Study on Translation of Remember Me from the Perspective of Three Beauties Theory: Taking Italian, Mandarin and Cantonese as Examples

Abstract

Influenced by the trend of globalization, the translation and dubbing of songs in musical movies largely affects target language audience’s Influenced by the trend of globalization, the translation and dubbing of songs in musical movies largely affect the target language audience’s understanding. Xu Yuanchong’s “Three Beauties” theory has been applied in other translation fields except for the translation of songs in musical movies. Based on the “Three Beauties” theory, this study evaluates three translation versions’ lyrics of Remember Me, the theme song of the 2017 successful animated musical film Coco, which won two Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song (“Remember Me”). In this paper, we compare the Italian, Mandarin and Cantonese translation versions of Remember Me with the original English lyrics, and examines whether the three translations convey and express well and properly the feelings and emotions in the original lyrics in three dimensions: beauty in form, beauty in sound and beauty in meaning, and whether they meet the expectations of the target audience for the aesthetics of the original song, to provide reference suggestions for future song translations and music film translations.