earticle

영어

This study aims at investigating the difference in translated lyrics of Stephen Sondheim's musical Sweeny Todd between its 2007 premiere and 2016 revival in South Korea and exploring the possible reasons behind the change. The two versions of translated lyrics were analyzed focusing on their phonetic and semantic features such as syllable, beat, note, pronunciation, rhyme and metaphors. The textual analysis showed that the premiere version tended to leave the original version's distinctive rhyme untranslated and faithfully preserve its expression and metaphor. This resulted in negative reviews particularly on the delivery of lyrics and may have partly affected the premiere's box office failure. On the contrary, the revival version improved the lyrics' delivery and acceptability by adjusting the number of syllable, maintaining and sometimes reinforcing the effect of rhyme and domesticating the humor and word-play, which received good reviews and possibly have contributed to the revival's commercial success. Extensive review on newspaper and magazine articles, program books of the premiere and revival, and research papers suggested that the difference in the two translated versions may be attributed to a variety of extra-textual factors such as the purpose of production, participants e.g., producers, directors and translators, and the change in the country's musical industry and social context.