Lost in translation : why song titles differ in meaning in English and Chinese

This paper investigated the titles of Mandarin pop (Mandopop) songs released in the last two years, as well as their corresponding English titles in order to identify the plausible naming patterns in the process of translation. These song titles created the database instrumental to this study, which...

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Main Author: Goh, Diana Wei Ling
Other Authors: Francesco Perono Cacciafoco
Format: Final Year Project
Language:English
Published: 2019
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10356/76530
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
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spelling sg-ntu-dr.10356-765302019-12-10T13:02:26Z Lost in translation : why song titles differ in meaning in English and Chinese Goh, Diana Wei Ling Francesco Perono Cacciafoco School of Humanities DRNTU::Humanities::Linguistics DRNTU::Humanities::Linguistics::Semantics This paper investigated the titles of Mandarin pop (Mandopop) songs released in the last two years, as well as their corresponding English titles in order to identify the plausible naming patterns in the process of translation. These song titles created the database instrumental to this study, which were gathered from the top 100 songs in terms of popularity in 2017 and 2018 among listeners of Singapore’s top Chinese radio station, YES 933FM. Preliminary results suggests that there were five main categories of naming trends during the translation of the song titles from Chinese to English: the retention of meaning, narrowing of meaning, a question that turns into positive statement, relational meaning, as well as titles with completely different meanings. Thereafter, it was postulated that the factors influencing the categorization of the song titles included increasing accessibility of the songs to non-Chinese language users, prioritizing the cadences of the translated titles, as well as the themes and emotions conveyed in the songs. In addition, this paper provided some insights into intentions behind the exclusion of translated titles, as well as a diachronic comparison of translated song titles in the past two decades. Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics and Multilingual Studies 2019-03-26T01:16:09Z 2019-03-26T01:16:09Z 2018 Final Year Project (FYP) http://hdl.handle.net/10356/76530 en Nanyang Technological University 43 p. application/pdf
institution Nanyang Technological University
building NTU Library
country Singapore
collection DR-NTU
language English
topic DRNTU::Humanities::Linguistics
DRNTU::Humanities::Linguistics::Semantics
spellingShingle DRNTU::Humanities::Linguistics
DRNTU::Humanities::Linguistics::Semantics
Goh, Diana Wei Ling
Lost in translation : why song titles differ in meaning in English and Chinese
description This paper investigated the titles of Mandarin pop (Mandopop) songs released in the last two years, as well as their corresponding English titles in order to identify the plausible naming patterns in the process of translation. These song titles created the database instrumental to this study, which were gathered from the top 100 songs in terms of popularity in 2017 and 2018 among listeners of Singapore’s top Chinese radio station, YES 933FM. Preliminary results suggests that there were five main categories of naming trends during the translation of the song titles from Chinese to English: the retention of meaning, narrowing of meaning, a question that turns into positive statement, relational meaning, as well as titles with completely different meanings. Thereafter, it was postulated that the factors influencing the categorization of the song titles included increasing accessibility of the songs to non-Chinese language users, prioritizing the cadences of the translated titles, as well as the themes and emotions conveyed in the songs. In addition, this paper provided some insights into intentions behind the exclusion of translated titles, as well as a diachronic comparison of translated song titles in the past two decades.
author2 Francesco Perono Cacciafoco
author_facet Francesco Perono Cacciafoco
Goh, Diana Wei Ling
format Final Year Project
author Goh, Diana Wei Ling
author_sort Goh, Diana Wei Ling
title Lost in translation : why song titles differ in meaning in English and Chinese
title_short Lost in translation : why song titles differ in meaning in English and Chinese
title_full Lost in translation : why song titles differ in meaning in English and Chinese
title_fullStr Lost in translation : why song titles differ in meaning in English and Chinese
title_full_unstemmed Lost in translation : why song titles differ in meaning in English and Chinese
title_sort lost in translation : why song titles differ in meaning in english and chinese
publishDate 2019
url http://hdl.handle.net/10356/76530
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