Translating western musicals into Chinese: Adapting to the reception

Translating Western musicals into Chinese: texts, networks, consumers

For more than a century, Yan Fu’s translation principle(s) had a great influence on translation theory and practice in China and beyond. Largely because of the pithiness of the principle(s) and Yan’s marked departure from fidelity – an aspect of the principle, there has been much discussion. The lack of a theoretical tradition in Chinese translation discourse has led to impressionistic interpretations of the principle(s), often unmoored from its/their historical context. Given the various degrees of simplification and reductionism belie the multi-layered complexity of translation, a critical and nuanced discussion of the origin and function of the principle(s) is needed to rectify some of the prevailing and persistent misconceptions and to steer the discussion in meaningful and constructive directions to avoid an ahistorical and anachronistic use of the principle(s), which has led to conceptual confusion and methodological weakness. This article contextualizes Yan Fu’s ‘unorthodox way of translating’ Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics by relating it to the deep sense of national crisis among Chinese intellectuals who were trying to find ways to enlighten the general public for China’s national survival, which is conducive to justifying the almost unapologetically adaptive nature of Yan’s translation practice, whose success and influence are undeniable. 

Yan Fu’s translation ‘principle(s)’ and Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics

This article discusses the creativity and originality that can be generated by both interlingual and intersemiotic translations The text of Gustav Mahler’s song symphony Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth) is taken from Hans Bethge’s adaptations of Chinese Tang poetry In 2002 a modern Chinese dance was set to Mahler’s masterpiece by Chiang Ching, a Chinese choreographer now living in the US For this performance, Mahler’s text was translated into Chinese by Cheng Chou-yu, an influential contemporary Chinese poet, and was recited as interludes between the movements The present article explores this loop of intertextuality surrounding Das Lied von der Erde, created by interlingual and intersemiotic translations, and illustrates how the idea of ‘translation’ is deeply embedded in Mahler’s composition and Chiang Ching’s staging of the dance For Mahler the idea of his text being a translation justifies his musical innovation; for Chiang Ching the overall aesthetic of her dance hinges on t

The Song of the Earth

This article examines options in song translation and the concept of ‘singability’ from a functional point of view and describes the strategic choices made by translators/lyricists in translating songs. Moving from the assumption that a song has three properties (music, lyrics and prospective performance) and music has three (melody, harmony and musical sense), it suggests that a song translator may have five options in theory: not translating the lyrics, translating the lyrics without taking the music into consideration, writing new lyrics, adapting the music to the translation, and adapting the translation to the music. In practice, some of these options may of course be combined. The article also suggests that the ambiguous term ‘singability’ can be defined as a musico-verbal fit of a text to music, and that this musico-verbal unity may consist of several layers – prosodic, poetic and semantic-reflexive. These layers may sometimes be modified, or optional, but they would be united in a fully fu...

Choices in Song Translation

Translation theory advances thinking about film adaptation by enabling a more rigorous critical methodology. The relation between such second-order creations and their source materials is not communicative but hermeneutic, depending on the translator's or filmmaker's application of an interpretant. The hermeneutic relation can be seen not only as interpretive, fixing the form and meaning of the source materials, but as interrogative, exposing the cultural and social conditions of those materials and of the translation or adaptation that has processed them. The critic in turn applies an interpretant, whether a critical methodology or specific interpretation, to formulate the hermeneutic relation and its interrogative effects.

Adaptation, Translation, Critique

Translation and the Formation of Cultural Identities.

Based on the presentation of an ongoing research program inspired by the works of the French philosopher and anthropologist Bruno Latour – a program that consists of following translation projects “in the making” in three Montreal-based independent publishing houses – this article discusses the benefits and implications of designing a sociology of translation that would focus on the production end rather than the reception end, looking at translation from the viewpoint of its manufacture within publishing houses and integrating ethnography among the research methodologies used. Drawing more particularly upon the observations and analyses deriving from the fieldwork conducted so far in Montreal, this essay suggests how Latour’s “sociology of translation” could help overcome the limits of the polysystemic model.

Translating western musicals into Chinese: Adapting to the reception

Citations

Translating Western musicals into Chinese: texts, networks, consumers

Yan Fu’s translation ‘principle(s)’ and Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics

References

The Song of the Earth

Choices in Song Translation

Adaptation, Translation, Critique

Translation and the Formation of Cultural Identities.

Translations 'in the making'

Related Papers (1)

Chinese Adaptation of Musicals