Artistic Re-creation In E-c Song Translation: Perspective Of Translation Aesthetics

As an interdisciplinary study, song translation has been undeservedly disregardedfor a long time in translation field. Various mistranslations appear in practice due tothe insufficient theoretical support. Some scholars did dabble in the field but most ofthem based their research on a linguistic framework. Since song translation isenormously different from other types of translation, it will be quite difficult to solvethe concrete problems in the domain only by means of linguistics. The thesis thusdiscusses the issue from the perspective of translation aesthetics, elucidating that theprocess of translating songs is the aesthetic representation made by the aestheticsubject (the translator) about the aesthetic object (the song). Based on the translator’sintegral cognition and understanding about the aesthetic object, a new entirety isproduced in the process beyond each part of the object. It is a whole aestheticexperience of the original song. The translator has to take the song (including thelyrics and the tunes) as a whole into consideration in translation practice, for the songtranslated is for singing (singability). The translator therefore has to be faithful inmeaning and meanwhile make the target text fit the pre-existing music and if it isdifficult to satisfy both sides, it will be wise to make artistic re-creation to the lyrics,so that the artistic life of the original song is preserved. In order to explicate theintrinsic quality of the aesthetic representation in song translation, the thesis thusborrows the concept “Image-G (image gestalt)”. It is the image-G actualization thatmakes possible the translator’s aesthetic representation in translating songs.