Domestication Of English Song Lyrics Into Chinese In The Light Of Nida's Ideas About Five Cultural Elements

Songs are a combination of language and music, which carry a good many cultural elements and act as an important means of cultural communication. However, song lyrics translation does not attract enough attention in the translation academia and lies in an ignored position. Songs bear the characteristics both of literature and of music, which are an auditory art leaving the translator unable to add interpretations or illustrations, which increases the difficulties in song lyrics translation and hence the value of doing research on it. There are diversified cultural elements in song lyrics, which form great trouble for the translator, in that he or she cannot interpret them in too many words and must ensure them to be understood at one time. Most of the little existing research is about the translatability, rhyme, etc, and how to deal with the cultural elements and what theories to apply to them are rarely touched. Chinese and English belong to different families and bear great cultural differences. There exist a great number of cultural elements strange to Chinese people in English songs. So it is necessary to study how to cope with these elements in the translated Chinese version. The author means to see it as the main content and make a tentative study on the English-Chinese translation methods of song lyrics.Domestication is an important translation strategy, which holds that different languages and cultures have similarity, and advocates seeking common points while accepting differences. As is proved in practice, domestication is feasible and effective. Its representative Eugene Nida has put forward the famous dynamic equivalence and the theory of reader's response, which improves the development of domestication. He emphasizes "the closest natural equivalence" and attaches importance to reader's response, which both meet the demand of song lyrics translation in that the Chinese-speaking audience have the right to acquire the same or similar feelings as the English-speaking audience. Therefore, the author will take advantage of Nida's theories to guide the English-Chinese song lyrics translation.During the course, in order to explain the problems clearly and completely, the author first compares the Chinese and western cultures from three aspects: essence of the two cultures, linguistic culture and religious culture, and accordingly gets a general cognition of the differences between them. Then she classifies the cultural elements involved into five aspects according to Nida: ecological culture, linguistic culture, religious culture, material culture and social culture, which embodies a relatively integrated coverage of cultural elements in all areas.In the following analyses, the author systematically reviews Nida's translation theories, and elaborates on his views on language and culture, dynamic equivalence and the theory of reader's response and then discusses what methods are to be applied to solving specific problems from the above five aspects. Among them the social culture is a complex one and the author further divides it into three types: customs and traditions, historical, literary and artistic backgrounds and psychological reflections. But we cannot say that the translated version is suitable for singing as long as the cultural problems are settled. The translated song lyrics must be matched for the music. In terms of that, the author proceeds to briefly analyze the rhyme, rhythm and music style in the following chapter, which really embodies "the closest natural equivalence". Through the study the author finds that the cultural elements in English song lyrics can be translated by all means guided by Nida's theories.