The Beauty In English-Chinese Song Translation From The Perspective Of "Three Beauties" Theory

Despite the fact that song translation bears much similarity with poetry translation,some highly noticeable differences do exist between them.While poetry translation tends to give great priority to the visual beauty because poetic diction and syntax are frequently chosen or even arbitrarily worked out by the original poet to express poetic feelings in response to artistic inspiration,song translation need to emphasize the beauty of auditory art,which not only requires the translated lyrics to be in line with the spirit,style,structure,and poetic art or the original song,but also requires the translator to give ultimate priority to its singability.Therefore,song translation poses multiple challenges in terms of choosing appropriate diction,syntax,and rhetorical devices to ensure maximal similarity,not to mention equivalence,to the original song while maintaining its singabillity to the maximal degree.This thesis adopts Professor's Xu Yuanchong's views and ideas as its main theoretical framework to discuss singularities of song translation,particularly its seemingly innate difficulties that requires flexible choice of translational strategies and solutions.Based on his rich practice of translation,Professor Xu sums up a comprehensive system of theoretical views on poetry translation,which comprises of his famous "Three Beauties"(beauty in sense,sound and form)(Xu,2006:52)and "Three Transformations"(generalization,equalization and particularization)(Xu,2006:82).He further put forward his guiding norms as "understandable,enjoyable and delectable"(Xu,1996:19).Xu Yuanchong proposed that translation is the art to make a language into another language,mainly to solve the contradiction between the original and content and the form of translation(Xu,2006:82).His translation theory mainly emphasizes:beauty,transcendence and faithfulness.Drawing upon some insights gained from comparing different Chinese versions of a couple carefully chosen classical English songs,this thesis comes to the tentative conclusion that song translation needs to take singability,appropriateness in diction and syntax,and optimal similarity in poetic feelings to the original song as its guiding principle and norms.This concept of song translation is felt to be quite in keeping with Professor Xu Yuanchong's views and ideas of poetry translation.