Translating film titles: linguistic skills, cultural awareness or marketing strategies?

Film titles play an important role in the media field because they give their audience various clues about the genre and possibly the plot of the film itself. From a linguistic point of view, film titles are just like literature, that is, art work whose original intention(s), functions and flavour should be preserved as much as possible in translation. From a cultural point of view, film titles are bound to the original author’s cultural setting and, as such, they can be viewed as an expression of cultural identity which may pose problems in translation. From a marketing point of view, film titles are held responsible for the success or failure at the box office. This paper is aimed at assessing the impact and the quality of the strategies employed in translating film titles since in Italy these translations are carried out by the marketing department of the distribution houses.