「五月天」二個版本歌詞翻譯錯誤分析：功能關聯性視角

• Main Authors: Tsai-ting Wu, 吳采庭
• Other Authors: Chung-ling Shih
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/b9d2a4

碩士 === 國立高雄第一科技大學 === 應用英語系口筆譯碩士班 === 104 === The current study aims to analyze the translation errors in two English versions of Wuyetian’s song lyrics. Drawing on Katharina Reiss’ (1971/2000) text typology theory and Christiane Nord’s (1997) functional model, this study redefines the textual function of the lyrics translation as informative and operative. Furthermore, contextual effect and optimal relevance in Gutt’s (1992) relevance theory are discussed and applied to understand the relation of textual functions to the errors made in translating some culture-related expressions. This study adopts both quantitative and qualitative analyses to examine the two English versions of Mayday’s 21 song lyrics. One version (TTA) is translated by a native English speaker and the other (TTB) by a native Chinese speaker. Three out of Nord’s (1997) four types of translation errors including 1) linguistic, 2) cultural, and 3) text-specific ones are used to investigate the errors occurring in the two versions. The statistical results of error analysis indicate that TTA shows a higher percentage of both linguistic (98/451=22%) and cultural (19/38=50%) translation errors than those of TTB (82/451=18%; 9/38=24%). However, as regards text-specific errors, TTA (27/451=6%) is lower than TTB (50/451=11%) as TTA uses more often the following three measures: 1) clear and straightforward depictions, 2) action verbs, and 3) repetitive structure. The findings allow us to know that TTA is less informative but more operative than TTB. In addition, eight semi-formal interviews with target audience reveal that both the interview and interviewees like cultural translations in TTB better, but in terms of text-specific translations, the interviewees’ reception of both versions doesn’t show a distinct difference. The main reason is that the use of repetitive structures in the ST is not necessarily attractive when replicated in the TT. For most of interviewees, replicating the original it might hinder the audience’s easy comprehension and reading. In other words, more often than not, the use of simple and natural sentence structures is favored by the interviewees. In this regard, translators of future lyrics translation should pay more attention to the correctness and smoothness of depictions and grammar in the target text rather than its text-specific functions. That is, linguistic and cultural errors are more important than text-specific errors. Finally, this study suggests that apart from his or her proficiency in source and target languages, the translator should also take the textual function of lyrics translation into consideration and take the target readers’ reading needs as one of the important guidelines. In this way, the intended messages will be more effectively conveyed to the target audience. What’s more, the good quality of lyrics translation will help spread the culture of songs from one language to another.