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Article published In:
APTIF 9 - Reality vs. Illusion: From Morse code to machine translation
Edited by Frans De Laet, In-kyoung Ahn and Joong-chol Kwak
[Babel 66:4/5] 2020
► pp. 780–795

When the classic speaks for children

Retranslation of Bob Dylan’s songs in bilingual picture books

| Macau University of Science and Technology
Bob Dylan has significantly influenced American song tradition and popular music for more than five decades. As his songs are famous for the creative poetic expressions, they are not merely song lyrics, but also can be regarded as lyric poems. This paper aims to investigate the retranslation of Bob Dylan’s songs in bilingual picture books to explore how his classic musical works are repackaged both verbally and visually for contemporary children. The data for analysis are selected from two bilingual picture books on Dylan’s songs published in China in 2018. Firstly, it conducts a detailed textual analysis of the English and Chinese song lyrics to analyze the appropriate translation strategies and methods for song translation. Secondly, based on visual narratives (Painter, Martin and Unsworth 2013), it analyzes the intersemiotic relations between texts and images in picture books to discuss how the emotions and narratives in Dylan’s songs are visually represented.
Keywords: song translation, poetry translation, visual narratives, picture book, Bob Dylan
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Song translation as poetry translation
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Data
    • 3.2Analytical framework
  • 4.Case analysis
    • 4.1Translation of Bob Dylan’s poetic song lyrics
    • 4.2Visual representation of Bob Dylan’s songs in picture books
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 5 October 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00175.che
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