A Report On The C-E Of Chinese Music

Translation for musical literature is a study belongs to not only the musicology but also thetranslatology. It includes translations for musical literature from Chinese into other languagesand from other languages into Chinese. However, the number of translations from Chinese intoforeign languages is far less than that of translations from other languages into Chinese, whichhas already hindered the development of Chinese music. This phenomenon is half due to thedifficulties of translating the musical terms and culture behind those terms and half due to lack ofa set of guiding principles for Chinese musical translators to conduct their work. Therefore, inorder to fulfill the gap of previous translation in China, I decided to conduct the project bytranslating a100000words Chinese book named “Chinese music” of Jin Jie into English. Thewhole report is based on the project experience and what I have learned from it, which could bedivided into five parts, introduction, a review on previous studies, description for the translationtask, case analysis and conclusion. Thanks to reviewing previous translations for music literature,“meaning equivalence” of Eugene Nida was adopted as the theoretical framework for the project.Indeed, due to the attributes of Chinese musical literature, many musical terms and classicalChinese that related to those terms are involved in translation. Therefore, the report mainlyfocuses on how to achieve the “meaning equivalence” for target readers in translating musicalterms and associated classical Chinese in the book. In linguistic layer, componential, hierarchicaland semantic structure analysis approaches for the target text are involved so as to identify theproper and suitable methods in translation. Generally, depending on different situation, there arethree methods in translation, which are “free translation” and “transliteration plus explanatorynotes” in the translation for musical terms and phrases and “literal translation combined with thefree translation” in translating the classical sentences. Translational skills such amplification,omission and semantic structure analysis in dealing with the polysemic words are all adopted insolving different problems occurred in the process of translation. In chapter three, main part ofthe report, representative cases are presented to support these arguments. To sum up, thistranslational practice helps me to more understand the responsibility as a translator and theimportance of learning professional knowledge for translators. Hope the report could also havesome reference value for translators who also conduct translation for musical literature.