TRANSLATION OF FEATURE FILM TITLES: STRATEGIES AND TACTICS

The article examines the distinctive features of translating English-language feature film titles released between 2000 and 2024 into Ukrainian. A film title is viewed as an essential element of the film text that performs nominative, informative, promotional, and expressive functions, shaping the target audience’s initial perception of the film. The study analyses the principal translation strategies employed in rendering film titles, namely domestication and foreignisation, and identifies the specific features of their implementation depending on linguistic, cultural, and pragmatic factors. Particular attention is paid to the translation tactics of direct translation, title transformation, and title substitution, which contribute to achieving communicative equivalence between the source and target titles. The findings indicate that the choice of a translation solution is determined not only by the need to preserve the semantic content and imagery of the original title but also by the necessity of taking into account cultural references, the film genre, marketing considerations, and the expectations of the Ukrainian audience. The article also characterises the principal translation techniques employed in rendering film titles, including loan translation, transcription, transliteration, concretisation, generalization, logical development, as well as grammar and lexical-grammatical transformations. It is argued that the selection of a particular translation strategy and its corresponding tactic is driven by the translator’s intention to achieve an optimal balance between preserving the national and cultural specificity of the original title and ensuring its comprehensibility and appeal to the target audience. The study demonstrates that direct translation is the most frequently employed tactic, whereas transformation and title substitution are applied when a literal rendering fails to produce the intended pragmatic effect or does not conform to the norms of the Ukrainian language. The findings confirm that the effective translation of feature film titles requires a comprehensive consideration of linguistic, cultural, and communicative factors, as well as the integration of theoretical principles of Translation Studies with the practical demands of the contemporary film industry.