【正文】 eal millions of people, not only because of the performers’ skillful acting and beautiful pictures but also the meaningful title. Movie, one of the most important mass media, is an audiovisual art. It creates images, narrates stories, expresses feelings, states philosophy and attracts the audience by its sound, color and moving pictures. Movie is more direct and sensitive than any other forms of art to keep pace with times. Ever since the adoption of the policy of reform and opening up to the outside world at the end of the 1970s, cultural exchanges have bee increasingly prevalent and the receptors of dubbed movies have greatly expanded. Meanwhile, people begin to investigate the movies from various angles and parison between movies of different countries also starts to prosper. However, being a special and significant part of movies, movie titles are far from being explored and there is a relative paucity of writings on movie title translation. Purpose of the research The audience are the readers of movies. Being a medium facing the public, translation should find a foothold in the audience, applying the most acceptable and understandable languages. Movie title translation is an important and creative job. Wonderful translation would make a good movie still better. However, in practice, there are many problems, such as market disorder, excessive translations for one film, and low quality of translations. Up till now, there isn’t any set of perfect principles for the movie title translation while there are a lot of theories for other aspects of translation. What’s more, skills of movie title translation are also monotonous. This paper puts forward further new skills based on the basic translation theories, with the final purpose of plugging the gaps of those problems. Movie title translation is not only important but also creative. A classic translation needs translator’s wisdom and wide knowledge, and also certain translation principles and skills. This paper summarizes the specific translation principles and skills of movie titles. 2 Principle of movie title translation In China, both translators and translation theorists have been abiding by the triplet theory of translation: faithfulness, expressiveness, and elegance. Nevertheless, with the policies of reform and opening to the outside world, a series of translation theories have been introduced from foreign countries, among which are “dynamic equivalence”, “functional equivalence”, “message theory”, as well as “reader’s response” advocated by Eugene Nida, father of translation theory in the contemporary United States of America. The aforementioned theories have, on the one hand, enriched the translation theories in China and served as effective guide to the movie title translation. American translation theorist Nida used to figure out the concept of functional equivalence in his book From One Language to Another. He thought that all the translation should be based on the closest equivalence of the message in the source language. There is no exception for the movie title translation. In movie title translation it means good title translation could not only translate the real meaning of title, but also reflect the theme of the movie, leave the audience an imaginary space, and fulfill the munication of culture. “Translation means municating, and this process depends on what is received by persons hearing or reading a translation.”(Nida, 2001:116) Movie title translation aims to fulfill functional equivalence between Chinese and English movie titles, and use the closest equivalence of the message in the source language. Generally speaking, movie title translation should follow the following principles: Finding out the content of movie and grasping the thesis and backgroundThis principle is the key to achieving the basic translation functioninformative function. The movie titles could reflect the content of movie, municate the theme information and establish the fundamental tone of emotion. When doing the translation, firstly, we should get some idea of the derivation of this title and the content, background and theme of the movie. Otherwise, the translation might be totally different form the subject of the movie. For example:Someone translates the Third Man into 第三者 which makes people confused. Audience may misunderstand it as a marital ethical movie. However, “the third man” in fact means the third eyewitness in the traffic accident. To fit for the content of this movie, it should be translated into 第三個人. Another example is movie the Day After Tomorrow. Some people used to translate it into 后天. “The day after tomorrow” is just the literal meaning of this title. However, from the movie advertisement of “the day after tomorrow, where we will be” we could get some tips, “the day after tomorrow” is not just a pronoun of time. The important point is that after that what will happen and where we will be. Therefore, we’d better get down into the movie first before translating the title. The movie tells a story about the disaster of climatic anomaly。 in a day the temperature of the earth suddenly drops rapidly as a result of greenhouse effect, then the earth gets into ice age. The movie brings us a feeling of depression that we will have nowhere to live the day after tomorrow. The translation of 后天couldn’t let audience imagine such disaster. Therefore, the translation 末日浩劫 would be more suitable. The examples above show the principle of finding out the content of movie and grasping the thesis and background. If the translator has no idea of the movie before translating the title, he may mistranslate it into words with a totally different meaning. Transforming language and cultureLanguage and culture are closely related to each other. Translation will certainly involve transformations of the two languages and their munications. Thus, how to deal with the linguistic form, customs and culture of