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‘No Revolutionary Roads Please, We’Re

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  • Across Languages and Cultures 14 (2), pp. 245266 (2013) DOI: 10.1556/ACR.14.2013.2.6

    1585-1923/$ 20.00 2013 Akadmiai Kiad, Budapest

    NO REVOLUTIONARY ROADS PLEASE, WERE TURKISH:

    THE TRANSLATION OF FILM TITLES AS AN OBJECT OF TRANSLATION RESEARCH

    JONATHAN ROSS

    Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies

    Boazii University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, 34342 Bebek, Istanbul, Turkey E-mail: [email protected]

    Abstract: This paper endeavours to promote further research into the relatively ne-

    glected field of film title translation by highlighting the fascinating range of factors and agents (including not just translators) that help determine the names used to market films imported into a country. As a survey article, it cannot dwell on all the variables that shape the choice of such titles but instead focuses on five: the diversity of translation tactics avail-able; the influence of the cultural background of the target audience; local patterns and con-ventions with regards to title translation; commercial considerations and the techniques they engender; and the impact of the international process and business relations from which translated film titles emerge. To illustrate these factors and to lend the paper a comparative and international perspective, the article draws on data from two countries on the margins of Europe, Turkey and Slovenia, who (albeit in different proportions) are heavily dependent on imported films, especially from the USA: it analyses a parallel corpus of film titles from the year 2009 and incorporates the findings from a questionnaire completed by professionals involved in the translation of titles in these two territories.

    Keywords: film title translation, translation tactics, globalisation, Turkey, Slovenia

    1. INTRODUCTION

    On 15th December 2008, Revolutionary Road, a drama film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, premiered in the United States. Adapted from Richard Yatess 1961 novel with the same title, the film depicts Frank and April Wheelers anguished quest for happiness amidst the stifling conformity of 1950s suburban Connecticut. The Revolutionary Road in the title is the name of the leafy street to which the protagonists move early in the film. Ironically, the lifestyle the Wheelers find themselves and those around them leading is anything but revolutionary, and the couple, particularly April, feel deeply frus-trated with their monotonous lives. Thus, people who see the film or read the novel are likely to understand the title as Yates purportedly intended it, that is, as signalling ironically that the revolutionary road laid by the Wheelers Ameri-can predecessors had reached a dead end (interview with Richard Yates 1974, cited in Ford 2000). The title could also be said to refer to another symbol of

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    (bourgeois) revolution that presents itself in the story France, the country to which the couple contemplate escaping. When Frank is offered a lucrative pro-motion, though, he abandons the French revolutionary road and shatters the dreams that April had had for them and their family, leading to the destruction of their marriage and the death of April through a failed self-inflicted abortion.

    Although Revolutionary Road is a very American film in terms of its set-ting, characters, plot and themes, it was actually a joint production of BBC Films and the US company Dreamworks, with the lead actress being English. What is more, it proved a bigger commercial success abroad than domestically.1 When it came on general release in the US (23rd January 2009), it had already arrived in cinemas across Europe, and by the end of February it was showing in most major film-territories of the world.2

    Various factors might have attracted people to watch Revolutionary Road, such as the lead actors DiCaprio and Winslet, starring together for the first time since the blockbuster Titanic (1997), or perhaps the famed director Sam Men-des. With this film, as with any other, the title is also likely to have had an im-pact on viewers. Indeed, one film-marketing expert has claimed that An evoca-tive title can be the most effective single element of creative material in a broad marketing program, because a films name is relentlessly pushed into the mar-ketplace with giant billboards, television ads, and print ads (Marich 2009:25). Here, Marich mentions just three contexts in which a title appears and helps to advertise a film; others, to which he refers elsewhere (2009:47), include trailers, websites, and the spoken or written discourse of film and media professionals and of ordinary members of the public.

    The makers of the film Revolutionary Road chose to retain the title of Yatess novel, as tends to be the case with films based on literary works (Kol-strup 2007). Yet when the film travelled abroad, distribution companies in countries where English is not the dominant language created a myriad of titles. In Spain and Portugal, the original title was retained, and the Japanese distribu-tor chose to transliterate (/, Reboryshonar Rdo). In Greece, the distributor named the film (The Road to Revolution). The German public came to know the film under the title Zeiten des Aufruhrs (Times of Tumult), whereby the theme of turmoil was retained but the specific reference to the road was sacri-ficed. In Slovenia, where the film was titled Krona cesta, the distributing firm Karantanija opted to keep the road (cesta) but described it as circular (krona).3 As for Turkey, the local subsidiary of United International Pictures opted to deviate markedly from the original title and to produce a new title, Ha-yallerin Peinde (Pursuing Dreams), shunning the English titles specific ref-erence to the Road and actually giving a clearer sense of the story of the film than did most other international titles.

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    In this paper, I hope to demonstrate that seeing such titles for imported films as translated texts and outcomes of translational processes can teach us a lot about the manifold factors and agents (and not just translators) that deter-mine translational decisions in todays world. The article is an introductory overview of the multiple factors and constraints that shape the choice of titles for imported films, a multiplicity which is rarely acknowledged in the scholarly literature on the subject and which most members of the public are presumably unaware of. In line with the comparative and international ambit of this issue, the paper takes most of its data from two countries, Turkey and Slovenia: it draws on a parallel corpus of the titles for the most popular films from the year 2009 (the most recent year for which full data were available) and on a ques-tionnaire completed by ten representatives of film distribution companies who are directly involved in the selection of titles in either Turkey or Slovenia (see Sources). As such, it gives us the chance to compare and account for the differ-ent solutions that film distributors in these two countries have found for trans-lating the same source texts, and it pushes us to try and understand the converg-ing and diverging patterns in this particular field of translation. The fact that the primary sources examined include commentaries by the people who actually choose these titles lends us a rare insight into what goes on behind the scenes in media conglomerates and their local partners, providing us with concrete evi-dence not only of how globalisation can affect translational practices but also of how different cultures and the agents within them respond differently to the global spread of cultural goods.

    2. LITERATURE REVIEW

    Back in 1993, in her pioneering Einfhrung in das funktionale bersetzen am Beispiel von Titeln und berschriften (Introduction to Functional Translation: Titles and Headings as a Case in Point), Christiane Nord noted that it was re-markable that translation studies had largely neglected the phenomenon of the title (2). Twenty years on, Nords study is still the sole book-length treatment of the translation of titles of printed works. As for scholarly literature on film title translation, it is limited in quantity and scope, but several translation scholars have recognised the potential of this subject and have addressed title-translation in individual countries, including Spain (Gonzlez Ruiz 1998, 2000 and 2001; Mart and Zapater 1993; Bravo 2004; Daz Prez 2008), Germany (Schubert 2004; Steinsaltz n.d.), Italy (Brownlees 1994), Turkey (Bulut 2001; Doan 2012) and China (e.g. Ying 2007 and Yin 2009), China being a particularly abundant source of articles published online. Many articles go little further than categorising and illustrating the procedures used in translating (mostly Ameri-can) foreign titles, with Yin for instance finding that Techniques of English movie title translation mainly fall into two categories: showing respect for the

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    original title (transliteration, literal translation, explication) and discarding the original one (adaptation, providing a new title) (Yin 2009:171). Other studies offer a more conclusive, empirically-based account of title-translation tenden-cies in a particular territory through statistical analysis of a corpus. Examples are Schuberts (2004) study of 1,486 German titles for English-language films between the years 1944 and 2003 and Grtner and Schlatters comparative analysis of German and Brazilian translations of 364 (mostly AmericanEnglish) titles during the period 1992 to 1996 (2001).

    Some authors are quite judgmental and prescriptive in their language. This is usually the case when they encounter translations that seem semantically dis-tant from the original title, but there are times when commentators object to lit-eral translation. Several articles, though, exhibit a more descriptive, explanatory and interpretive approach to film title translations. Foremost among these are Gonzlez Ruizs studies of the influence of religious-ideological and economic pressures in the titling of foreign films in Francos Spain (1998, 2000 and 2001). Gonzlez Ruiz observes that the seemingly innocuous titles of American films were rewritten in such a way as to emphasize that these films conveyed a moral message that would be acceptable to the highly influential Catholic Church. He speculates, though, that the renaming of a film like In the Cool of the Day (1963) as Amor prohibido (Forbidden Love) might at the same time have been a crafty marketing ploy on the part of the film distributors, intended to lure people who were hungry for tales of immorality, even if such viewers were likely to be disappointed by films that turned out to be less debauched than the Spanish title had led them to expect (Gonzlez Ruiz 2000:167f.)!

    As yet, there are no published monographs on the translation of film titles. One welcome recent contribution is an MA thesis completed under my supervi-sion (Doan 2012). Like many of her predecessors, Doan proposes a new ty-pology for categorizing title-translation procedures, which she applies to a cor-pus of the top 100 films in Turkey in 2010. But she goes further than this, com-bining the findings from this corpus research with insights gained from audi-ence research carried out face-to-face and online and from a questionnaire for film distributors, which we developed together. Her aim was to assess what ex-pectations ordinary members of the public have of translated titles, whether they react differently to such titles when they know their original form, and whether the translation strategies preferred by film distributors are actually appreciated by the audience and, as such, fulfil their purpose.

    The data that Doan obtained from within the film distribution industry is especially illuminating. The responses to the questionnaire confirm what several scholars (e.g. Grtner and Schlatter 2001:85; Bravo 2004:227) have stated, namely, that the job of finding titles for film imports is normally done not by professional translators but by experts in marketing, distributing and advertis-ing, in conjunction with executive managers. Doans data also helps uncover

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    the process of communication between the US film studios and their distributors in Turkey as well as the factors that appear to rank most highly in the minds of the people responsible for choosing titles for imports. The current paper draws on the same data, supplementing it with responses from Slovenian distributors, thus enabling a comparison between the two countries and paving the way to a more general understanding of the phenomenon of film title translation.

    3. THE VALUE OF STUDYING FILM TITLE TRANSLATIONS

    3.1. Film Titles as Exemplars of Translation Tactics Translated film titles constitute fruitful research material for a number of rea-sons. On a practical level, since they are generally short, they render the differ-ences between source and target texts and thus translation strategies and tac-tics4 particularly visible, and the reasons for these differences and practices

    Table 1 Translation tactics employed in the translated titles

    Translation tactics Target text Target text (Back translation) Source text

    Non-translation (TR) Michael Jack-sons This Is It Michael Jacksons This Is It

    Michael Jacksons This Is It

    Transcription (TR) rek Shrek Shrek

    Literal translation (SN) Deek v rtasti piami The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

    The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

    Established idiomatic equivalent (TR) Pek Yaknda Very Soon Coming Soon

    Transposition5 (SN) Borba Fight Fighting Modulation6 (TR) Sahtekarlar Tricksters Duplicity Other minor semantic shift (SN) Ugrabljena Abducted Taken

    Amplification7 (TR) Yukar Bak Look up! Up

    Reduction8 (SN) Hia demonov The House of De-mons The Haunting in Connecticut

    Free translation with semantic connection (TR) Kara By Dark Spell Drag Me to Hell

    Free translation with no semantic connection

    (SN) Nenavadna nogodivina Unusual Adventure No Network

    Title with precedent9 (TR) Harry Potter ve Melez Prens Harry Potter and the Mixed-race Prince

    Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

    Note. In the first column, I itemise the various translational tactics that local film distribu-tors can be seen to have used when creating titles for films imported into a territory; the second column presents examples of titles produced using these tactics, either from Turkey (TR) or Slo-venia (SI); a literal translation of these titles is given in the third column; the fourth column iden-tifies the full form of the original US title, as listed in the Internet Movie Database.

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    Table 2 Frequency of employment of translation tactics in the corpus of Turkish & Slovene titles for film

    imports in 2009

    Turkey n = 200 Slovenia n = 190 Number % Number %

    Local films in top 10 5 50% 0 0% Foreign films in top 10 5 50% 10 100% Local films in top 200/190 54 27% 11 6% Foreign films in top 200 /190 146 73% 179 94% Non-translation 12 8% 19 11% Non-translation (in combination) 19 13% 37 21% Transcription 0 0% 2 1% Transcription (in combination) 6 4% 8 4% SUB-TOTAL NON-TRANS. + TRANSCRIPTION 35 24% 66 37% Literal translation 36 25% 80 45% Literal translation (in combination) 29 20% 32 18% SUB-TOTAL LITERAL TRANSLATION 65 45% 111 62% Established idiomatic equivalent 2 1% 2 1% Transposition 3 2% 3 2% Modulation 4 3% 5 3% Modulation (in combination) 2 2% 2 1% Other minor semantic modification 7 5% 7 4% Other minor semantic modification (in combination) 8 5% 9 5% SUB-TOTAL MINOR MODIFICATION 26 18% 28 16% SUB-TOTAL LITERAL TRANS. + MINOR MOD. 85 58% 132 74% Free translation with semantic connection 9 6% 7 4% Free translation with semantic connection (in combination) 14 10% 4 2% Free translation with no semantic connection 1 1% 0 0% Free translation with no semantic connection (in combination) 13 9% 3 2% SUB-TOTAL FREE 37 25% 14 8% Amplification 7 5% 8 4% Amplification (in combination) 37 25% 24 13% SUB-TOTAL AMPLIFICATION 44 30% 32 18% Reduction 2 1% 0 0% Reduction (in combination) 11 8% 5 3% SUB-TOTAL REDUCTION 13 9% 5 3% Title with precedent 45 31% 57 32%

    Note. Table 2 indicates the frequency (in terms of figures and percentages) with which the tactics classified in Table 1 have been used in the titles for foreign films distributed within Turkey and Slovenia in 2009. For reasons outlined below, some titles have been classified as manifesting two or more tactics; the frequency of such cases can be seen in the rows in which the first column presents the name of the tactic being measured plus (in combination).

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    can then be discussed in a more nuanced manner than might arguably be the case with longer stretches of text. My corpus certainly reveals a wide range of translation tactics, illustrated in Table 1, and the table leaves no doubt that translation in the real world requires flexibility and creativity.

    Although in 2009, the same number of films and the same films were not screened in the two countries, for a more healthy comparison I have based my corpus of translated titles and their sources on authoritative annual film-distribution lists (see Sources) which are roughly equal in length: the Turkish list contains 200 films and the Slovene list includes slightly less, 190. To indi-cate a significant contrast between the film-sectors in Turkey and Slovenia namely the quantity and popularity of domestic productions in Turkey as op-posed to their relative paucity in Slovenia I have added some statistics related to the number of local and foreign films distributed during the period in ques-tion. While it is not clear at present whether or how this difference might affect titling procedures, the statistics arguably provide important background infor-mation about the context of film production, distribution and exhibition.

    On first appearances, the typology and the analysis derived from it can be criticised on a number of counts. To start with, the typology seems to proceed from the assumption that the unit of translation is the individual word, rather than the phrase, the sentence, the text, the function, the culture and so on, as most serious translation scholars today maintain (Nord 1997:68f.). As an exam-ple, the Slovene translation of The Haunting in Connecticut, Hia demonov (The House of Demons) has been included in Table 1 to exemplify reduction because the specific reference to Connecticut has been omitted from the trans-lated title. From a functionalist perspective, though, the choice of the entire title Hia demonov could be said to be motivated by the operative function of attract-ing Slovene fans of horror films without overcomplicating the matter through the inclusion of the foreignizing element of Connecticut.

    In defence of my methodology, I would argue that the typologys principal purpose is to give us a rough picture of the preferred tactics for title translation in the two countries at one particular juncture. Most of the categories I have de-ployed to classify title translations correspond to those that film distributors use to describe the choices they make; in other words, the typology appears to re-flect the way translators of film titles approach their task. The statistics pre-sented in Table 2 arguably vindicate the typology in that they bring out the points of convergence between Turkey and Slovenia (especially the common-ness of literal translation) and the particular features of the individual countries, namely the stronger tendency of free translation and amplification in Turkey and of literal translation, non-translation and transcription in Slovenia.

    Having said this, in making use of Vinay and Darbelnets notions of transposition and modulation and my own category of other minor semantic modification, the typology signals that translation tactics should not be divided

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    merely into the four main categories of non-translation, transcription, literal translation and free translation, which is sometimes the case in the literature on title-translation (c.f. Jovanovi 1990; Yin 2009; Ying 2007). For reasons such as the grammar, lexis and stylistic conventions of the target language, mi-nor modifications are often made to the title, whether these be optional or obligatory shifts.

    A further argument in defence of the typology is that the methodology that has been applied in the analysis allows us to view the 390 items in the corpus from multiple perspectives, since individual items can be labelled as belonging to more than one category at once. Thus, Hia demonov has been classed not only as a case of reduction but also as an example of Free translation with semantic connection. Such a methodology is necessary given the hybrid char-acter of some translated titles, that is, the fact that translations involve multiple tactics and functions. The film Terminator: Salvation, for example, screened in Turkey with the title Terminatr: Kurtulu. In terms of the typology, this is a combination of the transcription of the main title and the literal translation of the sub-title, but the title as a whole can also be seen as a title with precedent, since this film is the last in a series of four science-fiction films. For this reason, Terminatr: Kurtulu has been classified as an example of transcription, literal translation and precedented translation in combination. The methodology of ap-plying multiple descriptors has proven particularly fruitful in revealing the commonness of the tactic of amplification as well as the extent to which precedent shapes the choice of translated titles. The label amplification has been applied to titles that are inherently more explicit and/or informative than their sources and do in fact offer the recipient a clearer idea of the content of the film; in other words, it tells us not just about the relationship between the target title and the source title but also about the relationship between the title as a paratext in Genettes (1997) sense and the text to which it refers, the actual film. Thus, the Slovene title Moja grka avantura (My Greek Adventure) for the romantic comedy My Life in Ruins has been classified as Free translation with no semantic connection and Amplification: the first descriptor stems from the fact that, without seeing the film, it is practically impossible to understand the connection between the English and Slovene titles; the label of amplification indicates that the Slovene title (like the Turkish title Ak Rehberi, Love Guide) gives us much more information about the plot of this film, which revolves around the romantic escapades of a travel guide in Greece.10

    3.2. Film Titles as Exemplars of Target Culture Factors

    The corpus offers copious evidence of the crucial role that target culture factors can have in influencing translation decisions. An example is the film mentioned at the beginning of this article: one of the reasons why UIP Turkey did not opt

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    for a literal translation of Revolutionary Road might well have been that the most obvious word-for-word rendition of it would have been Devrimci Yol, the name of a radical Leftist movement in Turkey. In the unlikely event that UIP had used this title, Turkish-speakers who saw the name of this militant group emblazoned on a poster in juxtaposition to the faces of DiCaprio and Winslet would undoubtedly be perplexed; on the other hand, those who heard or saw nothing else but the title might think that the film was a documentary about Devrimci Yol, which could either put them off seeing the film or motivate them to do so, only for them to be disappointed when they discovered what it was ac-tually about! The particular associations that revolutionary carried in Yugo-slavia and its successor states probably also explain why the Slovenian distribu-tor of Revolutionary Road opted to call the film Circular, rather than Revolu-tionary Road.

    While the Turkish and Slovene translations of Revolutionary Road may be examples of how the target context can rule out certain translation decisions, the Turkish translation of the 2006 romantic comedy Wedding Daze, Taze Gelin akn Damat (2007) (Newly-wed Bride, Bewildered Groom) demonstrates how indigenous texts within the target culture can provide positive precedents for translations. The pun on days/daze in the American title refers to the as-tounding chain of events through which the male protagonist, who has recently lost the love-of-his-life and claims he will never love again, ends up getting married to a complete stranger. Faced with the hefty challenge of translating the pun in the title, the Turkish distributors opted for a creative rendering that re-tains the theme of the confused groom (akn Damat) but does so using two very familiar Turkish idioms in a novel yet catchy combination: taze gelin is a common expression in colloquial Turkish, appearing for instance in the title of a folk-song Ben De Bildim Taze Gelin Olmusun (I heard youve just got mar-ried) and akn Damat was the title of a 1975 Turkish comedy starring the legendary Turkish comedy actor Kemal Sunal.

    When asked to identify the factors that he and his colleagues consider when choosing titles for films, Andrej Novak, director of theatrical distribution and marketing in the Slovenian company Karantanija, listed the following ten:

    A. Is the translation literal enough (when needed)? B. Does it capture the meaning of the original title? C. Is the title cinematic (fresh, bigger than life)? D. Is it commercial? E. Is it in the language of the target audience? F. Does it leave options for sequels? G. Does it fit in with the graphics on the poster and other materials? H. Is it offensive (trying to avoid it)? I. s it provocative (when the target audience is appropriate)? J. Is it the same as the local translation of the book? (Novak 2011)

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    What is striking here is that, out of the 11 criteria Novak lists, only the first two concern the relationship between the local title and the source title, while the remaining nine pertain to the position of the title vis--vis different aspects of the new context within which it is supposed to function. This can be interpreted as corroborating Gideon Tourys often-cited claim that translations are facts of the culture which hosts them (Toury 1995:24). C and E are related to generic conventions and linguistic norms and policies. At root, D is connected with the expectations and tastes of the target audience, since a title that does not take these into account is unlikely to bring commercial success to a film. H and I are also oriented to the target audience, but they may have a political or legal di-mension too if a title threatens to inflame local cultural or political sensitivities. As unconnected as they may seem initially, we can group F, G, J under the heading of intertextuality: J acknowledges the link between translated film ti-tles and past translations; G concerns the compatibility between the title, a ver-bal text, and other kinds of visual co-texts with which it appears simultaneously (although the visual texts are invariably produced several months before the verbal text, so the verbal text is expected to confirm to the visual co-text and not vice versa); and F. pertains to the link between the title and other texts in the fu-ture. Although this list is not complete, it neatly encapsulates the variety of tar-get-culture factors that impinge on the process of film title translation.

    Due to space limitations, it is not possible to deal with all the factors that Novak mentions or, for that matter, those that he omits. In particular, I will not be dwelling on the relationship within multimodal contexts such as posters and trailers between the title, other verbal texts (e.g. taglines and quotes from film critics) and still or moving visual images. To be sure, the interaction between a title and its verbal and visual co-text can profoundly affect the way viewers un-derstand the title and thus increase or decrease the work that a title has to do; more often than not, additional visual and verbal paratexts function as amplifi-cation devices, offsetting titles that are deliberately un- or misinformative. Jeremy Munday is entirely justified in maintaining that Translation studies must move beyond the written word and the visual, and multimodal in general, must be incorporated into a fuller study of the translation of advertising (Mun-day 2004:216), with title translation clearly having a lot in common with the translation of advertising. However, because the semiotic unity between the word and the image (Nord 1993:49) is such a complex issue, which requires ample illustration, it will have to be covered in its own right in subsequent pub-lications. I will limit my discussion here to three of the most important and in-teresting factors: the influence of prevalent patterns with regard to the transla-tion of titles, a factor Novak does not mention directly; the attempt to maximize commercial appeal (D) through the use of amplification and genre-markers; and a further factor that Novak neglects, the influence of the (international) business setting on the production of titles.

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    3.2.1. Titling patterns

    In her functionalist study of titles and headings, Nord argues very convincingly that, in order to produce an effective translation, a translator must be familiar with the conventions of the target-culture and the expectations of readers, even if (s)he deliberately flouts them (1993:7). This entails appreciating that texts of a distinct variety (Textsorte) in one language, such as titles, tend to share fea-tures that mark them off not only from texts of the same variety in other lan-guages but also from texts of other kinds in the same language. To demonstrate this, Nord analyses a corpus of around 12,500 titles and headings in German, English, French and Spanish and identifies a series of syntactic, semantic and functional characteristics that, she claims, have established themselves as con-ventions within the particular cultures and language communities examined (Nord 1993:284).

    Through my quantitative analysis of a more modest corpus, I likewise have discerned a number of patterns that seem to point to the existence of translating and titling conventions, although examination of a larger corpus covering a longer period is needed to confirm this. In both countries, but particularly in Slovenia, literal or even word-for-word translation was found to be the most popular strategy, and the percentage of translations performed using the other tactics was considerably lower. As we see in Table 2, 25% of titles in Turkey and 45% of titles in Slovenia consist purely of literal translation, but when we add to this the translations that partially involve literal translation and those where minor modification has been deployed, the figures rise to 58% for Tur-key and 74% for Slovenia. Contributing to the frequency of literal translation in Slovenia is the fact that 12 of the films imported there came from countries where, like Slovenia, a Slavic language is spoken, making recourse to literal translation a more feasible prospect, but this does not completely close the gap between Turkey and Slovenia. In Turkey, free translations (25%) are much more common than they are in Slovenia (8%). Equally striking is the frequency of recourse to amplification, especially in Turkey: 30% of title translations in Turkey involve some element of explicitation or extra information, but the fig-ure for this in Slovenia is only 18%. Although only 5% of title translations in Turkey have been classified purely as amplification, which differs very margin-ally from the 4% for Slovenia, when it comes to amplification in combination with another tactic, the Turkish percentage of 25% outstrips the Slovene tally of 13%. The statistics also reveal the large proportion of free translations in Tur-key that involve a degree of amplification. Of the 13 Turkish titles categorized as Free translation with semantic connection (in combination), 11 involve the combination between this kind of free translation and amplification and only two see free translation wedded with some other kind of tactic. When it comes to Free translation with no semantic connection (in combination), all 13 com-

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    binations are with the tactic of amplification. The total number of free transla-tions in Slovenia (14) is too small for statistics related to combination with am-plification to have any real significance.

    3.2.2. Amplification, genre-marking, and emotive words

    A good many of the cases of amplification in both countries can be thought of as obligatory. They occur when the original title refers to a person, object, phenomenon or text probably familiar to members of the source culture but less likely to be known among the target audience, so that the latter would have dif-ficulty understanding a literal translation or the retention of the original title. One example is the film Seven Pounds (2009), which appeared in Turkey as Yedi Yaam (Seven Lives), in Slovenia as Sedem du (Seven Souls), and in the rest of the world with very similar translations. The pounds in the Ameri-can title is an allusion to Shakespeares The Merchant of Venice, echoing the pound of flesh that Antonio is supposed to forfeit if he is unable to repay his debt to Shylock. In the context of this film, it refers to the debt to society that the protagonist, played by Will Smith, feels he needs to repay to compensate for his causing a car accident that killed seven people. While simultaneously side-stepping the challenges of dealing with this allusion and translating the imperial weight measurement, international distributors opted for a translation that gave quite a strong clue as to the content of the film, stronger indeed than that pro-vided by the American title.

    In this and similar cases, film distributors used amplification to compensate for presumed gaps in the cultural knowledge of their target audiences. However, the Turkish corpus in particular includes many other titles that could have been translated literally with minimal loss in meaning but were translated freely. When one is familiar with the films in question, one realizes that these creative renditions serve to transform an original title that provides little information about the film into a title that presents the genre and basic story-line on a plate. As such, they can be seen as translations between the two basic categories of ti-tles described by Mladen Jovanovi, titles which, in the minds of the reader create no associations or associations which have nothing in common with the contents of the work in question and titles which make it possible for read-ers (addressees) to arrive at a certain idea of the contents of the work even be-fore reading it (1990:214f.). Several respondents involved in translating titles in Turkey have conceded that they and the companies they work for prefer titles that are highly informative, even if this means being disloyal to the meaning of the original title. Commenting on the 2010 film Edge of Darkness, Ayhan ok of the company Pinema, for example, notes that.

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    When were translating, the thing were most concerned with is whether or not the title fits in with the film. Thats how we decided on the title for the film ntikam Peinde (Seeking Revenge). First of all, the distribution de-partment watched the film. The translation could have been Karanln K-ysnda (Edge of Darkness), and we did consider this, but then we de-cided that this didnt have anything to do with the subject of the film. In other words, we thought that the title ntikam Peinde better suited the film Edge of Darkness. (Cited in Keskin 2010, my translation.)

    Pinemas choice of the words ntikam (revenge) and Peinde (seeking / run-ning after / looking for) was no doubt very deliberate. In isolation and in com-bination, these words belong to the category of Reizwrter (emotive words) which, according to Arnold Rothe, author of a seminal German study of literary titles, appear so frequently in titles because in the minds of advertising experts they have proven themselves to be particularly enticing (1986:90) and be-cause they appeal to the latent wishes and interests of the target audience (1986:96). According to the Turkish translator and film critic Sevin Okyay, the main reason why Turkish titles sometimes diverge so markedly from their sources is the commercial considerations of the distributors, who calculate that thrilling, romantic, fear-provoking or even erotic titles will attract bigger audi-ences (cited in Keskin 2010). This attitude is plain to see in both the comments of the distributors and in the many titles in the corpus where a blatant attempt is made to signal the genre or story of the film by including at least one emotive word. If the film is a romance or a romantic comedy, the title is bound to con-tain sevgi (love) or ak (passionate love); the inclusion of dehet (horror), vahet (savagery), kan (blood), cehennem (hell) and so on points to a thriller or horror film; and words like lgn (crazy) and atlak (crackers)

    Table 3

    Turkish titles including Ak

    Turkish title Back-translation Source title Imported Films

    Arkadamn Ak My Friends Love My Best Friends Girl Akn 500 Gn11 500 Days of Love 500 Days of Summer Aka Son ans Last Chance for Love Last Chance Harvey Byk Ak Great Love Coco Chanel & Igor Stravin-

    sky Ak Uruna For the Sake of Love Pour Elle / Anything For Her Ak Atei Love Fire The Burning Plain

    Turkish Films Ak Geliyorum Demez Love Doesnt Say Its Coming Ac Ak Bitter Love Baka Dilde Ak Love in Another Language

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    mark a film as a comedy. Peinde is not so indicative of a distinct genre but evokes a quest, an archetypal trope that distributors hope will appeal to audi-ences.

    Returning to our corpus, it is striking that ak (passionate love), whether inflected or not, appears in the titles of six imported films, as well as in three of the 54 Turkish productions (sec Table 3). In contrast, only two of the source ti-tles include the noun or word love or its equivalent in other languages. One of these, significantly, is a film entitled All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, a title that conjures up a teenage romance movie. Nothing could be further than the truth, though, as the film is a gruesome thriller about a party attended by the much sought-after teenager, Mandy Lane, which turns into a bloodbath. Whereas the original title had given little away about the genre, a model followed in the typi-cally literal Slovene translation Vsi fantje so zatreskani v Mandy Lane (All the Guys Have a Crush on Mandy Lane), the Turkish title Vahet Partisi (Savage Party) leaves nothing to chance, as is also true of the Portugese and Spanish ti-tles Seduo Mortal / Seduccin Mortal (Deadly Seduction).

    3.2.3. The process of film title translation

    As has already been noted, researchers into film title translation mostly ac-knowledge that the work of producing translations of foreign film titles is done by people who are not themselves professional translators and who have a pri-marily commercial motivation (Bravo 2004:227; Grtner and Schlatter 2001:85). Such a view of the process of film title translation does not tell the whole story, however. In reality, the local distributor is not alone in determining the eventual form of translated titles, and other agents may be involved, as may factors besides the target culture, so that titles in fact should be seen as not sim-ply facts of the culture which hosts them (Toury 1995:24).

    This is especially true of titles distributed by the local subsidiaries of the so-called majors12 (e.g. Disney Turkey and UIP Turkey) and (to a lesser ex-tent) of those marketed by companies representing these conglomerates (e.g. Continental in Slovenia, which represents 20th Century Fox, Sony and MGM). Judging from the questionnaires, employees of such companies are heavily in-fluenced by the corporate image and culture of the studio to which they are af-filiated and seem as concerned with serving the goals and culture of the parent company as they are with appealing to the desires and expectations of the local population. Pnar zyiit, marketing manager of UIP Turkey, gave a very tell-ing response to the question, When choosing film titles, to what extent (and in what ways) do you try to create associations with existing titles in Turkish or with elements of Turkish culture? She answered that she and her colleagues do not usually take Turkish films as a reference, and expanded: Our references are the brand itself, target audience and global directions. We try to find a solution

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    which combines all of them (zyiit 2011). Of course, having the target audi-ence as a reference point inevitably entails drawing on elements of the target culture, and a global corporation would be unlikely to reject a proposed title that made use of a target culture idiom or cultural reference if it promised to increase box-office returns. All the same, it is significant that zyiit mentions the brand13 and global directions, concepts which do not appear in the discourse of independent distributors.14

    It also needs to be pointed out that the process of film title translation fol-lowed by companies like UIP Turkey is quite different from that enacted by in-dependent firms who distribute the films of independent companies or of major studies but on an individual basis. Local subsidiaries and representatives of me-dia corporations appear to be limited in their actions from the outset.15 When asked to explain the process of generating titles, Andrej Novak, whose company distributes films for Paramount, VTI, Dreamworks, Universal and UIP, noted that the first step is for the studio to request a local translation, whereby it speci-fies whether the distributor should endeavour to keep the original16 or try to be as literal as possible or whether it has the freedom to translate as it sees fit (Novak 2011). In other words, the producer of the source text may have a guid-ing role in determining the translation strategy and tactics, which may result in titles turning out boring because its what principal studios demand from us (Novak 2011, my emphasis).

    The call for a title is normally made when the film is still in the production phase or, in the case of predicted blockbusters, even in the pre-production phase. Thus, distributors have to base their decisions not on the film itself but on materials they are sent by the studio, such as the proposed US title, other promotional titles, a suggested (English-language) international title, taglines, trailers, teasers, a prcis of the plot, poster drafts, character descriptions and sometimes a full-copy of the script (Armaan 2011). Within the confines al-lowed by the initial commission, the distributor thinks up a local title for the film and returns it, together with a back-translation and explanatory notes if necessary, to the relevant headquarters of the studio, which tend to be the Lon-don office. Finally, the submitted title is either approved or rejected by the Cali-fornian office of the studio, with the director or producer of the film sometimes having the last word. In the period when distributors are working on devising ti-tles, the London office regularly emails them tables showing titles that have been submitted in other territories.

    The process with independent companies differs in several ways. Firstly, since the local distributor buys the rights for the film, the film becomes its prop-erty, so it is free to title it as it wishes (Aknc 2011). It may receive suggestions from the studio and also be sent sample titles from other territories but, in con-trast to dependent distributors, it has the final say. Furthermore, since inde-pendent films tend to be released abroad quite a long time after their premiere in

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    their home country, the people responsible for titling in foreign countries some-times have the opportunity to watch a film before titling it, which is rarely the case with films produced by the major studios.

    Awareness of the process that leads to the choice of a translated title can help us understand better why titles end up the way they do, and it can also pre-vent us from rushing to hasty conclusions. For instance, the 2008 release Clo-verfield, about a creature that attacks New York, was screened in Turkey under the title Canavar (Monster). A person familiar with titling practices in Turkey may see Canavar as a typical Turkish example of an amplifying spoiler. How-ever, when one learns that the director of the film insisted that its title abroad should be either Cloverfield or the local translation of Monster (Armaan 2011), a rather different conclusion presents itself, namely, that the impetus for amplification and genre-marking came from the parent company and not from the target culture. A similar case was the Sony comedy Just Go With It (2011), a title that tells one little about the genre of the film. The working title, though, was My Pretend Wife, and this rather than the eventual US title constituted one of the sources for translations such as the Slovene Moja neprava ena (My Pseudo-wife), the German Meine erfundene Frau (My Made-up Wife), M-chant Menteur (Naughty Liar) in Francophone Canada and the characteristi-cally free Turkish title Hayatm Yalan! (My Lifes a Lie).

    An example that appears to underline the power of global media conglom-erates in controlling the translation of titles is the Slovene title for the 2011 film Battle Los Angeles (2011). Sony Pictures were most insistent that this title, or at least the international promotional title World Invasion: Battle Los Angeles, be translated very literally and that the original punctuation be retained (Mirti & Vrbi 2011). In Slovene, as indeed in everyday English, the lack of a preposi-tion (such as for or over) between Battle and LA seems ungrammatical and makes the title look rather awkward. Despite this, though, the film appeared in Slovenia as Svetovna invazija: Bitka Los Angeles (World Invasion: Battle Los Angeles), serving to illustrate how the dominance of giant media corpora-tions or the demands of powerful individuals involved in film production can lead to the violation of linguistic norms in territories outside the US.

    A final and quite fascinating point related to the process of title translation concerns the precise source for foreign titles. We have seen that, especially in Turkish titles, the film itself is sometimes taken as more of a source than is the original title, especially when the original title is deliberately obscure or mis-leading. We have also observed that, where one exists, the international promo-tional title and not the US release title might come to be a model. In addition, some titles from the corpus and elsewhere lead one to surmise that local film distributors have been influenced by the titles developed in other territories and actually resort to using translations of them as the eventual title. A possible case in point from the corpus is the Slovene translation of the FinnishIrish chil-

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    drens cartoon film with the working title Niko - Lentjn Poika (Niko Pilot Boy), which had two international titles Niko & The Way to the Stars and The Flight before Christmas. The first international title was evidently used as a source in various countries, including Turkey, where the title was Niko-Yldzlara Yolculuk (Niko-Journey to the Stars). The Slovene title, however, was Jelenek Niko (Niko the Little Deer), which resembles the Spanish, Ger-man, Italian and Danish renditions in pointing out that the protagonist is a deer, a detail omitted from the international title. Above all, though, Jelenek Niko is strikingly similar to the French Niko Le petit renne, of which it may be a lit-eral translation (or vice-versa).

    4. CONCLUSION

    In her pioneering 1993 study, Nord observed that the phenomenon of the title was interesting from the perspective of translation theory and that it was re-markable that translation studies had not yet addressed it at any length (2). To the best of my knowledge, Einfhrung in das funktionale bersetzen am Beispiel von Titeln und berschriften remains the only book-length treatment of the subject, while Gonzlez Ruizs doctorate (2001) and Doans MA thesis (2012) are apparently the sole extensive academic works on the specific topic of film title translation. Relatively few of the articles or papers on the subject deal with it in a manner that concurs with current approaches in translation studies. Having conducted only preliminary research into this field, I can say that it is surprising that film title translation remains such untouched territory, as it has much to offer translation researchers, trainers and students. Examples of trans-lated titles highlight the importance of translational functions, of the target au-dience and target culture, and of factors as diverse as culture-specific generic conventions, intertextuality, multimodality and ideology. At various points, Nord herself acknowledges that the task of translating titles is not left exclu-sively to translators and that publishers, with their overriding commercial con-cerns, might have a more instrumental role (1993:VII, 3, 47, 132). As we have seen, professional translators have little stake in the choice of film titles, and other agents, both at home and abroad, have considerable sway, especially if the films are made by major studios, which enjoy such dominance in the fields of the production and distribution of films in Europe (Doyle 2002:105).

    Nevertheless, the creation of local titles for such films is an act of transla-tion, and an act that reveals a great deal about the various constraints and vari-ables that influence translations in our day and age. Unfortunately, for reasons of space, it has not been possible to deal with all these factors in what is only an introductory study. In particular, I have said little about the multimodal contexts in which titles tend to be embedded, and the speakability (and even singabil-ity) of titles is another factor in title translation that needs to be addressed.

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    Using primarily data from Turkey and Slovenia, I have tried to paint a pic-ture of film title translation at the margins of Europe, comparing the translation tactics that have been deployed in these two countries and offering insights into the international business relations that can determine the eventual form of ti-tles. Among my key findings was the dominance of literal translation, a phe-nomenon that Grtner and Schlatter attested in Brazil (2001:86), that Schubert observed in German titles between 1944 and 1963 (2004:254f.), and that Doan documented with regard to 2010 releases in Turkey (2012:62). This was found to be especially conspicuous in Slovenia, whereas in Turkey there was also a quite strong tendency to free translation involving amplification, as there was in the following year (Doan 2012:62). Identifying the reasons for these differ-ences (if they are part of an ongoing pattern) would require more extensive re-search into the history of titling in these countries and into the attitudes and be-haviour of consumers and marketers. Yet for the moment, one might speculate that the popularity of free translation in Turkey has something to do with the demographics of the country and how the population is perceived by film dis-tributors. Even though Turkey lags far behind most European countries in terms of the proportion of the population that goes to the cinema and the frequency with which they do so (Evrensel Kltr Servisi 2007), because the population is so large even this proportion stands for a considerable number of people and thus means sizable box-office takings. In 2008, for example, total admissions amounted to 21, 713, 92817 (for a population of 71, 517,100).18 Perhaps the size of the potential film-going public makes studios more willing to accept seman-tically unfaithful translations than they would do in the case of Slovenia, where in the same year admissions amounted to a tenth of those in Turkey, only 2,177,318 for a population of just 2,039,399.19 At the same time, the responses to the questionnaire lead one to believe that film distributors in Turkey see po-tential audiences as rather unsophisticated and in need of direction (through amplification and genre-marking); Doans findings suggest that Turkish movie-goers are indeed influenced by the clues that distributors insert regarding a films genre, even if they claim that they prefer literal translations and com-plain about free translations when they have the chance to compare source and target-titles (2012:103).

    What Doan and I have also uncovered is the process of international communication and negotiation that culminates in the eventual selection of a ti-tle. This reminds us that decisions about translations are not taken by translators in a vacuum but can be affected by extraneous factors such as the imbalance of power in business relations in our globalized world. The intermediary transla-tion I have referred to is a particularly interesting consequence of the local consumption of global goods and images, which Michael Cronin defines as one of the two main manifestations of the era of globalization, the other being the ascendancy of massive global conglomerates (2003:57). And it would seem

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    especially pertinent to the Slovene situation, where translations of (mostly Eng-lish) titles into other South Slavic languages such as Serbian and Croatian could well offer inspiration to Slovene distributors facing a creative block.20 In view of the process of title translation outlined above, another enticing research ques-tion would be whether titles created by independent distributors differ in a sys-tematic way from those invented by subsidiaries or local representatives of ma-jors, and if so how. When it comes to film title translation, at present there are many questions but few answers!

    Notes 1 http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=main&id=revolutionaryroad.htm, accessed 23/04/

    2011. 2 Unless indicated otherwise, this and subsequent data concerning film releases and interna-

    tional film titles are taken from the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com), accessed 23/04/2011.

    3 I would like to thank colleagues at the University of Ljubljana who have helped compensate for the gaps in my knowledge of Slovene language and culture: Urka Purg, a Slovenian exchange student at Boazii University, provided me with literal translations of the film titles in the corpus and cooperated with me in categorising these translations according to the typology in Table 1, and Ura Vogrinc Javorek from the Department of Translation answered various queries about the film sector in Slovenia.

    4 In using the term tactic, rather than strategy, procedure, method or the like, I am drawing on Yves Gambiers helpful distinction between tactic, which refers to a (conscious or automatized) routine employed on a local level during a translation, and strategy, which denotes a more global approach to a translation task (Gambier 2010).

    5 Transposition is used here in Vinay and Darbelnets sense of replacing one word class with another without changing the meaning of the message (1995:36).

    6 According to Vinay and Darbelnet, Modulation is a variation of the form of the message, obtained by a change in the point of view (1995:36).

    7 In their proposal for a new classification of translation techniques, Molina and Hurtado Al-bir suggest the useful term of amplification, which denotes introducing details that are unformu-lated or implicit in the source text (2002:510). It covers what various scholars have termed ex-plicitation, addition, paraphrase and periphrasis.

    8 This includes omission and implicitation. 9 Titles with precedent include titles of film sequels (e.g. Fast and Furious 4) as well as

    cases where a film is imported into a territory after the book, television series, computer game, etc. on which it is based has appeared in that territory and has therefore already been given a local title.

    10 In addition, the title has been labelled a precedented translation since it is clearly modelled on an earlier title Moja obilna grka poroka (My Ample Greek Wedding), a slightly modified rendition of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which had the same lead actress.

    11 The tagline of this film reads This is not a love story; this is a story about love. In its depiction of the relationship between a woman called Summer, who does not believe in true love, and the man who falls in love with her, the film shuns Hollywood-style slushy romanticism and has the feel of an independent production. According to Ersan Congar of Tiglon in Turkey, the original title 500 Days of Summer likewise suggests an independent film, whereas the Turkish version, with its incorporation of Ak, seems to promise more unproblematic passion (Congar 2011). (This said, the Turkish poster and trailer for the film partly offset the clichd title by

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    signalling the complicated nature of the relationship through the inclusion of a literal translation of the American tagline). In keeping with the Slovene preference for literal translations, the Slovene title is 500 dni s Summer (500 Days of Summer).

    12 Majors refers to the seven California-based conglomerates in the media and entertain-ment industries that produce and distribute the vast majority of films shown across the world.

    13 A film title is all the more likely to gain the status of a brand when the film is a block-buster, such as a childrens cartoon film. Such films tend to be accompanied by innumerable forms of merchandise, all of which contain the title or symbol(s) of the film. In view of this, the most financially viable translation tactic is often the non-translation of the (English) title, so that the same title can appear on a range of by-products (toys, T-shirts, books, games, mugs, etc.) all over the world, resulting in significant economies of scale (Bravo 2004:227).

    14 One should be wary, however, of making sweeping generalisations about the majors, since their corporate cultures and approaches to local markets can vary. Writing about the Nether-lands, van de Kamp, for instance, contrasts the marketing activity of Sony Pictures and UIP, who receive international films and promotion materials and select those which they think best fit the local market with the Dutch subsidiary of Warner Bros, who implement the worldwide promo-tion and release strategy without making any adjustments to local conditions (2009:216).

    15 I say appear to be, because the respondents to our questionnaire rarely complained about their relations with their parent companies or gave examples of conflicts over the choice of titles. It might be the case that employees are bound by confidentiality agreements; this is what Miriam van de Kamp discovered in her Ph.D. on the subsidiaries of music and film majors in the Netherlands (2009:102).

    16 By keeping the original, Novak is presumably conflating the procedures of both non-translation and transcription, even though the two could actually have quite different functions and be received in different ways within the target culture.

    17 http://boxofficeturkiye.com/turkfilmleri/?yil=2008 18 http://www.tuik.gov.tr/PreHaberBultenleri.do?id=3992 19 http://www.worldcontentmarket.com/download/ex_cinema.pdf 20 What is more, several Slovene companies have strong organisational links with distribu-

    tors in neighbouring countries, thus increasing the likelihood of title-sharing: Blitz Film and Video Distribution, the Slovenian representative of Warner Bros, actually has its headquarters in Zagreb, Croatia, as does Continental Film, which also has partner companies in Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and Serbia.

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    Sources 1. Lists of translated and original titles of films distributed in 2009

    Turkey: http://www.boxofficeturkiye.com/yillik/?yil=2009 Slovenia: http://www.cinemania-group.si/distribucija.asp?leto=2009

    2. Questionnaire responses 2.1. Turkey

    Aknc, Tolga. 2011. (Director of Theatrical Distribution, Medyavizyon) Congar, Ersan. 2011. (Director of Theatrical Distribution, Tiglon) Kaplanolu, Haluk. 2011. (Owner and Managing Director, Cinefilm) zmen, Ayl. 2011. (Marketing and Public Relations Department, Chantier Films) zyiit, Pnar. 2011. (Marketing Manager, UIP Turkey)

    2.2. Slovenia

    retnik, Janko. 2011. (Owner and Managing Director, Cenex Film) Novak, Andrej. 2011. (Director of Theatrical Distribution, Karantanija)

    3. Interviews 3.1. Turkey

    Armaan, Milli. 2011, 12th May. (Marketing Manager, Disney-Turkey) Soyarslan, Mehmet. 2011, 12th May. (Head of Board of Directors, zen Film)

    3.2. Slovenia

    Mirti, Martin & Vrbi, Manja. 2011, 6th January (Department of Distribution and Marketing, Continental Film)