Luận văn thạc sĩ VNU ULIS assessing the translations of english movie titles released in CGV cineplex from 2011 to 2014 m a thesis linguistics 60 22 02 01

Statement of the problem and the rationale of the study

The French artist and novelist, Baker (2004, p.40) believes that “Movie is so important that it has become the first arts of human world” In Vietnam, despite being a fledgling industry, motion pictures have been rapidly developed and widely loved by Vietnamese people, young and old alike According to Trinh (cited in Megastar Hé Lộ Doanh Số, 2012), in Vietnam, film industry “has maintained significant growth” in the past few years and “the box office revenue of Megastar alone rises from $13.8 million in 2009 to $47.8 million in 2012” In 2012, Hollywood‟s films occupied up to “80% of the movies screened in Megastar Cineplex alone” (Thị Trường Điện Ảnh, 2012) As a result, movie translation, apart from book translation or news translation, has become a dominant aspect of translation in the country

Aware of this trend, quite a lot of dedicated Vietnamese researchers have conducted studies on movie translation “A Study on Film Translation” by Van

(1999) and “A Study on the Translation of Filmscripts in English to Vietnamese” by Thanh (2001) are some examples, to name but a few The studies cover many facets of movie translation such as translating film scripts, translating idioms in movies

However, translating movie titles are not addressed in these researches despite its importance Meanwhile, as Prendergast (n.d.) states, one of the factors that can help movie-makers “market” their product” and “plays a critical role” in the success of a movie is its title This viewpoint is shared by many other researchers and translators such as Patterson (2008), May (2010), etc As a good title can “arouse the readers‟ interest to see a movie”, the translation of film title is of importance” (Mei, 2010)

Then, as an initial attempt to discover the translation of movie titles in Vietnam, Duong (2006) conducted a study on “Translation of English Movie Titles into Vietnamese” Furthermore, Minh (2014) did a research to investigate the principles in translating movie titles from English into Vietnamese These researches have helped to reveal many aspects related to movie title translation like functions and features of movie titles, strategies and principles in translating titles However, translation quality assessment, which is one of the main concerns of translation theorists, members of translation revision boards Benhaddou, 1991), has not been investigated yet Meanwhile, the quality of film title translation is considered more significant as more movies are “released internationally” under the “effect of globalization” (Translation of Film Titles, n.d.)

Quite a lot of controversies have emerged over the quality of translated titles in the countries where Hollywood‟s movies are distributed Hawley (2008) remarks that the translation of movie titles can “lead to the loss” of cultural and aesthetic features of the original titles Besides, Andersen (2010) states that translation

“causes misunderstandings in relation to the movie and its audience.” In addition, Kelan and Wei (2006) also points out the existing problems in translating English movie titles, including “the messy and low-quality” and “alienation and assimilation” Back to the situation of movie translation in Vietnam, translating movie titles has perplexed not only translators but also many others including film critics, moviegoers, etc Thus, in his article discussing inadequacies of translating movie titles from English into Vietnamese, Kha (2012) describes this issue as a

“war” Meanwhile, Ruelle (2010) also lists out several problems including the lack of feeling and original meaning faced by many Vietnamese translators when translating movie titles from Vietnamese into English and vice versa

Nevertheless, what can be regarded as a good translated title is still open to question It is said that “reframing a linguistic expression or a cultural phenomenon” that may be foreign to “non-American ears” is often “inevitable” (Heller, 2014) In addition, those who criticize translations of movie titles appear to base themselves on their own feeling and knowledge Without a solid theoretical framework, it is very likely that those criticisms are biased and cannot be justified Therefore, it will be useful and essential to use an appropriate theoretical framework to assess the quality of the translation of movie titles that have been released in Vietnam so far in order to provide audience with an acceptable explanation on why a translated title should be appropriate or not and to help rectify the situation

Besides, titles have three main functions including “informative function”,

“aesthetic function” and “vocative function” (Newmark, 1988, p.40) Therefore, how to translate the film titles properly and how to make the translation attractive to the audience become questions that the translators should consider during translation For that reason, it will be useful and essential to figure out techniques that can be applied in translating movie titles from English into Vietnamese in order to ease the task

Moreover, according to Hong (2010), regarding the “quality and quantity of movies shown in Vietnam”, CGV Cineplex “has advantage over other cinemas” In the annual report from HSC (2011), CGV is also regarded as the “leading company in theatre business” in Vietnam As a result, it will be a wise choice to utilize film title resources and translators from CGV Cineplex as the samples in order to fulfill the aims and objectives of the research This will probably confirm the validity and assure the reliability of the paper

All the reasons above have inspired the researcher to conduct a study on

“ Assessing the translations of English movie titles released in CGV Cineplex from

Aims and objectives of the study

First of all, the research paper aims to assess the quality of translated titles of movies distributed by CGV Cineplex from 2011 to 2014 To conduct the assessment, the researcher adapted a translation criticism framework suggested by Newmark (1988)

Then, it is expected to find out the strategies or techniques which were employed to translate good film titles in CGV Cineplex from 2011 to 2014 This would be done by interviewing the translators who produced good translations Via this, it is expected that helpful implications can be made about techniques that can be employed to produce good translations

To achieve these objectives, the research was undertaken to answer the following questions:

1 To what extent do the translated titles meet the standard as proposed in Newmark‟s translation quality assessment framework?

2 What techniques can be used in translating movie titles as suggested by translators?

Significance of the study

The paper will be fairly useful for people who have to translate or assess translated movie titles and researchers who happen to have an interest in the topic

First and foremost, the study is expected to be beneficial for those who assess film titles According to Tran (2012), before being released in Vietnam, one translated title has to undergo certain testing phases involving the assessment of local distribution manager and the original studio If the translated title is approved by the original studio, it will be released; otherwise, it will be sent back to the local distributor for edition Therefore, film distributors may adopt the same framework that was employed in this research to assess translated titles before sending them to original studios in order to avoid rejection and time-consuming edition process, which may ultimately help to save a great deal of time and energy

Secondly, the study may be helpful for translators who have to translate movie titles When being aware of criteria in the framework that can be used to assess the quality of translated title, translators might avoid making mistakes as well as justify themselves when being criticized by the public Besides, reading the paper, they may also find some practical techniques that were employed by other experienced translators to produce good translations Then, in specific context, they may apply the most appropriate one to make the best translation as possible

Last but not least, the study is also expected to serve as a preliminary for further investigation on the issue The study has no ambition of forming any universal laws or generalizations Rather, it is meant to provide an in-depth understanding on the complexities of the issue in order to help establish the foundation for future further investigation on the quality assessment of movie titles in particular, on the quality assessment of all kinds of title in general.

Scope of the study

First, although “ Assessing the translation of English movie titles released in

CGV Cineplex from 2011 to 2014 ” has been set as the title of the whole study, the samples of the study will be confined to titles of three most dominant movie genres including action, animated and comedy movies that were released by CGV Cineplex from 2011 to 2014 There were several reasons for this Firstly, except for the three above-mentioned genres, movies distributed by CGV Cineplex could be classified into many other genres including horror, romance, drama, war, music, thriller, crime movies, etc and the number of movies in each genre was less than 10 In addition, translation quality assessment itself is a very complicated issue which requires a lot of time and effort Consequently, in the limited time frame, the researcher chose to focus on assessing the translated titles of three most dominant movie genres including action, animation and comedy to ensure the quality of the paper

Besides, only translators working for CGV Cineplex and having experience of translating movie titles from 2011 to 2014 were selected to participate in the study The cases were deliberately chosen so that they could provide highly in-depth information of their situations, which would be helpful in understanding the complexities of the studied issue.

Methods of the study

In order to gather data to seek answers to the research questions, the researcher decided to use qualitative approach with two phases In phase one, English titles and their translations of movies released in CGV Cineplex was assessed based on the criteria of the translation quality assessment framework proposed by Newmark (1988) Then, the translators who produced successful titles as found out in phase one would be interviewed in phase two to spot the strategies and techniques they used to make good translations Collected data was analyzed and synthesized to answer each research question Because this was rather complicated, the detailed methodology of this research would be presented thoroughly in Chapter 2, Part 2 of this paper.

Organization of the paper

The research paper includes three main parts as follows:

Part A: Introduction presents problem and the rationale, the aims and objectives, the scope, and the significance of the whole paper Most importantly, the research questions are identified to serve as a guideline for the whole research

Part B: Development includes three chapters Chapter 1 (Theoretical Background) aims to establish the theoretical background for the research paper In this chapter, the definition of translation, the theory of translation strategies, translation quality assessment framework and an overview on movie titles are provided Chapter 2 (Research Methodology) describes the samples and participants, the instruments as well as the procedures which were employed to collect and analyze data Chapter 3 (Results and Discussion) answered the research questions with data presentation, data analysis and the comparison among the findings themselves

Part C: Conclusions summarizes the main issues discussed in the paper, the limitations of the research, several recommendations related to the studied issue and some suggestions for further investigation

After Part C are the reference list and appendices.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

An overview on translation strategies and equivalence

First of all, is necessary to understand the concept of translation mentioned by many translation theorists to obtain an overall picture of the translation

Discussing translation, different scholars may propose various definitions

Wassety (cited in Ghadi, 2010) regards translation as “a legitimate offspring of the phenomenon of language” Also, Ghadi (2010) states “translation is actually an activity performed by human beings in order to convey ideas and thoughts despite different languages” These definitions provide a very basic and general understanding about translation as a phenomenon of language and an activity of people

Besides, from a specific perspective, Le and Nguyen (2008, p.3) say that translation can be considered either as “a product” or “a process” On the one hand, being regarded as “a product”, translation may be seen as the text that has been translated On the other hand, translation means “a process” when it refers to the activity of translating

Due to the rapid growth of translation and translation studies, translation, now, is usually divided into two main branches based on the input material, including written translation and oral translation which is commonly known as interpreting or interpretation (Munday, 2001, p.17) Also, according to Munday

(2001, p.17), it has been decided, for reasons of space and consistency of approach, to focus on written translation rather than oral translation (the latter is commonly known as interpreting or interpretation) He mainly discusses issues related to written translation In addition, this paper aims to investigate English movie titles and their translation in Vietnamese so within the scope of this research, translation, whenever it is used, means written translation

Moreover, translation scholars also introduce various opinions about translation as a process Banja (2009) regards a translator as a “message conveyor”; hence a translation may be understood as “the process” In 1972, Harmant and Stork (p.36) states that translation aims to render as close as possible all grammatical and lexical features of the “source language” by finding equivalents in the “target language” Dubois (1973) shares the same viewpoint: “Translation is the expression in another language (or target language) of what has been expressed in another, source language, preserving semantic and stylistic equivalences.” Newmark (1982, p.7) describes translation as “a craft consisting in an attempt to replace a written message and/or statement in one language by the same message and/or statement in another language.” In his “A Textbook of Translation” Newmark simplifies the definition of translation as “the rendering” of “the meaning of a text into another language in the same way that the author intended the text” (1988, p.5)

Therefore, it can be concluded that translation should be perceived in the scope of this paper as the process of conveying as accurately as possible the meaning and aesthetic effects of the ST into the TT in written form

Extensive research has been done in the field of translation strategies

However, the definition offered by each author or theorist represents his/her own point of view and their views differ from each other Therefore, different researchers have investigated and described various translation strategies from their own perspectives

Baker (1992, p.26) lists eight strategies, which have been used by professional translators, to cope with the problematic issues while doing a translation task These strategies can be summarized as follows: Translation by a more general word; Translation by cultural substitution; Translation using a loan word or loan word plus explanation; Translation by paraphrase using a related word;

Translation by paraphrase using unrelated words; Translation by omission;

Translation by illustration Eight strategies suggested by Baker (1992, p.26) are quite clear and detailed However, they just work with translation at word level

Meanwhile, translation should not only be limited within a single word‟s boundary

Discussing the term “translation strategies”, Bell (cited in Ordudari, 2007) provides a more comprehensive definition in which he states that translation strategies include “global” (those dealing with whole texts) and “local” (those dealing with text segments) strategies This perception is widely shared among influential translators and scholars such as Newmark (1988); Vinay and Darbenet

(1995) This appears to be the best approach to understand the nature of translation strategies Thus, in this paper, the term “translation strategies” refers to methods and procedures of translation that deal with whole texts and text segments

Up until the second half of the twentieth century, theory of translation methods appeared “locked in” (Munday, 2001, p 19) what Steiner (1998, p.319) coins as a “sterile” controversy over “literal”, “free” and “faithful” translation The

“literal” and “free” poles surface once again in the rich translation tradition of the Arab world, which created the great center of translation in Baghdad There was intense translation activity in the Abbasid period, centered on the translation into Arabic of Greek scientific and philosophical material, often with Syrian as an intermediary language (Delisle & Wdodsworth, 1995, p.112) Baker (2004, p.320) describes the two translation methods that were adopted during that period:

The first [method] […] was highly literal and consisted of translating each Greek word with an equivalent Arabic word and, where none existed, borrowing the Greek word into Arabic

(Baker, 2004, p.320) Newmark, a famous translator and translation theorist, also differentiates between word-for-word and sense-for-sense approaches However, he also finds that

“the triumph” of the “consumer” “illusory”, which leads him to narrow the “gap between emphasis on source and target language by providing a system of eight translation methods which he presents in a V_diagram as follows:

Figure 1.1 Newmark‟s V_diagram of translation methods

(Newmark, 1988, p.45) Furthermore, Newmark also suggests the theory of translation procedures that a translator may use to deal with smaller segment of a text Thanks to its practicality and detailed description, Newmark‟s theory of translation methods and procedures has been widely recognized for its significant influence on many successors (Thuy,

Therefore, in this study, the concept of translation strategies refers to global and local strategies with eight translation methods and sixteen procedures proposed by Newmark (1988) They are respectively presented as follows:

Translation quality assessment

1.2.1 A review on models of translation quality assessment

According to Larson (1984, p.489), it is important to test a translation to know whether a translation that is faithful to the source text message and that it is natural sounding in the target language Furthermore, it seems that assessing the quality of a translation “lies in the heart of all concerns with translation criticism”

(House, 2001) Accordingly, there have been quite a few “attempts” to find ways to

“evaluate the quality of a translated work” (Faghih & Jaza‟ei, 2015)

Larson (1984) proposes a model of translation quality assessment (TQA) in which the translated text and the original one should be compared and contrasted based on three criteria including accuracy, clarity and naturalness This model is presented below:

1) Accuracy: conveys all the information that is in the source text Sometimes the translator struggles with reformulating the message and may include information that is not in the source text or meant in the source text This information should be removed from the translation

2) Clarity: the translation must be understandable to the people who are depending on it for information A translation may be accurate without being clear It tends to contain ambiguity Ambiguity is when a phrase or sentence could have more than one meaning in a specific context so the target audience is not sure of the intended meaning

3) Naturalness: A translation can be accurate and clear and still not be natural A natural translation is idiomatic and uses the grammatical forms ordinarily used in the target language Ideally the translation does not sound like a translation, instead it sounds like a text originally created in that language

However, this model appears rather simple It seems that the model is just a simple description of the three factors that a translator should consider when producing a translation Besides, in the model, the interrelationship among the three factors is not clearly stated In addition, the three criteria are ambiguous For example, one native speaker may find the translated text natural while others do not

If an assessor base himself on this model, he may find it difficult to identify whether a translated text reach the equivalent effect as the original one create on the source language readers

One model which has received positive comments from translation theorists is the one proposed by House (1977) Before presenting her model, House explains the theoretical basis on which her model is developed She starts by saying that it is the essence of translation that meaning be preserved across the two languages involved, and that meaning has three basic aspects: Semantic, Pragmatic and Textual aspect The model is presented below:

The semantic aspect is the most easily accessible from the three aspects and has been given preference by evaluators However, the pragmatic aspect, which is

"the particular use of an expression on a specific occasion" (House, 1977, p.27) is very important in translation because translation deals with language in use

The textual aspect has been frequently neglected though it is a very important aspect because all the references such as substitutions, anaphora, ellipses, etc that make up the different ways of text functions account for the textual meaning that should be preserved in translation

According to House (1977), the equivalence sought should be an equivalence of function In other words, both source and translated texts must present the same function and the text's function can only be made explicit through a detailed analysis of the text itself

This is the basis for the model, and what makes it different from other criteria for establishing equivalence is the fact that those criteria relied either on the writer's intention, an item that is not open to empirical investigation, or on the reader's responses, which present problems to be measured The function of a text would then be "the application or use of what the text has in the particular context of a situation" (House, 1977, p.37)

Approaching TQA from a translator‟s point of view rather than a theorist, Newmark (1988, p.186) proposes a process of 5 “topics” to assess a translation

These five topics include: (1) a brief analysis of the SL text stressing its intention and its functional aspects; (2) the translator's interpretation of the SL text's purpose, his translation method and the translation's likely readership; (3) a selective but representative detailed comparison of the translation with the original; (4) an evaluation of the translation - (a) in the translator's terms, (b) in the critic's terms; (5) where appropriate, an assessment of the likely place of the translation in the target language culture or discipline

The TQA model proposed by House requires profound and full knowledge of functional grammar (Tien, cited in Thuy, 2009) Meanwhile, regarding the number of movie titles in this research and the context of CGV Cineplex, it is impractical to use House‟s model Meanwhile, in this case, the TQA model suggested by Newmark

(1988) is considered a better framework to assess the quality of a translation in practice (Thuy, 2009) Furthermore, Tien (2007) also suggests that all the steps in the translation quality assessment framework that Newmark (1988) introduces are drawn from the practical experience of a translator Therefore, they reflect the issues that translators concern, which makes it feasible and uncomplicated to follow this TQA model It is noteworthy that despite its simplicity, Newmark‟s TQA model is established based on fundamental theories which are indispensable in assessing the quality of a translation (Tien, 2007) On top of that, the model puts its emphasis on the elements affecting translation as a communication process but not just a textual form (Tien, 2007) while movie titles, as mentioned above, are also means of communication that movie producers utilize to attract audience As a result, Newmark‟s translation quality assessment framework, with its simplicity and flexibility, appears to be more appropriate in this case For that reason, all the collected titles serving as the sample for this research paper would be assessed based on the TQA model proposed by Newmark (1988)

Newmark (1988, p.186) suggests a model of TQA which consists of 5 “topics”

This model is presented in detail as follows:

1) Text analysis: In this very first step, the assessor should analyze the author‟s purpose, that is, the attitude he takes towards the topic In addition an indication of the source text‟s category and type should be analyzed Newmark (1988, p.184) also noted that under no circumstances should the assessor “discuss the author‟s life, other words or general background”

An overview on movie titles

The word “movie” sounds simple and familiar to people, however; it is still necessary to clearly define the term in order to avoid any ambiguity

According to OALD, Movie (n.d.) is “a series of moving pictures recorded with sound that tells a story, shown at the cinema/movie theater” and its synonym is

“film” When it comes to the definition of Film (n.d.), OALD says that the term means “a series of moving pictures recorded with sound that tells a story, shown on television or at the cinema/movie theater” There is a slight difference between them: Both can be shown at the cinema, however, only film can refer to “moving pictures” shown “on television” However, the research only concerns movies or films shown in CGV Cineplex Hence, within the scope of the paper, the two terms are used interchangeably to denote “a series of moving pictures recorded with sound that tells a story, shown at the cinema/movie theater”

It would be no exaggeration to state that movie genre has certain influences on the strategy that a translator chooses to translate a movie title

Therefore, in this paper, movie genre is a factor that is considered in assessing the translation of the selected movie titles

So numerous and various are movies, hence, movie classification is such a difficult and complicated task “The world's biggest movie website” (Daily Mail Report, 2010), IMDB proposes 26 movie genres These include Action, Comedy, Family, History, Documentary, Reality-TV, Talk-show, etc However, the website lists out film genres in a way that mixes TV series with motion pictures, which may cause confusion for movie classification

Meanwhile, Andersen (2010) mentions three film genres including Romance, Comedy and Children‟s movies Although the author provides detailed explanation of each genre, his classification as such cannot cover all movie types

According to Tan (2015), based on different theme and complexity, films can be divided into several genres, including the Western film, the Musical, Comedy, Science fiction, War film, Detective and Gangster, Horror film, Film Noir, Social- Political Drama, Adventures, lyric films and so on Although it is fairly detailed, using this way to classify movies seems unfeasible because the author does not provide readers with explanation and criteria to categorize movies into different genres

Fischoff (1998) presents fourteen movie genres including Action – Adventure, Drama, Comedy, Romance, Musical, Horror, Animation, Science-Fiction, Fantasy, Murder, Biblical, Documentary, Sport-based, Animal-based Thanks to detailed description and examples for each genre, this appears to be the best way of classifying movie genres Besides, this research concerns three dominant movie genres in CGV Cineplex, as a result, it appears unnecessary to complicate the situation by listing out all of the fourteen movie genres proposed by Fischoff (1998)

Therefore, only action, comedy and animation movie genres are presented in this paper as follows:

Action: the overriding focus of these films is fast pace, derring do, exploding guns, cars, and people Males tend to dominate the storyline and male interests and values are paramount, even if women are featured as "heroes or villains." Females, except for the occasional movie like Thelma and Louise or La Femme Nikita, tend to be surbordinate interests and of subordinate focus

Comedy: Films which portray people, relationships, or events in a deliberate and consistently humorous way either with jokes and one-liners or because of the situations conceived It is a type of dramatic work that is amusing and satirical in its tone, mostly having cheerful ending The motif of this dramatic work is triumph over unpleasant circumstance by which to create comic effects, resulting in happy or successful conclusion Thus, the purpose of comedy is to amuse the audience

Comedy has multiple sub-genres depending upon source of humor, context in which an author delivers dialogues, and delivery method, which include romantic comedy, comedy of humors and tragicomedy

Animation: Films in this genre are produced by a simulation of movement created by displaying a series of pictures, or frames Cartoons on television is one example of animation Animation on computers is one of the chief ingredients of multimedia presentations However, it should be noted that there is a difference between animation and video Whereas video takes continuous motion and breaks it up into discrete frames, animation starts with independent pictures and puts them together to form the illusion of continuous motion

1.3.3 Movie titles in English 1.3.3.1 Functions of movie titles in English

According to Turgut (2012), movie title is a powerful designed element that not only can allude to the story of the movie but also to the genre and the general atmosphere of the movie

Discussing the functions of movie titles, Duong (2006) states that titles can

“provide information” about the film by “summarizing the main plot, uncovering the theme, or offering some ideas” Although a title might be “vague, abstract or hard to capture the meaning”, people still catch a certain notion of the film She also adds that movie titles should act as audience “attracter” because it can stimulate the interest and desire for watching the movies of audience

Sharing the same point of view, Andersen (2010) also suggests that film titles mainly aim to attract moviegoers Movie titles is “privileged and prioritized” because they are the most “visual of a movie‟s promotional features” and they are

“displayed” to public before films “run” in the cinemas

The two viewpoints are obviously right However, restricting the functions of movie titles within supplying some information about the film and attracting audience does not seem very appropriate because naming a movie is “the play writer‟s painstaking conception” (Wang, 2007) Hence, titles surely contain artistic creativity Acknowledging this, Wang (2007) and Sun (2007) agree that movie titles have three main functions including “informative function”, “aesthetic function” and

Discussing the functions of language, Newmark (1988, p.40) states “The core of the informative function of language is external situation, the facts of a topic, reality outside language” Similarly, the informative function of movie titles means providing the “potential audience” some “relevant information” about the movies (Wang, 2007) The “relevant information” may include the genre, the main characters, the plot or setting, etc of the movie For example, the title “The dark knight rises” (2012) may let moviegoers know that this is an action film about hero called “the dark knight”

Newmark (1988, p.42) suggests that aesthetic function means “please the senses” Regarding movie titles, this function allows audience to gain sensory

“enjoyment” by using “delicate language” which may contain “vivid images, musical words or various rhetorical devices” (Sun, 2007) In fact, not all the movie titles can perform this function

The vocative function of language aims at the “readership”, “addressee” and calls upon them to “act, think or feel”, which means to “react” in the way “intended by the text” (Newmark, 1988, p.41) When the theory of vocative function is applied to movie titles, the “readership” and the “addressees” here refer to “moviegoers”

(Sun, 2007) Hence, regarding movie titles, the vocative function is to “draw attention of audience” and “make them psychologically interested” in watching the movies (Sun, 2007)

1.3.3.2 Characteristics of movie titles in English

According to Wang (2007), English movie titles have four main characteristics These include being “brief and concentrated”, having “heroes‟ and heroines‟ names as titles”, having “settings as titles” and being “attractive”

Principles in translating movie titles

Quite a few assumptions about the principles or standards in translating movie titles have been made so far Wang (2007) advocates 4 main principles:

1) Faithfulness: It requires the translator to put in time and energy on the conciseness of the script and try to display the connotation of the movie

2) Cultural awareness: The translator should be aware of cultural information, fully understand it, and properly translate it to the understanding of the target audience

3) Combination of commercial and aesthetic effects: A well-translated title should be a perfect combination of attractiveness and quaintness, and capable of achieving both commercial and aesthetic effects

4) Artistic quality: The movie title itself is an art A good translation must be a good artistic work

The assumption seems to expose inadequacy This lies in the vague differentiation of “aesthetic effects” and “artistic quality” while Wang (2007) offers little adequate explanation Hence, this may lead to the confusion among readers

Meanwhile, Duong (2006) remarks 4 standards that a translator should meet when translating movie titles as follows:

1) Faithfulness to the context: The faithfulness is shown in the way that the title should be in either direct or indirect connection with the movie itself

2) Consideration of movie genres: It is necessary to take movie genres into account

The translated titles should be produced in a way that can convey the movie genre

3) Cultural awareness: Translation should be acculturation and negotiation between two cultures and translation is now culturally oriented A translator should be aware of and knowledgeable about the extinctive features of English movie titles to avoid mistranslation

4) Combination of commercial and aesthetic effects: Commercially, a movie title is crucial in marketing and appealing to the moviegoers However, the translation cannot go too far out of the original and the movie itself

Duong (2006) and Wang (2007) appear to share the similar ideas However, here, Duong proposes “consideration of movie genre” which is not mentioned by Wang

Nevertheless, these are all only assumptions about the principles in translating English movie titles Being aware of this, Minh (2014) conducted a research on the principles in translating movie titles in Vietnam Then, she concludes that there are three main principles that should be abided by translators when translating movie titles from English into Vietnamese These include being faithful to the originals, fulfilling commercial purpose and being aware of cultural differences as presented below:

1) Being faithful to the originals: This means a translation should remain loyal to the original titles As original titles are created with certain functions including descriptive, aesthetic and vocative functions, translators should take more account of them That is the beautiful and natural sounds of the SL text should be preserved as well as compromising on meaning where appropriate However, it is noteworthy “originals” should not be restricted to movie titles only; rather it should extend to movies‟ content In other words, a translation is still considered accurate if it stays faithfully or precisely reflects the content of the movie

2) Fulfilling commercial purpose: This is the most decisive and influential principle to bear in mind because the aim of a title and, also, its translation is to attract as many moviegoers as possible Adhering to the principle, translators must make their translations understandable to audience, be able to convey the movie‟s genre and then be ear-catching In addition, a translation should also be brief and succinct to facilitate key art Key art is a specialized term denoting a movie‟s banner, poster, fliers and trailer Original poster and trailer have been designed with a fixed space for the title to attract audience‟s attention Hence, if the translated title is too long compared to the original one, key art designer will encounter difficulties

Ideally, a translation should have the same length as the original title to fufill this principle However, due to quite a few differences between the two languages, it is acceptable for a translator to produce longer translation compared to the original title Even in these cases, translators should never make their translations four words longer than the original text

3) Being aware of cultural differences: This means translators should avoid sensitive words Regarding cultural differences between Vietnamese and English, translators should avoid using sensitive words These include sex-related words, political words, violence-related words, religious words There are two main reasons for this Firslty, those words seem to be unacceptable to the majority of Vietnamese people Secondly, such sensitive words, especially politics-related and religion- related ones are not permitted by Vietnamese authorities who are reluctant to develop political sensitivity Furthermore, cultural difference also refers to cultural words or pharses in English These words and phrases should also be adapted to make them accurate, natural and appropriate in Vietnamese

In this chapter, overviews of translation, translation strategies, translation quality assessment and movie titles have been provided In general terms, translation is a process of conveying as accurately as possible the meaning and aesthetic values of the ST into the TT in written form Furthermore, discussing strategies of translation, eight methods and sixteen procedures of translation have been mentioned The former consists of Word-for-word, Literal, Faithful, Semantic, Adaptation, Free, Idiomatic and Communicative translation Meanwhile, the latter comprises of Transference, Naturalization, Through Translation, Shift, Modulation, Cultural Equivalent, Functional equivalent, Descriptive Equivalent, Synonym, Recognised translation, Compensation, Translation label, Componential analysis, Paraphrase, Reduction/ Expansion and Couplets Besides, among various translation quality assessment models, the one proposed by Newmark appears to be the most feasible and suitable framework in this research The model consists of five topics, namely text analysis, the translator‟s purpose, comparing the translation with the original, the evaluation of the translation and the translation‟s future

Next, an overview on movie and movie titles has been offered Movie can be defined as a series of moving pictures recorded with sound that tells a story, shown at the cinema Regarding movie titles in English, they have three main functions, namely informative, aesthetic and vocative It seems that because of those functions, English movie titles generally share some notable characteristics A great number of movie titles in English contain proper names which might be names of the movie‟s character or of settings Besides, they are usually brief and concise, which means they appear in the form of only a word, phrase and sometimes a sentence The last characteristic is that English movie titles can be descriptive (describing the topic) or allusive (connecting the title with certain things outside it) Finally, a brief review of some standards that translator must meet when translating movie titles from English into Vietnamese in CGV Cineplex has been presented These standards include being faithful to the original title or movie‟s content, fulfilling commercial purpose and being aware of cultural differences.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Qualitative approach

In the study, qualitative and quantitative approaches were employed for several reasons First of all, integrating qualitative and quantitative approaches in development research can help achieve insightful results that “neither approach would produce on its own” (Woolcock & Rao, 2003) This particular research concerns two major issues, namely translation quality assessment and translation techniques The former issue, a fairly complicated one, would be explored by using a translation quality framework combining with a contrastive analysis between original English movie titles and their translations Hence, only by utilizing qualitative and quantitative approach can the researcher assess the quality of the translated titles and present them in statistical data Meanwhile, for the latter issue, a number of translators would be interviewed for “an insider's view of the field”

(Burns, cited in Le, 2010) Therefore, only by applying qualitative approach could the research study both translated movie titles and translators to ultimately discover the answers for the research issues.

Setting

The study was conducted in CGV Cineplex (formerly known as Megastar Cineplex) The Cineplex started its business in Vietnam in 2005 After one decade of operation, the Cineplex has become the leading distributor for Hollywood movies and holding up to “90% of the movie industry‟s revenue” in Vietnam (Long, 2015)

Before being released in Vietnam, one translated title has to undergo certain phases First, marketing staffs in CGV Cineplex introduces the movie which is about to be screened Next, one group of translators will be assigned to translate the movie‟s title and subtitle Then, the group will discuss to choose the most suitable Vietnamese title to submit to distribution manager in CGV If the title is not approved at this stage, the group will have to re-translate it After being approved by the distribution manager, the title will then be submitted to the original studio producing and distributing the movie Here, the Vietnamese title is termed “local title” If the local title is approved by the original studio, it will be released; otherwise, it will be sent back to CGV for edition The strictness of the process depended much on the original studios and the “blockbusters” that would be shown (Tran, 2012) It should be noted that certain movies like Avatar (2009) and Thor

(2011) were still released in Vietnamese under the original English titles For these cases, the distributor of those movies had to ask for permission from the Cinema Department of Vietnam (Tran, 2012)

Figure 2.1 The process of releasing a local movie title in CGV Cineplex

Design of the study

As mentioned above, the research aim to assess the quality of the Vietnamese translations of English movie titles and suggest techniques to help avoid making mistakes and ease the task Because of this nature, it was necessary to conduct a contrastive analysis between original titles and their translations to evaluate the translations‟ quality and then interviewing translators who were successful in translating investigated movie titles to explore translation techniques that might be used Hence, the study was divided into two phases

Phase one was designed to seek the answer to the first research question concerning the assessment of the translated movie titles Hence, in this phase, titles of animation, action and comedy movies released in CGV Cineplex from 2011 to

2014 would be collected and analyzed

The study took advantage of purposive sampling, in which samples are

“selected because it serves the real purpose and objectives of the researcher of discovering, gaining insight and understanding into a particular chosen phenomenon” (Burns, 2000, p.465) As it was indicated in the title and in the scope of the study, the current research only concerns the titles of animation, comedy and action movies released from 2011 to 2011 in CGV Cineplex Hence, movie titles investigated in the research were chosen purposively

At first, the researcher intended to choose all the English titles of movies that had been released by CGV Cineplex since 2006 (when CGV Cinpelex, formerly known as Megastar Cineplex, started their business in Vietnam) so that the findings would be more comprehensive However, there were certain obstacles that made the intention unfeasible On the one hand, given that approximately 50 movies were shown every year, there would be about 400 titles from 2006 to 2014 The researcher was uncertain whether she could handle such a huge number of samples within four months On the other hand, no matter how hard she attempted, the researcher could not find the database containing names of movies shown in CGV Cineplex since 2006 to 2010

Thence, movie titles were selected based on the following criteria First, only titles of animation, comedy and action movies released by CGV Cineplex were selected In addition, all of the titles must be original in English Besides, movie titles must be up-to-date so that they would be accessible and reliable to serve as the samples for the research

Finally, titles of 126 movies shown by CGV Cineplex from 2011 to 2014 were selected based on the above criteria They were classified into three genres including animation, comedy and action For each genre, the titles were categorized into two sub-types: descriptive titles and allusive titles

In this phase of the study, document observation served as the method of data collection After careful consideration, this method was chosen for the following reasons Firstly, by using document analysis, the researcher “attempts” to provide “a confluence of evidence that breeds credibility” (Eisner, 1991, p 110) Besides, as a research method, document analysis is particularly applicable to produce rich descriptions of a single phenomenon, event, organization, or program (Stake, 1995)

As contrastive analysis was chosen as the data collection method, the instruments employed to gather data would be 126 selected movie titles in English and their Vietnamese translated versions

In this stage, the data collection procedure basically consisted of two main steps as follows:

The very initial and essential step of this research is collecting the titles of the animation, comedy and action movies shown in CGV Cineplex from 2011 to

2014 This was done by searching for the session times on the Cineplex‟s official website and on Google In the session times, the genre of each movie could be seen; hence, the researcher just had to select movies of three genres including animation, comedy and action

However, for most of the foreign movies, only Vietnamese translated titles were found In addition, it should be noted that the title of one movie is always translated by its local distributor Meanwhile, not all movies shown in CGV were distributed by the Cineplex Hence, to choose titles translated by CGV Cineplex, it was necessary to verify that the translated titles belong to movies released by the Cineplex This was done by type the following structure on Youtube: The title in Vietnamese + CGV/ Megastar trailer Then, at the beginning or at the end of each trailer there would be a line stating that the movie was distributed by CGV or Megastar Cineplex Also, the researcher could find the original English title appeared at the end of the trailer

Step 2: Establishing database of original and translated movie titles

It was necessary to establish a database containing both original English titles and their Vietnamese translated version so that it would be easier and more convenient to investigate the samples in order to analyze and compare them

Therefore, collected titles and their translations were classified into three genres including animation, comedy and action movies Then, for each category, they were put into allusive and descriptive titles For titles of animated movies, there were 14 descriptive titles and 4 allusive ones The number of descriptive titles and allusive ones for comedy were 9 and 7 respectively Meanwhile, titles of action movies consisted of 22 allusive titles and 70 descriptive titles

The data analysis procedures were conducted followed the assessment framework suggested by Newmark (1988) As mentioned in the previous chapter, this framework consists of 5 topics: 1) ST analysis, 2) Translator‟s purpose analysis, translation Meanwhile, the titles serving as the samples for this study had been already released before the study was conducted, hence, they would be assessed on the four first topics Titles of each genre including animation, comedy and action movies would be in turn assessed The assessment process could be analyzed as follows:

Step 1: Analyzing the source text

The characteristics of the original titles were analyzed In other words, the original titles were examined to see whether they are descriptive or allusive titles and the language used in entitling movies

Step 2: Analyzing the translator’s purpose

The characteristics of translated titles were also studied This aimed to identify whether the translator had made any changes when translating the titles from English into Vietnamese

Step 3: Comparing the translations with the originals

Here, the translations would be compared with the original titles of animation, action and comedy movies to see how the translators had solved the particular problem in the SL texts Firstly, translation strategies used to translate movie titles in the three categories would be examined Based on this, major problems arising in translating the titles and how they were handled would be discussed These problems would be grouped selectively such as cultural words, proper names, names of sequels, etc

The accuracy of the translation would be assessed from the translator‟s standards and from the assessor‟s standard A translation would be considered as meeting the assessor‟s standard when it remains semantically and pragmatically faithful to the source text In other words, the assessor would compare each translation with the original title in the context of the each movie‟s content Besides, as it is presented in the previous chapter, movie title translators have certain principles to follow (Minh, 2014) Thus, a translation would be considered as meeting the translator‟s standard when it can reflect the movie‟s content, be understandable to audience and be succint Then the translations would be assessed by the assessor‟s own standards of referential and pragmatic accuracy In this topic, translations would be synthesized into four categories: 1) Fully meet the TQA framework; 2) Only meet the translator‟s standard; 3) Only meet the assessor‟s standard and 4) Fail to meet the TQA framework

After each step, the findings were synthesized to answer the research question regarding to what extent the translations meet the requirements in the translation quality assessment framework (Newmark, 1988)

After assessing the translations of the selected movie titles, the researcher might discover some strategies that were used to produce good translations

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

Phase one

The data gained from analyzing 126 English movie titles and their translated versions in the first phase were to answer the first research question regarding the quality of the Vietnamese translations of English movie titles released by CGV Cineplex from 2011 to 2014

3.1.1 Assessing the translations of animation titles

Generally, the language used in the selected titles of animtions is simple and funny Due to their “condensed form”, titles of cartoons are often considered to be a direct and easy to process means of communicating a message (Tsakona, 2008)

That may help to explain why almost all of the collected titles are descriptive, except

“Tangled”, “Despicable me 2”, “Frozen” and “Brave”

Translators preserve the simplicity and sense of humor of the original titles

For descriptive titles, translators appear to be faithful to the originals However, for allusive ones, translators tend to rename the movies based on each movie‟s content

- Comparing the translations with the originals Data analysis discloses that seven strategies are employed to translate titles of animated movies into Vietnamese The most dominant strategies are adaptation and descriptive equivalent Each of them is utilized to translate 22% of the collected titles Meanwhile, only 17% of the collected titles are translated by faithful strategy

The frequency of each translation strategy is converted into percentage and illustrated in the pie chart below:

Figure 3.1 Strategies employed in translating titles of animations

For the titles with cultural words like “Smurf” and “Puss in boots”, the translators translate them using their equivalents in Vietnamese

However, for the case of “The Boxtrolls”, a totally new concept introduced by Alan Snow in his novel titled “Here be monsters” (Pomerantz, 2014), the translator decides to translate the title faithfully into “quái hộp” In Vietnamese,

“quái” is the literal meaning of “troll” - an imaginary, either very large or very small creature in traditional Scandinavian stories, that has magical powers and lives in mountains or caves Besides, “hộp” is the literal translation for “box”

Among the titles containing names of the protagonists, only Rio is translated by transference In other words, it is directly copied into Vietnamese For “The Croods”, the translators chooses to use descriptive equivalent as the strategy to deal with the title, which means the proper name was still preserved, however, the translation is added with a few words of explanation about the content of the movie

Meanwhile, in the case of “Wreck-it Ralph”, the translator uses naturalization to translate the name

For allusive titles including “Brave”, “Tangled”, “Frozen”, “Despicable me 2”, the translators chooses the strategy of adaptation All the new titles are renamed based on the feature of the protagonists of the movies as “Công chúa tóc xù”, “Công chúa tóc mây”, “Nữ hoàng băng giá”, “Kẻ trộm mặt trăng” These titles can be respectively translated back into English as “The silky-haired princess”; “The Frizzy-haired Princess”; “Queen of Frost” and “The Moon-stealer”

- The evaluation of the translations

Data analysis reveals that the translations of eigthteen movie titles in animation genre fall into four quality categories referring to the TQA framework proposed by Newmark (1988) The number of translations in each category is converted into percentage and presented in the pie chart below:

Only assessor's standard Only translator's standard

Figure 3.2 Quality of translations of animation titles classified according to

Firstly, 39% of the translations (7 translations) meet all the criteria in the quality assessment framework proposed by Newmark (1988) The source texts and their translations are presented in the table below:

2 Puss in Boots Chú mèo Đi-hia

3 The Boxtrolls Hội Quái hộp

4 Planes Thế giới máy bay

5 Wreck-it Ralph Rap-phờ Đập phá

6 How to train your dragon Bí kíp luyện rồng

7 Free Birds Giải cứu gà tây

Table 3.1 Translations of animation titles meet all criteria in the TQA framework

As can be seen from the table above, the source texts are all descriptive and the translators, when translating them into Vietnamese, also preserv this characteristic This means, all the translations are also descriptive titles

For the titles with cultural words like “Smurf” and “Puss in boots”, the translators find their equivalents in Vietnamese “Smurf” in English and “Xì-trum” in Vietnamese both refer to Belgian comic and television franchise centered on a fictional colony of small blue creatures that live in mushroom-shaped houses in the forest (Samuel, 2011) Similarly, “Puss in boots” and “Mèo đi hia” both refer to an old children's story which is about a poor young man who owns a cat that can talk and wears boots By playing a series of tricks on people, the cat makes his owner rich and helps him to marry a princess (Munarriz, 2015.) These are common words whose equivalents exist in the two languages, hence, the translators use descriptive equivalent as the strategy to translate the titles

However, for the case of “The Boxtrolls”, it is not easy to find an equivalent in Vietnamese This is because the word “boxtroll” is a total new concept introduced by Alan Snow in his novel titled “Here be monsters” (Pomerantz, 2014) As portrayed in the novel and in the movie, “Boxtrolls are a sub-species of the common troll, who live inside cardboard boxes They are fascinated by anything mechanical and will therefore steal almost any unsecured item They are charged with the maintenance of the underground tunnels” (Pomerantz, 2014) Hence, the translator decides to literally translate the word into “quái hộp” As mentioned above, “quai” is the literal meaning of “troll” - an imaginary, either very large or very small creature in traditional Scandinavian stories and “hop” is the literal translation of “box” In addition, “s”, representing plural form, was translated into

“Hội”, which means a group of people with the same features or occupation Hence, this choice of word is reasonable Similarly, instead of “Nhung chiec may bay”;

Planes was added “The gioi”, which means a group of people who share the same characterisitcs, is suitable

Wreck-it Ralph with “Wreck-it” acting as an adjective modifying “Ralph” is translated literally into Vietnamese as “đập phá” Especially, the translator chooses to use naturalization strategy to translate “Ralph” into “Rap-phờ” From the point of view of an audience, the assessor believes this makes the titles sound funny in Vietnamese

For the case of Free Birds, if the word “Birds” were faithfully translated into Vietnamese as “gia cầm”, the translations would sound less attractive and too general This may lead to misunderstanding about the movie‟s content Meanwhile, this is a story about two turkeys from opposite sides of the tracks who must put aside their differences and team up to travel back in time to change the course of history - and get turkey off the holiday menu for good Hence, choosing “gà tây”

(turkey) instead of “gia cầm” seemed reasonable because it remained loyal to the original text and the movie‟s content

“How to train your dragon 2” was translated into “Bí kíp luyện rồng 2” using the strategy of shift Changing the adverb “how” into the noun “bí kíp” (secrets) entails “to train your dragon” acting as a noun modifying “bí kíp”

Furthermore, 11% of the translations (2 titles) are able to meet the assessor‟s standard They are presented in the table below:

Table 3.2 Translations of animation titles only meet assessor‟s standard These titles are translated by transference This means they are exactly copied from English into Vietnamese However, for those who do not know English, these translations might appear difficult to understand “Rio” means the city of Rio de Janeiro where the story about Blu, a domesticated macaw from small-town Minnesota and his fiancée Jewel develops Only the word “Rio” might lead audience to mistake the title as the name of the protagonist In English grammar, an adjective goes before a noun, serving as a modification for that noun Therefore, “Kungfu Panda” should be understood in English as the panda who knows and practices kungfu Meanwhile, in Vietnamese grammar system, a noun phrase is normally structured with a head noun followed by adjective or other nouns as modification

Hence, reading the translation “Kungfu Panda”, audience who do not know English might think of a kind of kungfu whose name is panda as snake kungfu, tiger kungfu

Among the selected translations, there are five translated titles (23%) only meeting the translator‟s standard The original tiles and their translations are presented in the table below:

1 Monster University Lò đào tạo quái vật

2 Penguins of Madagascar Biệt đội chim cánh cụt Madagascar

3 Despicable me Kẻ trộm mặt trăng

4 The Croods Cuộc phiêu lưu của gia đình Croods

5 Frankenweenie Chó ma Frankenweenie Table 3.3 Translations of animation titles only meet the translator‟s standard

Generally, the translations are not semantically faithful to the original titles

Phase two

The data obtained in the second phase provide the answers to the last research question related to the techniques in translating movie titles from English into Vietnamese in CGV Cineplex First, an analysis of three cases with emerging themes would be presented Then, a summary of findings would be provided in response to the research question

Quang is a professional movie translator He worked for CGV Cineplex from

2009 to mid-2012 and from late 2013 until now In CGV Cineplex, he translated both movie subtitles and titles Quang said that he had translated 100 movies or so for CGV Cineplex Between mid-2012 to early 2013, he worked for Platinum Media Company Limited and occupied the position of Film Marketing Manager Among the three participants, Quang appears to be the most experienced movie translator It was Quang who produced successful Vietnamese translations for “How to train your dragon”, “No String Attached”, “Guardian of the Galaxy”, “The Tourist”

 Techniques in translating movie titles from English into Vietnamese

Quang emphasized consultation was the most important technique He affirmed that normally, titles had to be translated before the movies were released so all he had for title translation were English titles and production notes Therefore, he said only by consultation could a translator understand the title and the movie‟s content; thence, translating it correctly and beautifully Some consulting sources he suggested include original studios, http://www.imdb.com, http://www.rottentomatoes.com/ and yahoo.movies.com He illustrated his point with the following example:

“I was not in charge of translating the title Winter’s Bones, which was translated into Xương trắng mùa đông The Vietnamese title sounds correct and beautiful In fact, it is not accurate I found out that “bones” in the title, in fact, means a small gift or blessing, as in the phrase to throw someone a bone and Ree's blessing occurs in winter, both literally and metaphorically For that reason, if I were the translator, I would translate it into Phước lành mùa đông.”

Another technique shared by Quang was the formula of Vietnamese translation for one-word or two-word title: Original word (translated in Vietnamese) + one or two Vietnamese word to explain the movie genre or movie content

“For example, The Tourist was translated into Du khách bí ẩn The original title could be absolutely translated into Du khách, which must be understandable by the

Vietnamese and faithful to the English title However, such a name would be not appealing enough and fail to reflect the movie‟s genre and storyline As a result, it was added bí ẩn to show the movie genre (thriller) and somehow the movie‟s content […] Some other examples are No String Attached (romance, comedy) – Yêu không ràng buộc, The Roommate (horror) – Sát thủ cùng phòng, etc.”

Quang also noted that movie‟s brand name, in either English or Vietnamese, which was familiar to and popular among Vietnamese audience, should be unchanged “This is particularly true for blockbusters, movie series or movie adapted from famous books, novels, comics or cartoons, etc.”, Quang stated He illustrated this with an example:

“The Host (2013) is such a case […] The Vietnamese translated title Vật chủ sounds conventional However, it is so popular that I just need to mention Vật chủ without any explanation, Vietnamese fans of the novel will know it is a movie adapted from The Host by Stephenie Meyer Therefore, we did not edit or create new Vietnamese title but used the translated one.”

The final technique shared by Quang may be applied for the titles of movies released on some special days such as Valentine‟s Day, Halloween, Children‟s Day, etc Quang said that translator might use words that can convey the atmosphere of such occasions This aimed to attract targeted moviegoers to ultimately fulfill commercial purpose He illustrated this with the following examples:

“The Vow”, released on between Valentine‟s Day and Woman‟s Day, was translated as Yêu lại từ đầu […] Or Frankenweenie, released on Halloween, was translated into Chó ma Frankenweenie” instead of Chú chó Frankenweenie “Yêu” and “ma” are typical words of such occasions.”

Thanh has worked for CGV Cinplex for three years Previously, he used to work for some television companies as a movie translator He was the one who translated “Gulliver‟s Travels”; “Bad Teacher” “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol”,

 Techniques in translating movie titles from English into Vietnamese

Like Quang, Thanh also stressed the important role of consultation in translating movie titles Thanh said that he normally utilized production notes as a tool to understand the content of the movie Based on this and the English title, he would produce a Vietnamese translation In addition, Thanh also did some researches on Google to guarantee that his translation is unique This is because a title must have no namesake while in Vietnam, translators tend to adapt a title based on movie‟s content He further explained his poin with the following example:

“This summer, there will be two films about the attacks on Whitehouse: “Olympus Has Fallen” and “Whitehouse Down” The former was distributed by Platinum Cineplex It was translated the title as “Nhà Trắng thất thủ” Hence, we had to encounter enormous difficulties in translating “Whitehouse Down” Of course, we do not want our translation to be a copy of theirs.”

Moreover, Thanh suggested using Sino-Vietnamese in translation From his point of view, Sino-Vietnamese words usually sound more attractive, ornate and shorter than purely Vietnamese ones He illustrated his viewpoint with the following example:

“Gulliver’s Travel can be translated as Hành trình của Gulliver or Những chuyến đi của Gulliver, it‟s fine However, Gulliver du ký sounds much more attractive than Hành trình của Gulliver Similarly, Chiến hạm appears better than

Tàu chiến in translating Battleship.”

Thanh recommended a formula that can be utilized to translate certain titles using Sino-Vietnamese: “Negative prefix_key word_IBLE/ABLE” => Bất khả + root word (translated in Vietnamese/Sino-Vietnamese)

He demonstrated this with an example of translating “Mission Impossible” into “Nhiệm vụ bất khả thi”

Summary of findings

On seeking answers to the two research questions, the study has yielded a picture of movie title translation in CGV Cineplex from 2011 to 2014 in different aspects, namely translation quality assessment and translation strategies in translating movie titles from English into Vietnamese

First of all, after assessing the translations of titles of animated, action and comedy movies that were released by CGV Cineplex from 2011 to 2014, the researcher found that only one-third of the selected movie titles meet the TQA framework proposed by Newmark Meanwhile, most of the translations only meet the standard of the translator or the standard of the assessor Besides, that a large number of the translations fail to meet any criteria in the assessment framework seems to be because of the translators‟ deficiencies They did not search for enough the information about the movie and this led them to misunderstand the movie‟s content or the original titles and the producers‟ purposes For that reason, in order to solve the problem, it is advisable that each translator should find as much information about the movie as possible

In addition, the paper reveals the translators‟ techniques in translating movie titles from English into Vietnamese Data gathered from interviewing three translators who produced successful translations in Phase one discloses that consultation from the internet or the original distributor was of high importance in order to translate correctly and beautifully a movie title Besides, the formula: translation of original word + words denoting movie‟s genre is devised to deal with one-word or two-word titles In addition, typical words for special occasions like Halloween, Valentine‟s Day may be utilized to make translations more appealing

Besides, one respondent suggests using Sino-Vietnamese and strong words which create strong emotions This aims to improve aesthetic effects for translated titles

Besides, translators may translate English titles word by word to understand them

Thence, those rough translations should be reworded to sound more natural in Vietnamese.

Recommendations

First and foremost, although a translated title of one Hollywood‟s movie must undego certain phases of examination before being released in Vietnam, a large number of translations are still surrounded by a lot of controversy regarding their accuracy In order to avoid such controversy, movie title translators and movie distributors may adapt the TQA model proposed by Newmark (1988), which proved feasible and suitable to serve as a framework for assessing translations of movie titles in this study By utilizing this TQA model, translators and movie distributors may guarantee the quality of their translation and to protect themselves from being attacked by personal opinions on quality of a movie title translation

In addition, findings in the research also suggest some strategies to handle certain kinds of movie titles Firstly, the assessment showed cultural equivalent was the most dominant strategy for cultural-specific words But, in cases where there were no equivalents in the target language, faithful translation proved to be effective Thus, translators when dealing with titles with cultural terms may consider using faithful translation beside cultural equivalent Futhermore, for title containing proper names, transference appeared to be the most suitable translation strategy

However, it is noteworthy that if the proper name in a title is not name of the protagonist, translators should use couplets of transference (to handle the name) and expansion (with one or two words explaining the name or movie‟s genre) For descriptive titles with one or two words, translators may choose faithful translation and this method appear to be effective in handling such titles For the titles of movie series, the translators chose the strategy of couplets with the combination of transference (applied for the series‟ title”) and faithful translation By doing so, the translations remain faithful to the source texts and also reflect the movie‟s genre by helping audience recognize the brandname of the series they have already known

Analysis of unsuccessful translations revealed a number of typical errors that translators often committed Translators should be aware of these problems and may consider using some techniques that the three participants in the study suggested to resolve them Firstly, translators, when using descriptive equivalent, made their translations too long, this, according to translator, violates the principle of key art in translating movie titles In order to avoid producing long translations, translators may utilize Sino-Vietnamese words because they appear to be briefer and more concise compared to their purely Vietnamese counterparts according to the experience of the three participants in the research Secondly, unsuccessful translations often resulted from translators‟ misunderstanding of the original titles

In addition, when using expansion, translators usually added words that might sound ear-catching but these words are not related to the movie‟s content or the features of the protagonist at all To avoid making these errors, translators are advisable to conduct researches on the titles that they are to translate from sources such as production notes or some websites such as imdb, rotten tomatoes.

Limitations of the study and suggestions for further research

In spite of considerable efforts of the researcher, certain limitations are inevitable, which opens suggestions for further investigation on the issue

Firstly, Sino-Vietnamese and strong words were mentioned by the participants; however, it is hard to determine which words are Sino-Vietnamese and which are not Meanwhile, those words were not defined and explained clearly within the scope of the current study Therefore, more intensive studies can examine such words and their usage in movie title translation

In addition, one of the major shortcomings is due to the limited resources, namely the researcher‟s time and expertise Thus, the researcher has chosen to focus on the things that are easy to describe, including assessing quality of translated movie titles based on four topics in the TQA model proposed by Newmark (1988) as well as principles and techniques in translating movie titles More complicated issues such as cultural constraints in language transfer involving title translation in general could not be dealt with Consequently, there is still a considerable gap for future research conducted on such complicated issues

Moreover, another limitation can be found in the number of the informants and the sampling strategy employed in phase two of the research The study involved only three translators It should be noted that this sampling strategy might be “highly unrepresentative” (Black, 1999, p.118) However, the researcher had little choice but to adopt the strategy because of the rigorous and rigid schedule of the translators and the time constraint under which this study was conducted Hence, the results could not be generalized Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that the emphasis of the phase was not making any generalization, but looking in depth at the studied issue It is expected that with detailed descriptions of cases, the study can provide a detailed and in-depth understanding of the studied issue Because of such rich descriptions of data, the study may lay concrete foundation for further investigation in a quantitative mode

Another shortcoming of the current study that is not very serious still needs to be mentioned is the limited number of movie titles in its first phase In this phase, only titles of movie shown in CGV Cineplex from 2011 to 2014 were investigated while the number movies shown in Vietnam are neither limited within the four-year period nor restricted in only CGV Cineplex Hence, this number was not so large that it can provide an overall picture of the quality of the translations of English movie titles in Vietnam Therefore, any attempt to conduct a research on larger-scale samples should be encouraged and appreciated

In conclusion, more intensive researches on Sino-Vietnamese and strong words as well as their usage in movie title translation should be conducted Besides, further studies concerning more complicated issued such as quality assessment of the translation, cultural constraints in language transfer involving the translation of movie titles, book titles, etc can be pursued In addition, investigations on the studied issue should be made with a larger population including either translators or movie titles

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APPENDIX 1: TITLES OF ANIMATIONS IN CGV CINEPLEX FROM 2011

1 The Croods Cuộc phiêu lưu của nhà Croods

3 Monster University Lò đào tạo quái vật

4 Planes Thế giới máy bay

6 How to train your dragon Bí kíp luyện rồng

7 Penguins of Madagascar Biệt đội chim cánh cụt Madagascar

8 Free Birds Giải cứu gà tây

9 The Boxtrolls Hội quái hộp

11 Puss in Boots Mèo Đi-hia

12 Ice age 4: Continental Drift Kỷ băng hà 4: Lục địa trôi dạt

13 Wreck-it Ralph Rap-phờ đập phá

1 Frozen Nữ hoàng băng giá

2 Tangled Công chúa tóc mây

3 Brave Công chúa tóc xù

4 Despicable me 2 Kẻ trộm mặt trăng 2

APPENDIX 2: TITLES OF ACTION MOVIES RELEASED IN CGV CINEPLEX FROM 2011 TO 2014 AND THEIR TRANSLATIONS

1 Oblivion Bí mật trái đất diệt vong

2 Dead man down Kẻ báo thù

3 Now you see me Phi vụ thế kỷ

6 Prisoners Lần theo dấu vết

7 Edge of Tomorrow Cuộc chiến luân hồi

9 Interstellar Hố đen tử thần

11 Equalizer Thiện ác đối đầu

12 Limitless Trí lực siêu phàm

14 In time Thời khắc sinh tử

15 Chronicle Sức mạnh vô hình

16 Act of Valor Biệt kích ngầm

18 Dark Shadows Lời nguyền bóng đêm

19 The cold light of day The cold light of day

20 Total Recall Truy tìm ký ức

22 Act of Valor Biệt kích ngầm

23 Premium Rush Tốc độc kinh hoàng

The last stand Chốt chặn cuối cùng

GI Joe: Retaliation GI Joe: Kẻ báo thù

Fast and Furious 6 Fast and furious 6

Star Trek: Into the darkness Star Trek: Chìm vào bóng tối

Man of steel Người đàn ông thép

Whitehouse down Giải cứu nhà trắng

The lone ranger Kỵ sĩ cô độc

Pacific Rim Siêu đại chiến

The mortal Instruments: The city of bones

Vũ khí bóng đêm: Thành phố xương

Runner runner Át chủ bài

Legendary: Tomb of the dragon Legendary: Mộ rồng

The Hunger Games: Catching fire The Hunger games: Bắt lửa

Thor 2: Dark world Thor 2: Thế giới bóng tối

Need for speed Đam mê tốc độ

Captain America 2: Winter Soldier Captain America: Chiến binh mùa đông X-men: Days of future past X-men: Ngày cũ của tương lai Godzilla_Galaxy Studio Quái vật Godzilla

Transformer 4: Age of Extinction Transformer 4: kỷ nguyên hủy diệt

Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb Đêm ở viện bảo tàng: Bí mật hầm mộ

The Pyramid Bí ẩn kim tự tháp

Dracula Untold Ác quỷ Dracula: Huyền thoại chưa kể

The Maze Runner Giải mã mê cung Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Ninja rùa

The November Man Sát thủ tháng 11

He who dares Kẻ liều lĩnh

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit Jack Ryan: Đặc vụ bóng đêm

The lone survivor Sống sót

The Tourist Du khách bí ẩn

Fair game Trò chơi sòng phẳng

The Warrior's Way Con đường chiến binh

The Adjustment Bureau Bản đồ định mệnh

Source Code Mật mã gốc

Fast and Furious 5 Fast and furious 5

Xmen: First Class Xmen: First class

Transformers 3: Darkmoon Transformer 3: Darkmoon Cowboys and Aliens Cao bồi và quái vật ngoài hành tinh Rise of the Planet of the Apes Sự nổi dậy của loài khỉ

Real Steel Tay đấm thép

Tower Heist Siêu trộm nhà chọc trời

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol Nhiêm vụ bất khả thi 4: Chiến dịch bóng ma

The Darkest Hour Giờ đen tối

Contraband Phi vụ ngầm Underworld Awakening Thế giới ngầm trỗi dậy

Man on a Ledge Người đàn ông trên gờ tường

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island Journey 2: Hòn đảo huyền bí

Immortals Chiến binh bất tử

Wrath of the Titans Sự phẫn nộ của các vị thần

The Avengers Biệt đội siêu anh hùng

Men in Black III Men in black III

The Dictator Kẻ độc tài

The Dark Knight Rises Kỹ sĩ bóng đêm trỗi dậy

Savages Những kẻ man rợ

Resident Evil: Retribution Vùng đất dữ: Báo thù The Man with the Iron Fist Người đàn ông có tay đấm sắt Guardian of the Galaxy Vệ binh dải ngân hà