Translation methods for movie titles: A case study in Vietnam

The study aims to examine how movie titles are translated from English to Vietnamese under the light of the translation methods proposed by Newmark (1988). To fulfil this research objective, the researcher uses a linguistic corpus consisting of 83 pairs of movie titles collected randomly from various sources. Two research methods are employed, including discourse analysis to analyse the linguistic components used in the original and translated titles and translation comparative to compare the linguistic and semantic similarities and differences between the two versions to identify what methods have been used in each title translation. The research findings show that of the eight methods presented by Newmark (1988), only five are employed, including faithful translation, semantic translation, idiomatic translation, free translation and adaptation, together with the two additional ones, including keeping the title unchanged and creating a new title, of which faithful translation has the highest frequency of use, while the least common method is idiomatic translation. The findings indicate that the choice of translation methods depends on the text types and translators’ consideration of the linguistic, semantic and pragmatic transfer in the translation process. These findings partly align with the earlier research of Newmark and other scholars, thereby further consolidating the theories related to translation methods while some new findings are identified as the contributions of this study to the research topic. Based on the findings, some implications have been made on how to translate movie titles in general and other text types in particular.