A Comparative Study Of Musicality In Zhushenghao's And Bianzhilin's Translations Of Blank Verse In Hamlet

Since the first publication of The Complete Works of Shakespeare in 1623, the 37 dramas have been translated into many kinds of languages. As early as 150 years ago, the name of William Shakespeare was introduced to China and his plays were translated into Chinese at the very beginning of the 20th century.One of the unique features of Shakespeare's works is that they are basically written in the form of blank verse. Take Hamlet for example, it takes about sixty percent of the whole play. In this sense, the way to render blank verse determines largely the translation's quality. The choice of Hamlet as a sample analysis is because tragedies are the most famous ones among Shakespeare's plays and Hamlet is one of his four great tragedies, which is considered by Bian Zhilin as the central and richest work among Shakespeare's plays (1989:1). Chinese translators can be divided into two groups according to the literary forms they take. One refers to those who translate blank verse in the form of prose, the other to those in the form of verse. The former school is represented by Zhu Shenghao and the latter by Bian Zhilin.In the past eighty years or so, many researches have been done about Hamlet's each translation and comparisons among them from different angles, however, the musical features of blank verse's translation have been paid a little attention and the comparative study of it is even less. For these reasons, the thesis will carry out the research setting the musicality of blank verse's translation as the basic concern and aims to compare Zhu Shenghao's and Bian Zhilin's versions of Hamlet, which can well represent the two translation schools. By comparison, the thesis tries to find out their own musical features and their ways to transplant blank verse into Chinese. It has always been a controversial issue whether poetic form is better than the prosaic one or the other way round. With detailed analysis and exact statistics, the anthor tries to prove her view that both of them function well for the melliflence in Chinese translation of Hamlet. It hopes to shed light on the translation and retranslation of Hamlet and other Shakespeare's plays. It may also help readers better appreciate the musical qualities of Hamlet and other Shakespeare's dramas by the three ways summarized in the thesis. Translating practisers may find some guidance as well. Thus, it is of academic and practical values.The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter one is the introduction part. It discusses the musical features in poetry including rhythm, rhyme and rhetorical devices. Next it deals with the term blank verse about its history and usage in drama and Hamlet. The third point is a brief description about Shakespeare and Hamlet; also, its Chinese translations are introduced according to chronology.Chapter two, three and four are the thesis'main body, exploring different musical features of Zhu's and Bian's versions. Rhythm and rhyme are the two formal constituents that give both prose and poetry sound features and thus compose chapter two and three. In order to reproduce blank verse's rhythm, Chinese dun is used to replace the English foot. This method is chapter two's focus, including its definition, usage and functions. Dun is a sound group usually made up of two or three characters. In Zhu's translation, there are lots of parallel halves which successfully convey the sound effect. Bian's version is poetic and he uses five duns each line to replace the five feet in blank verse, thus reproducing its rhythm to the most extent. As for rhyme, there are several types employed in Zhu's and Bian's translations, such as the end rhyme, the imperfect rhyme, the internal rhyme and so on. Rendering unrhymed verse into rhymed texts takes an active role in making the translation full of melody and euphony. In addition, rhetorical devices such as repetition, antithesis and parallelism contribute to the sense of musicality as well, which is the content of chapter four. In the end, the author presents a summary of the whole thesis together with the limitations of present study and suggestions for future research.