Studies On The Translation And Dissemination Of Traditional Chinese Music To The West

The absence of cross-disciplinary studies on the translation of traditional Chinese music(TCM)has negatively influenced its dissemination in the west.From the perspectives of musicology,translation studies and the prototype theory,this dissertation attempts to explore the translation of TCM in history and systemize the transaltion study of TCM.First,it redefines “translation” as “representation”,i.e.representing in the target culture the content and style of the original text and the message relating to the original-text as well as the source culture as a discourse in a broader context.Accordingly,besides the text-to-text translation,the translation of TCM should include a wider scope of resources,such as the musical ethnography of TCM,the hypertexts that introduce TCM on different internet media and even the TCM performance in the West.Second,exploring the translation of TCM in hisotry throws light on how the translation of TCM interacts with the cognition,motivation,social identity and social background of translators.Third,since the social background is by no means the only factor that influences the translation of TCM,the different forms of translation of TCM are categorized in a descriptive approach,according to their characteristics rather than the historical periods,into five ways of representation: novelty-seeking,conquering,studying,self-introducing and multi-dimensional re-presenting.The multi-dimensional representation is the dominant characteristic of comtemperary translation of TCM,which involves a great variety of translators,audience and media,conventional or new.Fourth,translation is not only a cultural manipulation but also a rhetorical invention.The present study,drawing upon New Rhetoric in the West,has appropriated such notions or strategies as “rhetorical situation”,“audience-oriented” and “identification”,with which to analyze at the macro level the current rhetorical situation of TCM translation and the rhetorical resources that we can make use of.Meanwhile,the purpose of TCM translation is clarified as an an on-going negotication for identification rather than one of “conquering”.Finally,this dissertation proposes some measures to respond to the paradoxical situation in which the translator has to identify himself with TCM and the target audience are expected to identifiy themselves with the TCM for the purpose of facilitating the translation and dissemination of TCM in the West.