【正文】 movie title? Simply speaking, its primary function is to identify the film. In other words, a film title is a guide and interpreter of a film, which is firstly able to promote sales of the film and cause people’s interest, viewers’ discussion, researchers’ analysis etc. Therefore, a good title can be regarded as a kind of catalyst for the audience so that they have already had an emotional resonance with the film before the actual appreciation of it. Generally, movie titles have three basic functions: the informative function, the aesthetic function and the mercial function. Informative Function The informative function is the basic function that any movie titles should possess. As the word “informative” reveals, this function provides basic or relevant information to the target reader. The core of informative function is the facts of the topic, the reality outside the language and the idea. As for a film title, it is supposed to give hint to the audience about what is going on in the story, thus help the audience decide whether they are interested in the movie or not. Aesthetic Function This is the language designed to please the senses, firstly through its actual or imagined sound and secondly through its figures of speech. The rhythm, balance and contrasts of sentences, clauses and words also play their part. An excellent movie title can also perform aesthetic function in terms of providing the audience aesthetic enjoyment through colorful words with sound effects and the application of rhetorical devices. Movie titles with aesthetic function please the feelings of audiences through their unevenness in intonation, smoothness in sound and vividness in image presentation. 6 Commercial Function Nowadays, it is very mon that a movie costs hundreds of millions of dollars, especially the hot hit made by Hollywood. The mercial function proposed in this thesis is, to some extent, similar to the vocative function, the core of which is the readership, the addressee. Taking this explanation as reference, it can be concluded that a good movie title can also “call upon” the audience to see the movie, or to react in the way intended by the producerbuying tickets so that great box office will be generated. 7 3 Methods of English Movie Title Translation The title is the head of the movie, and it serves at least three functions, as aforestated, that is the informative function, the aesthetic function and the mercial function. A movie title usually embodies more than one function。 5 Commercial Function 關(guān)鍵詞 ： 英文電影 片名 ； 特點(diǎn)；翻譯方法 II Abstract The movie, a popular art with both artistic and mercial values, is one of the most influential mass media nowadays. With the success of China’s Reform and Opening up Policy and the strengthened economic and cultural munication between China and Englishspeaking countries, recent years we have seen a large flow of English movies into Chinese movie market. English movies are being continuously translated to meet Chinese audience’s growing needs. The translation of movies is not only a simple and direct way to introduce the exotic culture, but also an important channel to transfer our own culture. While the translation of the title of a movie is the top priority in translation movies, therefore, we study the way that the translation of movies deeply, using different ways to translate movies. As the titles of the English movies always carry the special cultural senses, when they translated into the Chinese, many factors should be considered and different methods of translation should be taken accordingly. The paper explores the general analysis of English movie titles, discusses the features and the function of the movie titles, and puts forward the relevant theories and methods, then gives the four translation methods: transliteration, literal translation, free translation and adapted translation. Key words: English movie title。 feature。 2 Fantasy Movies15 Acknowledgments Dance 4 With Wolves《與狼共舞》， using the structure of a verbobject phrase。隨著中國(guó)改革開放的成功，中國(guó)與英語國(guó)家的經(jīng)濟(jì)文化交流日益頻繁。 2 Comedy Movies 3 Linguistic Features while the latter on the reader or critic, who may use the criteria to evaluate translation works. Whenever principles or criteria of translation are under discussion in China, Yan Fu’s “threecharacter guide”, which was first proposed in 1898, would be mentioned, namely, the principle of “信 ，達(dá)，雅 ” (faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance). In the past decades, Mr. Yan’s principle of translation has been generally regarded as a yardstick to measure the professional level of translation and a goal for translators to strive after. However, some scholars maintain the original three characters, and in the meantime add some new concepts to the character “elegance”. Despite the variety of opinions, two criteria are unanimously accepted, namely, the criterion of faithfulness/accuracy and that of smoothness, we may also take these two criteria as the principles of translation in general. A movie title is the foremost window through which the audience may get a rough idea of the content of the movie at first sight. Therefore, how to translate English movie titles successfully into Chinese has bee an exceedingly important issue for the introduction of English movies to China. However,