Cultural problems in translation of English and Polish film titles

Abstract

The article describes the most common cultural problems appearing in translation of film titles from English into Polish. Its aim is to verify which translation strategies and methods are most frequently encountered while dealing with such problems and whether they are a result of globalisation or rather an attempt to transfer elements of the source language culture. In order to show the most frequent translation strategies, a corpus of title translations from Polish into English was analysed. Firstly, the culture issues were categorized into names, quotations and other problems. Then, examples of translation strategies were elaborated upon. It turned out that the influence of globalisation is visible in title translations. Specifically cultural items difficult to render are often generalised or removed. Foreignisation is used especially in case of names and allusions to songs, but other strategies are also applied in such cases. It is also common in case of names when foreign ones are replaced with their target language equivalents. However, then the viewers still have a feeling that the name belongs to the foreign culture, although its sound is closer to them. In general, rendering cultural issues is rather not very essential to translators of film titles: titles are foreignised only when viewers have no difficulties with understanding them. A number of instances can be presented in which the influence of globalisation is observed, and rendering cultural issues, not forgetting at the same time about maintaining the main functions of the title, poses a great challenge for contemporary translators.