typology; film titles; translation methods

摘  要

电影片名是一部电影的品牌，好的片名在推介影片、吸引观众、提高票房等方面作用巨大。随着越来越多的外国影片进入中国，对电影片名的翻译工作就显得尤为重要。电影片名翻译不同于普通的文学翻译，具有一定的广告性质，但是又比普通的广告文本更具艺术性，这给电影片名的翻译工作带来了极大的挑战。
本文从莱斯的文本类型理论角度研究了电影片名的翻译策略。本文先简要介绍了莱斯的文本类型理论的理论基础，回顾了文本类型理论的发展历程，为下文电影片名翻译的文本类型研究做好理论铺垫。第四部分为本文的核心部分，即对电影片名的来源，功能，语言特点及翻译策略进行了系统的分析。通过研究，作者认为可以将电影片名分为信息型文本，感染型文本和表情型文本。信息型电影片名翻译多以直译为主，感染型电影片名翻译多以意译为主。最后，作者也提出了一些电影片名翻译中文本类型理论不能解决的问题，这些问题都有待进一步的研究。

关键词:文本类型理论；电影片名；翻译策略