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I. Introduction
As an audiovisual art which is one of the most influential mass media, movie follows and reflects people’s life. It is a product of particular culture. Although movie was born in the west, it is gaining prosperous popularity and has now become a global art. During the past decades since 1978 when China began to conduct its reform and opening-up policy to the outside word, communication between China and the rest of the word, has been becoming increasingly frequent, resulting in the plunging of many foreign movies into China’s movie market. Most of them are from Britain and the US. Foreign movies, particularly movies in English language, have entered the China’s market and held very important position in Chinese people’s recreational life. Needless to say, it is of vital importance to introduce these movies to Chinese audience so as to promote cross-cultural communication between China and the English speaking countries. To do this work better, translation plays a key and indispensable part.
Since very few people can understand original English movies, all the original works have to be translated to reach the vast Chinese audience. Translating foreign audiovisual art work has become a significant activity in promoting cultural exchanges. As more and more foreign movies are introduced into the Chinese market, increasing attention has been paid to movie translation. However, movie translation is far from being explored. It is true to movie title translation in particular.
Therefore, movie translation research, as an important branch of practical translation studies, came into being. The past twenty to thirty years has witnessed great development in the field of movie translation research, including the translation of movie titles. However, it is far from being satisfying because there appeared a lot of problems in this field. One of them which has been long standing is that to one movie title different people advance different translations, and what is worse, sometimes even several versions emerge to compete with each other for prominence, a phenomenon which can be shown by such examples as “Courage Under Fire” which was rendered into “火线下的勇气”or “生死豪情”and “Mission Impossible” which was translated into “难以完成的使”or “碟中碟’this often causes immediate misunderstanding for audience who do not know English or who are English users but do not know the original title in advance, resulting in a negative effect on the movies’ box office, and ,in a deeper sense, on cross-cultural communication. The movie title, like the title to a literary text, delivers the most important information about the movie to the audience. It can grip the attention of the audience at their sight and stimulate their association with the plot, the actors the director and other elements of the movie. It should be concise, condensed and compact. Since movie is a popular art, it has commercial value. A big success in box office means not only wide-spread fame and recognition, but most importantly, huge fortune for the movie maker. The movie title serves as an important promotion means of the movie. It contributes the success of a movie and holds an important position in box office. A good movie title not only attracts eyeballs, but also helps the movie win an everlasting fame. As a branch of non-literary translation, the translation of English movie titles, like many other forms of non-literary translation, has not yet received due attention despite their importance. Some mistranslation will give false information and affect audience to enjoy movies, so using proper translation skills is very necessary.
Hence, this paper will discuss the general characteristics, then set out the translation methods of English movie title skills and translation strategies, then sump up movie title’s translation should be connected with practice, and continually improve in the practice.