TRANSLATION TECHNIQUES IN BLUE SKY STUDIOS FEATURE FILM TITLES - A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF BULGARIAN AND RUSSIAN TRANSLATIONS

Abstract

The crucial role of titles for introducing and marketing entertainment products such as feature films is undeniable and stems from the need to motivate potential audiences to make a specific effort and invest their time and money in order to see a movie. In the world of today with its comforts and availability of entertainment at people`s fingertips, it requires a specific effort on the part of entertainment creators to make people leave the comfort of their homes and commit to the process of “going to the movies”. This places a specific expectation on feature films that they should be something special, there should be more to them than what other forms of entertainment (such as TV, social media content or streaming platforms) offer - a good movie is an experience. For the audience, the starting point of that entire experience is the title - it introduces, labels and brings together the entire production, it creates the first impression. The title is a pivoting point for the entire marketing campaign of the movie as a product and needs to fit appropriately with the rest of the production in order to have the desired strong impact - and to hopefully become a household name, or gain an “iconic” status and bring with it an entire franchise to further capitalize on the success of the initial product. Furthermore, in order to maximize profit, these entertainment products need to be marketed to as many markets as possible, to as many countries, cultures and languages as possible and for this purpose the title of the production needs to be rendered, translated into the target language of the receiving audiences. This process involves specific strategies, methods and techniques which are multifaceted and are not only linguistic in nature, but also stem from the theory and practice of marketing and advertising.
The purpose of the present study is to take a look into the specific ways in which these marketing and advertising strategies are reflected in the actual final product of the title`s translation - i.e., the actual translation techniques observable in the translated titles of these animated feature films. The article provides a descriptive analysis of the sets of translation techniques employed in the rendering of titles of animated feature films from the original English to the Bulgarian and Russian, respectively. More specifically, the study is dedicated to the titles of the animated films produced by Blue Sky Studios and attempts to delineate the specific techniques employed based on the actual existing translations of the titles. For this purpose a corpus has been created containing 39 units of analysis - all 13 original titles and their Bulgarian and Russian translations of films produced b the studio which have been marketed to Bulgarian and Russian theater audiences.