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Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science

ISSN Online: 2576-0548 ISSN Print: 2576-0556 CODEN: JHASAY
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ArticleOpen Access http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2026.06.004

Visibility and Invisibility: On Female Images in the Chinese Translation of Film Titles

Xiao Liu

School of Foreign Languages, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Qingdao 266061, Shandong, China.

*Corresponding author: Xiao Liu

Published: June 23, 2026

Abstract

This article applies feminist translation theory to the Chinese translations of nine English film titles that come from the Chinese mainland, the Hong Kong SAR, and the Taiwan region. Film title translation has long been seen as a commercial practice. Its main purpose is to draw audiences and boost box office earnings. But it is also a cultural site where gender discourse gets reproduced. This dimension remains largely unexplored in cross-cultural audiovisual studies. The analysis builds on three key concepts from feminist translation frameworks: visibility, objectification, and subjectivity. Using comparative critical discourse analysis, the study looks at how translations vary across the three regions. The findings show a striking duality. On one hand, women are often rendered systematically invisible. Their identities are flattened into stereotypical aesthetic or erotic symbols. They are stripped of independent agency. On the other hand, a handful of creative translations succeed in reconstructing female subjectivity and bringing it to the fore. This tension points to the complexity of gender politics embedded in different sociocultural settings. At the same time, it leaves room for deliberate ethical choices. As an ethical paradigm, feminist translation theory pushes translators to exercise gendered subjectivity. It asks them to challenge patriarchal language structures. The ultimate goal is straightforward: to make sure women are genuinely “seen and heard” in the translated text.

Keyword

Feminist translation theory; film title translation; gender subjectivity

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Copyright

© 2026 by the author(s).
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license, which permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not modified or adapted.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

How to cite this paper

Visibility and Invisibility: On Female Images in the Chinese Translation of Film Titles

How to cite this paper: Xiao Liu. (2026) Visibility and Invisibility: On Female Images in the Chinese Translation of Film Titles. Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science10(6), 631-637.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2026.06.004