The Contrastive Analysis of the Translation of English Film Titles into Lithuanian and Russian

. Titles are most important in terms of information they carry about the text, the film, radio programme, etc. Translation of titles is a challenging task that is fulfilled by employing specific translation methods. The aim of the theoretical part of this article is to present the problem of title translation into the target language, to give an overview of major translation theories and methods used in the translation of film titles and titles in general. The practical analysis in the article is based on Vinay and Darbelnet’s model of translation procedures. The model was applied for the contrastive analysis of the translation of comedy and thriller titles into Lithuanian and Russian in order: a) to compare the translation methods used to translate the same film title into the two languages, b) to identify the most commonly used translation methods for both genres and both target languages, and c) to determine whether or not the genre has any influence on the selection of the translation method. The research has shown that literal translation is the most frequently used translation procedure in the translation of comedy titles into Lithuanian and in the translation of thriller titles into Lithuanian and Russian and is the first procedure by frequency of usage overall. The statistical data allows to state that in the translation of film titles transcreation is much more frequent in the Russian translation, as compared to the Lithuanian translation. When compared by genre, the distribution of the statistical data varied, thereby allowing to state that the genre may have a specific influence on the choice of translation procedures.


Introduction
Titles play a significant role as they introduce, define, reflect the content of a piece of writing, a film, a radio programme, etc.In a text they are presumably the most salient and eyecatching part and would rightly deserve a more extensive and systematic linguistic research.So far titles have received some attention from representatives of different domains of studies.To illustrate, French philosopher Jacques Derrida called titles promises, Italian semiotician and novelist Umberto Eco defined them as interpretive hints, and German linguist Uriel Weinreinch referred to titles as text guides (Leonardi, 2011).
A more systematic attempt to investigate titles comes mainly from French literary theorists and linguists, who have been developing research into titrology ("la titrologie" in French), the science of titles, as a sub-branch of literary history and critique.The most significant contribution to the field of title studies was made by literary theorists Claude Duchet and Gerard Genette in the 1970s and the 1980s.In his research into Romanesque titles, C. Duchet distinguished three functions of the title: referential, connotative, and poetic, which respectively refer to the object of a text, the addressee, and the message (Bokobza, 1986).G. Genette saw the title as a paratext and by relying on C. Duchet's findings in the field of titrology presented his own classification of title functions: designation, indication of the content, and seduction of the public (Vauterin, 1997).
In recent decades titrology has attracted the attention of scholars with more diverse interests and has therefore become less attached to the field of studies of literary history and critique.
As Maribel Peñalver Vicea put it, the studies of titrology have entered a very wide range of fields of studies, from social discourse and the press (J.Peytard, P. Charaudeau, F. Fransen) to the domain of drawing (B.Bosredon) and cinema (Group μ) (Vicea, 2003).However, since the findings of the scholars were mainly reported in French, they have not found their way to the international level of scientific discussions and remain localised.

Theoretical Overview of Title Translation Methods
In the development of translation studies in the 20th century, translation theorists did not generally show much interest in title translation methods.From those who did, the most systematic approach was demonstrated by German scholar Christiane Nord, who identified six functions of titles to be taken into consideration in the process of translation.According to C. Nord, these functions fall into two groups: essential (distinctive, metatextual and phatic) functions, and optional (referential, expressive and appellative) functions (Nord, 1995).She describes the above functions as follows: "Each title has to be distinct with regard to the culturespecific title corpus it forms part of (=distinctive function).Each title has to conform to the genre conventions of the culture it belongs to (=metatextual function).Each title must be appropriate to attract the attention of its culture-specific audience and, if necessary, to be remembered over a certain period of time (= phatic function).If any piece of information is intended to be transmitted by the title, it has to be comprehensible to the respective addressees with their culture-specific world-knowledge (=referential function).Any evaluations or emotions expressed in the title have to be judged in relation to the value system of the culture in question (=expressive function).Any appellative intention has to take account of the culture-specific susceptibility and expectations of the prospective readers (= appellative function)" (Nord, 1995).
C. Nord placed strong emphasis on goal-orientated translation methods, with a specific reference to culturespecific elements in titles.Titles seem to be the most noticeable "representatives" of the source text in a target culture.However, the clear functional classification of titles suggested by C. Nord was not duly elaborated to become part of practical recommendations for title translation.
Differently from C. Nord, the classification of literature titles by translation theorist Peter Newmark is much simpler and more closely intertwined with practical recommendations for title translation.P. Newmark identifies two main types of titles: descriptive titles (that describe the topic of the text) and allusive titles (that have some kind of referential or figurative relationship to the topic) (Newmark, 1988).The theorist emphasizes the importance of genre in the translation of titles and presents suggestions as to how different types of titles should be translated: "For serious imaginative literature, I think a descriptive title should be 'literally' kept (Madame Bovary could only be Madame Bovary), and an allusive title literally or, where necessary, imaginatively preserved (…).For non-literary texts, there is always a case for replacing allusive by descriptive titles, particularly if the allusive title is idiomatic or culturally bound" (Newmark, 1988).P. Newmark's instructions for title translation were oriented at the attempts to avoid notional and cultural misunderstandings associated with literal translation procedures.He acknowledged creativity to be an important instrument for a translator in order to successfully render the sense of the original title.
Apart from C. Nord and P. Newmark, no other translation theorist has shown a deeper interest in or presented any systematic approach to title translation.As a result, research into methods of translation of titles, film titles in particular, has been scarce.It is noteworthy that the scientific articles available on the translation of film titles have predominantly been produced by representatives of Asian countries (Mei, 2010;Chang, 2012;Yin, 2009;Kelan and Wei, 2006).Their interest in the subject of film title translation can be attributed to the marked linguistic and cultural differences existing between the Indo-European languages (such as English, French, Spanish) and a different family of languages (such as the Sino-Tibetan Mandarin).These differences are an unavoidable challenge that the translators of film titles have to face in order to present a successful product for the target audience.Such cross-cultural research into film titles basically addresses the issues of domestication and foreignisation (Kelan and Wei, 2006), the importance of cultural awareness (Yin, 2009;Kelan and Wei, 2006), and the discussion on the main functions of film titles (Mei, 2010;Yin, 2009).
The European scholars who have addressed the issue of the translation of film titles put emphasis on slightly different aspects of the subject in question.To illustrate, in their research into film title translation, Maria Zapater and Roser Marti (1993) came to the conclusion that the most popular translation methods applied in film title translation into Spanish and Catalan were free translation methods, the choice being based on four factors: linguistic difficulties, commercial interests, socio-cultural differences and the translator's moralizing intentions.In her analysis of linguistic skills, cultural awareness and marketing methods involved in the translation of a big number of film titles, Vanessa Leonardi (2011) arrived at the conclusion that marketing goals were the most important factor to influence the selection of the film title translation method.

The Aims and Subject of the Study
As can be derived from the overview of the studies on the translation of film titles, the available reports on research into film title translation have been centered on the comparison of two sources: the original titles and the translation thereof into a target language.No reports have been available on a contrastive analysis of translation methods employed for the translation of film titles into at least two target languages.The motivation to conduct a contrastive analysis of the translation of English film titles into the Lithuanian and the Russian languages was basically generated by the interest in the identification of differences and similarities in the linguistic contexts of the two target languages.As the two languages are relatively similar (both languages belong to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages), the analysis of the translation of titles of films released in 2010-2013 was deemed to be most informative in assessing the most recent tendencies in the choice of translation methods.It was also important to look at the influence that the film genre exerts on the choice of translation methods in both languages.
The aim of the research was to compare the translation methods used to translate English titles of films of two genres into Lithuanian and Russian.For the purpose, one hundred original English comedy titles and one hundred original English thriller titles from 2010-2013 were collected from the Lithuanian website www.kinoteka.ltwhich offers movie classification by genre and year of release.The study subject matter only covered translated titles that had been included in the repertoires of cinemas or TV programs.The translated titles that appeared in several versions were not included in the study.
The objectives were: a) to compare the translation methods used to translate the same film title into Lithuanian and Russian, b) to identify the most commonly used translation methods for both genres and both target languages, c) to determine whether or not the genre had any influence on the selection of the translation method.

Methodology
For the identification of the translation method used in the translation of the English film titles into Lithuanian and Russian, the model of translation procedures suggested by J.-P.Vinay and J. Dalbernet was chosen, basically due to the fact that the model had been developed on the basis of comparative stylistic analysis of French and English texts.The model offers a very clear classification of translation procedures and was therefore considered most relevant to this study.Moreover, this model has been widely acknowledged and applied by translation researchers (Ni, 2009;Newmark, 1988;Baker and Saldanha, 2008).The translation model developed by J.-P.Vinay and J. Dalbernet consists of seven procedures that represent either direct or oblique translation methods.
Three direct translation procedures: 1. Borrowing: The SL word is transferred directly to the TL.
2. Calque: This is a special kind of borrowing where the SL expression or structure is transferred in a literal translation.
3. Literal translation: Word-for-word translation between the languages of the same family and culture.
Four oblique translation procedures: 4. Transposition: This is a change of one part of speech for another without changing the sense.

5.
Modulation: This changes the semantics and point of view of the source language.
6. Equivalence: It refers to cases where languages describe the same situation by different stylistic or structural means.
7. Adaptation: This involves changing the cultural reference when a situation in the source culture does not exist in the target culture (Munday, 2008).
In the course of the research it was noted that some title translation cases characteristic of free translation were not ascribable to any of the oblique procedures as the translator's choice was not to translate but rather to create.Therefore, an eighth translation method called transcreation was deemed relevant and was added to the translation procedure model in question in order to represent an independent creative approach as an extension to the method of adaptation.The term "transcreation" comes into linguistics from the field of business and is defined as "process whereby new content is developed or adapted for a given target audience, rather than translated directly from the original version" (Ray and Kelly, 2010).
It is closely related to the processes involved in localization whose main goal is to adapt or modify a specific product to suit for a chosen target audience.Transcreation, as an absolutely free translation, is also often used to appeal to the targeted audience and to achieve financial success.

Analysis and Results
The contrastive analysis of the translation of English comedy and thriller (2010-2013) titles into Lithuanian and Russian has enabled to identify the most widely applicable translation methods, both by the two target languages and by the two film genres, and to disclose differences in the translation procedures employed.Hence, the top three procedures of translation into the two languages were found to be different.In the Lithuanian translation of comedy titles literal translation (35), transcreation (29) and modulation (14) were the most widely applied translation procedures whereas Russian translators gave priority to transcreation (37), closely followed by literal translation (34), and modulation (12).With reference to J.-P.Vinay and J. Darbernet's model of translation procedures, it may be stated that for this set of comedy titles, both Lithuanian and Russian translators showed preference for oblique or, in other words, free translation procedures.The difference in the choice between direct and oblique translation procedures has been negligible in the comedy titles translated into Lithuanian (with 47 direct translation procedures and 53 oblique translation procedures employed) whereas Russian translations have shown a bigger variation (with 41 direct translation procedures and 59 oblique translation procedures employed).
The data in Table 1 enables to see the correlations between the comedy translation procedures chosen by Lithuanian and Russian translators while Table 2 presents the occurrence of identic translation procedures in both languages and provides examples.
As can be derived from the given data, literal translation is the most frequently applied procedure in the translation of comedy titles into Lithuanian and Russian, which points to the fact that direct translation procedures are still preferable and widely used in the comedy title translation.On the other hand, the procedure of literal translation is very closely followed by transcreation, which was applied in the translation of 19 same film titles into Lithuanian and Russian.The analysis of the identic usage of the borrowing procedure in both languages has shown that both Lithuanian and Russian translators tend to directly borrow proper names or made-up words which have no equivalents in the target language and by communicating the sense of strangeness make them work as attention grabbers for prospective viewers.Modulation as a translation procedure was found to match in 6 comedy titles and is the third translation procedure by identic procedure occurrence.Modulation as a translation procedure is similar to transcreation in that it allows some modifications of the original text.The investigated cases of the identic use of the modulation procedure have revealed that the procedure is most often employed when the target language does not have exactly the same collocations or cultural contexts.For this reason, the modulation procedure works as a linguistic and cultural mediator.The statistics shows that for this set of films Lithuanian translators applied the literal translation procedure in the translation of almost half of the thriller titles (46 cases), that is much more frequently than their Russian counterparts did (38 cases).There is a variation in the other two most frequent translation procedures in both languages.In the Lithuanian translation of thriller titles modulation (20 cases) is the second and transcreation (16 cases) is the third most frequently applied translation procedure whereas in the Russian translation of thriller titles the trancreation procedure (26 cases) is the second and modulation (18 cases) is the third by frequency of usage.The procedures of borrowing, equivalence and adaptation were applied in almost the same number of cases in the translation into either of the languages.
Similarly as in comedy titles, no cases of the calque translation procedure were employed in the translation of thriller titles.In the Lithuanian translation of thriller titles there is a slightly higher frequency in the choice of the transposition procedure, however, the difference is inconsiderable and therefore does not call for further investigation.As we can see from the findings, Russian translators of thriller titles more readily rely on a creative and free approach to translation.Referring to J.-P.Vinay and J. Darbelnet's classification of the translation procedures as direct and oblique, it may be stated that in this set of thriller titles Lithuanian translators relied slightly more readily on the direct translation procedures (56 cases) than on the oblique ones whereas Russian translators gave a minimum preference to the oblique translation procedures (51 cases).As can be seen from the findings, the variation between direct and oblique translation procedures applied in the translation of thriller titles into Lithuanian and Russian was insignificant.
Investigation of cases when the same translation procedure was used both in the Lithuanian and Russian translation of thriller titles was also carried out.Table 4 presents the findings on the identic thriller title translation procedures employed and gives some examples.The data in Table 3 shows that literal translation is the most frequently applied procedure in the translation of thriller titles into both languages, which signifies its importance among the translation procedures.It is not surprising therefore that, as can be seen in Table 4, it was the most frequently used identic translation procedure in the translation of thriller titles into Lithuanian and Russian.
There is also a high number of correspondences in the usage of the transcreation (15) and modulation (12) procedures in both Lithuanian and English translation since statistically these procedures were among the three most popular ones employed in the translation of thriller titles.
Similarly to the findings for comedy titles, the frequency of the identic usage of the borrowing procedure in thriller title translation is high as both Lithuanian and Russian translators tend to transfer proper names or made-up words into the target language without major changes.
It has also been observed that certain cases of the usage of identic translation procedures are not accidental since they reveal the existing practice of imitative translation.To be more specific, by imitative translation we mean identical or almost identical by content film titles in the two languages resulting from oblique translation.It has been found that in a number of cases both Lithuanian and Russian translators "translated" thriller titles identically in terms of content, however, their translations were very distant from the original English title.Table 5 presents some cases of imitative translation of thriller titles, and it is important that this practice has also been observed in the translation of comedy titles.Since the presented examples of imitative translation of thriller titles into Lithuanian and Russian involve a certain degree of creativity, they cannot be treated as cases of casual coincidence.In addition, it can be rightly claimed that either Lithuanian or Russian translators took over the idea of the title translation.In view of close historical connections between Lithuania and Russia, an assumption can be made that Lithuanian translators, still having a good command of the Russian language, might be the ones who took over the idea of the film title translation from their Russian counterparts.However, another possibility has to be taken into account that the idea of translation of those film titles was taken over from a third, unknown to us source of translation.
The identification of imitative translation cases enables to make an assumption that in the translation of film titles the tendency exists to take over the translation method from some other languages into which the title has already been translated.Undoubtedly, verification of the assumption requires a more detailed research, however, the cases of the application of the same oblique translation procedure for the translation of film titles into the two languages when direct translation methods could be successfully applied instead (e.g.: Eng.Friends with Benefits -Lith.Draugiškas seksas -Russ.Секс по дружбе) seem to confirm the grounds for making the assumption.
After having discussed the application of corresponding translation procedures in both languages, it is also important to mention some tendentious differences in the choice of translation methods by Lithuanian and Russian translators.
In Modulation, with 64 cases of application in the translation of film titles into Lithuanian and Russian, turned out to be the third most popular translation procedure.The number of film titles translated into Lithuanian and Russian by using the procedure of modulation did not much differ (34 and 30, respectively).
In terms of direct and oblique translation procedures, in the present study the total number of oblique translation cases was found to be slightly higher than that of direct translation cases.Overall, oblique translation procedures were applied in 207 cases whereas direct translation procedures were employed in 193 cases.If compared by genre, the distribution of the statistical data varied.In the translation of comedy titles into Lithuanian, the number of cases of direct (47 cases) and oblique (53 cases) translation procedures was found to be similar.Differently, in the Russian translation of comedy titles a much greater preference for oblique translation procedures was noted (59 oblique versus 41 direct translation cases).The translation of thriller titles seems to be based on slightly different procedures, with prevalence of direct translation procedures in Lithuanian translation (56 thriller titles) and prevalence, though minimum, of oblique translation procedures in Russian translation (51 thriller titles).It is assumed that the distribution of translation procedures is influenced by genre.
To verify the assumption, further contrastive investigation of translation of film titles of different genres is needed.

Table 1 .
Quantitative Distribution of the Comedy Title Translation Procedures Employed by Lithuanian and Russian TranslatorsAs can be seen in Table1, in the translation of comedy titles in most cases Lithuanian and Russian translators used similar translation procedures.Literal translation, transposition, modulation, equivalence and adaptation were applied in almost the same number of comedy title translations into the two languages.Lithuanian comedy titles contained a few more borrowings from English, as compared to those in the Russian translation.It is important that in the translation of comedy titles into Russian, transcreation, as a translation procedure, was used more often than in the translation thereof into Lithuanian.

Table 2 .
Usage of Identic Translation Procedures in Lithuanian and Russian Translation of Comedy TitlesIt is now important to look at some tendentious differences in the choice of translation methods by Lithuanian and Russian translators.The analysis of the data has shown that in the translation of six comedy titles Lithuanian translators applied the borrowing procedure whereas Russian translators chose transcreation (e.g.: Eng.Jack and Jill -Lith.Džekas ir Džilė -Russ.Такие разные близнецы).A similar tendency can be traced in the choice of literal translation.In as many as nine comedies Lithuanian translators employed literal translation whereas Russian translators gave preference to transcreation (e.g.: Eng.Hop -Lith.Op -Russ.Бунт ушастых).In contrast to these findings, six Lithuanian comedy titles that were translated by using the modulation procedure were translated into Russian by applying the literal translation procedure (e.g.: Eng.Seeking a Friend for the End of the World -Lith.Kartu iki pasaulio pabaigos -Russ.Ищу друга на конец света).It can be stated that Russian translators of comedy titles rely on the transcreation procedure more readily than their Lithuanian counterparts and that the modulation procedure, another creative method of translation, is employed more widely in the translation of comedy titles into Lithuanian than in the Russian translation thereof.The investigation of the translation of thriller titles into Lithuanian and Russian has also revealed interesting findings.As we can see in Table3, in the translation of thriller titles both Lithuanian and Russian translators employed the literal translation procedure most frequently.

Table 3 .
Quantitative Distribution of the Thriller Title Translation Procedures Employed by Lithuanian and Russian Translators

Table 4 .
Usage of Identic Translation Procedures in Lithuanian and Russian Translation of Thriller Titles

Table 5 .
Examples of Imitative Translation among Thriller Titles comparison with comedies, thriller titles reveal fewer distinctive tendencies of different choices of translation methods.The analysis of the data has shown that in six comedies where Lithuanian translators applied a direct translation procedure Russian translators chose transcreation (e.g.: Eng.Edge of Darkness -Lith.Tamsos pakraštys -Russ.Возмездие).However, in the choice of modulation, another oblique translation procedure, most contradicting results were observed.In four thrillers where Lithuanian translators employed the literal translation procedure Russian translators gave preference to modulation (e.g.: Eng.The Debt -Lith.Skola -Russ.Расплата).It is though interesting to note that in contrast to the above, Lithuanian thriller titles contained four cases of modulation whereas the same titles were translated into Russian by applying the literal translation procedure (e.g.: Eng.The Bay -Lith.Baimės įlanka -Russ.Залив).As we can see from the findings, in the translation of thriller titles into the two languages the choice of translation procedures is wider and prioritisation of translation procedures is less expressed.ConclusionsThe analysis of the translation of comedy and thriller titles into Lithuanian and Russian has demonstrated that literal translation is the most commonly used translation procedure in the set of two hundred films.It was employed in 153 of translation cases, in 81 into Lithuanian and 72 into Russian, respectively.Literal translation was noted to be the most frequently used translation procedure in the translation of comedy titles into Lithuanian and in the translation of thriller titles into Lithuanian and Russian, and is the first procedure by frequency of usage overall.Interestingly, transcreation was the most frequent procedure used to translate comedy titles into Russian, and, having been applied in 108 cases out of the total 200 cases of translation of the two genres into Lithuanian and Russian, occupies the second position by frequency of usage overall.It was employed in 45 cases by Lithuanian translators and in 63 cases by Russian translators.The statistical data allows to state that in the translation of film titles the transcreation procedure is much more frequent in the translation into Russian, as compared to the translation into Lithuanian.