Strategies of Adapting Chinese Songs into Thai Songs: a case study of Suwanna Chanakan's Bilingual Love Song Album of Chinese-Thai Volume 4

Abstract

The objective of this research was to analyze the strategies of adapting Chinese songs into Thai songs using Chinese-Thai bilingual love songs volume 4 of Suwanna Chanakan’s album as a case study. These songs were categorized into a translation strategy and a new lyric writing. The two types of strategies, translation and new lyric writing, were then analyzed. The findings indicated the 3 songs of using translation strategy and 5 songs of using new lyric writing. The 4 translation strategies of adapting songs were found including adding information, using equivalent words, changing sentence structure, and composing new content. The new lyric writing strategy was divided into 2 categories including the songs with and without content relating to original meaning. The findings of this research could be concluded that the song with too complicated content could be an obstacle for translators. It could not be translated in accordance with the original song so the translator chose to convey only the melody of that song and use new lyric writing strategy. On the contrary, for the songs with too less content, if translating without adaptation it might result with the unmelodious lyrics. So the translator chose the adaption strategy of adding information for making it more melodious.