On The Translation Of Folk Songs Of Northern Shannxi

In the translation field, the researches are fruitful in the study of novel, essay,poem and drama. In contrast, as a special literature form, the translation study of folksongs has not been given much attention. Most studies about folk songs are merely onEnglish-Chinese translation. For example, the famous song translator Xue Fan and thefamous opera translator Sun Huishuang have done a lot of translations from foreignlanguages to Chinese. But in recent years, the translation of Chinese folk songs hasreceived a lot of considerations. Like Professor Li Linbo’s article called ListeningSong’s Echo From Poem—Study on the Voice From The Northwest and theTranslation of Northern Shaanxi Folk Song, Gou Bin’s work named Analysis on theDiscipline Orientation, History, Current Situation and the Strategies of Folk SongsTranslation as well as Professor Wang Zhanbin’s article The End Justifies the Means—Analysis on the Voice From The Northwest, which all have made greatcontributions to the translation of folk songs. However, it is undeniable that the studyof folk songs translation still needs to be done by more people.Based on Skopostheorie, this thesis will take the book Voice From TheNorthwest as the study subject, and the “Sound and Rhythm”,“Artistic Ambience andEthos” as well as “Individualized Language” as the breakthrough points. Then thetranslation of northern Shaanxi folk songs will be carefully investigated andresearched. And it is found out that the translation of northern Shaanxi folk songs canbe well guided by Skopostheorie. Moreover, in terms of translation strategy,documentary translation and instrumental translation are selected, but also preferred.For example, as for the translation of cultural elements, it is better to choose thedocumentary translation, while instrumental translation is much better in thetranslation of rhetorical effects difficult to convey, like reduplicative words andrhyme.It is certain that to do such studies on the translation of northern Shaanxi folksongs will promote the dissemination of Chinese culture and make the world moreknowledgeable of China. And as we all know, different texts are produced with different purposes. Therefore, when translating, each text should have a mostappropriate method and standard to meet its distinct purpose. With distinctive folkfeatures and local flavor, northern Shaanxi folk song’s art form is quite vivid and thesong’s significance is very far-reaching. From this point, we can see that thetranslation of northern Shaanxi folk songs cannot simply be identical to that of generalliterary works. This thesis is to analyze and find out some suitable methods,techniques and standards guiding the translation of northern Shaanxi folk songs so asto make the folk song translation more normative, systematic and scientific. And wehope to do something for those who are interested in the folk song study by providingsome rules to go by and some regulations to follow.