“Star of Arts” Across Languages: An Analysis of Singable Song Translation from a Typological Perspective
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Abstract
Objectives: This research aims to study the similarities and differences of each target language that affect the translation strategies of the song “Star of Arts” (Dao Aksorn) into English, French, German, Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese by considering the typological aspects.
Methods: The data used in the research are the original lyrics and the the singable translations of the song in all 7 languages. The research method is based on analyzing the translation glosses and back translation in each target language to compare the similarities and differences in various dimensions.
Results: The analysis results reveal that there are five key linguistics aspects which play important roles and affect the translation, including sound systems; word order; pronoun usage; grammatical morphemes; and syntactical structure. All the translations took these dimensions into account, which provided both advantages and challenges to the translation process.
Application of this study: The knowledge acquired from this research can be used as guidelines for singable song translation as well as for educational purposes in teaching these target languages as foreign languages.
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