Strategies For Choosing Rhymes In E-C Musical Translation

The report examined the translated version of the Broadway musical Hadestown,written by Anais Mitchell.This Tony and Grammy award-winning musical retells the Greek myth of Eurydice and Orpheus and sheds light on wealth gap,climate change,and other hotly-debated social issues.As musicals are gaining popularity in China,musical translation gradually attracts attention.This report attempts to encourage more translators to engage in E-C musical translation and facilitate strategies for musical translation.Over 80%of the lines in Hadestown are rhymed,and rhyme is deemed as an essential part of Chinese poetry and songs.Thus the report focuses on the selection of rhymes,including choosing rhyming-schemes and rhyming words in the translated text.Based on the previous studies,the translator divided the rhyming-schemes into four categories and the rhyming words into three levels.Under this classification,the translator counted the number of times each rhyming-scheme and rhyme had been used in the translated version.Examples are provided to evaluate the translation and examine the strategies for choosing proper rhyming-scheme and rhyming words.This report thus summarized the strategies for choosing rhymes.In general,whether the conclusion of this report can be applied to the translation of other musicals is to be discussed.The report provides one version of the translated song-lyrics of Hadestown,aiming at benefiting future studies on E-C musical translation.