Film Song Translation Based On The Pentathlon Principle

This thesis analyzes the official Chinese versions of five songs from the film Beauty and the Beast based on the Pentathlon Principle.It focuses on analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of the official Chinese versions and putting forward suggestions.At the same time,strategies of film song translation are summarized.Since film song translation is not given much attention in the filed of translation research,this thesis aims to expand research on it.In addition,as film songs play a significant role in the spread of films,this thesis also helps films’ cross-border spread.First,this thesis introduces research background,significance,questions and methodology.Second,it reviews film song translation at home and abroad from six aspects,and analyzes the limitations of previous research.Third,it introduces the Pentathlon Principle,which is a systematic and comprehensive principle and able to guide song translation.Next,since the translation research targets film songs,it elaborates on their functions and language features.Chapter five analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of the official Chinese versions of five songs in terms of five principles respectively,and puts forward suggestions.Last,translation strategies are given and expected to be applied at the same time so that the five principles will be met in an overall way.Conclusions are as follows.To begin with,the official translations of the five songs are relatively perfect,but some still have problems such as failing to abide by a single principle or accommodate other principles.This shows that taking into account the five principles at the same time poses a great challenge.On the basis of improving the official translation,this thesis summarizes five translation strategies in an aim to reach an overall high score on five principles,namely,free translation,matching Chinese tones with original music,adjusting word or phrase order,adopting rhyme variation,and keeping syllables,stresses and rests in Chinese consistent with those in source texts.