Musical Restrictions And Lyrics Shifts: Functional Equivalence Lost And Regained

The potential thesis is an attempt to conduct a theoretical study of musical restrictions and lyrics shifts on rendition of classical songs in English, analyzing the methods the translators have adopted in their works of art, aiming at generalizing some principles for future theoretical references.This thesis studies how to keep balance on notes and expressions and what kind of shifts can make the target lyrics "singable" and "understandable". The concept of FE (Functional Equivalence) proposed by Nina focuses on the "readers' responses" (Nida, 2001:116), and could be of value to our illustrative analysis.The study of the rendition of English songs in terms of FE could be defined as one on the basis of degrees of closeness to resultant identity of the performances. For musical part; its factors are unchangeable. Therefore, the target lyrics should claim some adjustments to coincide with all factors involved and FE lost and regained depends on the degrees to which the source lyrics have been represented by the target songs.Since songs are characteristic of an auditory art, the shifts of the sounds are to be cautiously studied. To achieve FE, however, the shifts of the syntax and meanings are also needed. To carry out the research work, 50 classical songs in English translated by Chinese translators have been chosen and processed, and most of them are still popular in Chinese community.The study consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 serves as an introduction to the research background. We recapitulate the ongoing discussions around FE, with a summary of the applicability of FE to song translation. Chapter 2 is the focus of the musical restrictions which are involved in song translation. Chapter 3 would deal with FE to be achieved in the rendition, and with the relationship between source and...