Emotions Transmitting And Translation Strategies In English-Chinese Translation Of Song Lyrics

With the development of international co-operation and the communication between nations, music has become an essential part of culture communication in the world. However, linguistic and cultural hindrances always exist because of regional differences. Translating songs from one language to another language not only semantically but emotionally becomes a challenge to translators. And in translation world, songs translation, especially in emotion transmission, has long been ignored. Analyzing the emotion transmission in song lyrics translation is almost a new topic. In this dissertation, the author studies and analyses the limited materials and resources on hand to make a comprehensive analysis of emotion transmitting and related translation strategies in songs translation and to emphasize the importance of high-quality songs translation. These are also two key problems solved in the study.The study mainly includes five parts. They respectively refer to the necessity of song lyrics translation, analyzing the emotion transmitting of song lyrics translation, discussing the translating strategies used in song lyrics translation, pointing out the importance of translators’ abilities and responsibilities in song lyrics translation with some advice and drawing a conclusion.The research takes Eugen A. Nida’s "functional equivalence", Xue Fan’s theory, whose "Exploration and Practice in Translation of Songs" published in2002is the first works to introduce translation of songs systematically and theoretically in China, together with "domestication" to emphasize the standard and principles in lyrics translation, especially for the purpose of achieving semantic and emotional translation. Qualitative research method will be applied in this study. Versions of translation of several typical songs will be analyzed from the angle of emotion transmitting. The conclusion is that song lyrics translation needs accurate emotion transmitting, proper translation strategies and translators with high level. In one word, we do want to suggest that any song translators should bear target singers and audience in mind and try their best to reflect the essence of the source text, instead of just imitating or using literal approaches.Certainly, although the author has done the best to elaborate the theme, there are still some limitations existing in the present thesis because of the limited materials and the limited theoretical references. So hopefully the thesis will attract more attention on this special field and hence help them to generate more high-quality song translations and enhance cultural exchanges by transmitting emotions in a better way.