영화제목의 기능과 번역

Functions and Translation of Film Titles

This paper explores how the conventions of a target culture affect translations with a focus on film title translation. For this purpose, using Christiane Nord s six functions of titles, which include distinctive, metatextual, phatic, referential, appellative, and expressive, this study makes a comparative analysis on the titles of original Korean films, English films and their Korean translations with the aim of finding out whether and to what extent hierarchical differences exist in their functions. The results are as follows: First, while the English titles of children s films and their Korean translations show the same hierarchy in their functions with the titles of Korean children s films with metatextual functions being most prominent, other genres of films for adults show differences in their hierarchy between the titles of English films and their translations. For instance, while the Korean titles of English comedy and horror films observe Korean conventions, the Korean titles of English drama films show correlations with Korean conventions. These findings suggest that the conventions of the target culture should be clearly taken into account in translating film titles.