The production and reception of titles for Hollywood film imports in Turkey

Abstract

This study explores the production and reception of titles for imported films in Turkey. In Turkey, a large number of imported films, particularly Hollywood imports, are screened in cinemas. When these films are released, they are shown with subtitles or dubbed, and most of the time their titles are translated. There are also times when titles are left untranslated and occasions when the original title is replaced with something to which it bears no semantic or formal likeness. There is also a lack of research on the process that lies behind the "translation" of these titles and the procedures involved in this process. Part of the aim of this thesis, therefore, is to fmd out what those procedures are and present them to readers. On the audience side of matters, there seems to be some dissatisfaction with the titles produced. This would seem to be a problem, as the films and film titles are produced in order to attract audiences to the cinema. Therefore, it is important to understand why audiences frequently respond to these titles in a negative way. In order to do this, the study draws on audience research, as well as questionnaires and interviews conducted an1ong people working in film distribution companies in Turkey. Benefiting from the categories of translation procedures suggested by previous translation scholars, it analyses the procedures used for imported film titles among the top-hundred films released in 2010 and then combines the findings from this analysis with the results of audience questionnaires in order to gauge the extent to which distributors meet audience expectations. The study suggests that distributors are in fact aware of their target audience and that target audiences respond to the titles in the way they are expected to do. However, when it comes to commenting on titles as translations, film-lovers are swayed by traditional binary oppositions between "good" (i.e. "faithful") versus "bad" (i .e. "unfaithful") translation and express negative attitudes towards translated titles that might be seen as functional and target-culture oriented.