Translation of Film Title

The 85^th Oscar Academy Award has just ended, Ang Lee won the best director for ‘Life of Pi,’ beating out Steven Spielberg for ‘Lincoln,’ who had been considered the most formidable competitor in the category.

I guess movie fans won’t miss those nominated films, let alone the Oscar-winning movies. Besides the content, the name of a movie would be one factor that attracts people’s attention. As we know, every foreign movie has a local name in the country or area where it is shown. It would be interesting to see the translated title of the film due to the cultural difference.

Here I’d like to raise some examples of the translated film titles used in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Even mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan are under the same culture background, there are different concepts and purposes of film title translation.

The film title is short in form but rich in meaning. The translation of the film title is a process of re-creation, which should be based on the following rules: (1) Be concise, condensed and compact, which can grip the audience’s attention at their first sight; (2) Film title translation does not mean free translation, it should obey the content and the theme of the film; (3) Obey the local people’s customs and the language style, namely the culture factor.

Above are the main factors in the translation of film title that the translator should bear in mind.

Read Also: Audiovisual translation

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