A Functionalist Approach To Song Translation

Song translation has received little academic attention and related research remains rather weak both at home and abroad. As a consequence, the concept of song translation has often been confused with those of the translation of song lyrics and of the translation and dubbing of foreign songs in the Mainland of China. This has given rise to much difficulty in identifying the research object in this field. In addition, there have been no readily applicable standards or yardsticks for evaluating song translations, which has resulted in the good and the bad ones intermingled.Based on Katharina Reiss's definition of the audio-medial text, this thesis first makes plain the unique feature of song translation while differentiating between the above three confusable concepts. Furthermore, it puts forward the Triathlon Principle or "triad principles" according to the "Skopos rule" and "loyalty" principle, which lay emphasis on the balancing of three yardsticks—singability, comprehensibility, and loyalty. The first two yardsticks should correspond to the Skopos of song translation in a broad sense. The last one requires mediation of different intentions among the singer, the target listener and the source writer and composer in a particular translational action, which should be in line with the loyalty principle.The "triad principles" are then applied to the evaluation of three Chinese translations of Edelweiss and Do-Re-Mi as a case study. The conclusion is thus reached that the functionalist approach is a right one in guiding the practice of song translation.