Basic Words in Music Translation

In this era of fast economic development, many people are getting richer and they are not content with material pursuit any more. More and more people begin to seek a spiritual life. Music art is enjoyed popular support among people; especially the beautiful movie songs have encouraged people’s enthusiasm for music. Besides this, various musical instruments become popular and fashionable in people’s daily life.

They hope to play the musical instruments and allowed the sweet music to be presented. Due to these factors, they are eager to learn about basic theory knowledge and cultural background of music. However, most western music related knowledge is written in English. Therefore, it is required to be translated into Chinese.

Now that the society has such kind of demand, the translators should bear the responsibility of being a bridge between the people and the English papers. Music translation is a special part in respect of classifications of translation. It also has some features. Now I’d like to speak of the basic words in music translation.

Read Also: The Translations for Some Musical Terms

Musical vocabulary is very interesting, some of them are common words we familiar with, but they have very special meanings in music. With the purpose of distinguishing different meanings, I list some such kind of words in the following (note: the first, the second and the third columns are the English word, the common meaning and the professional meaning in music respectively).

meter 米 拍子 passage 文章 乐段 pattern 模式 音型 beat 拍打 拍子 quality 质量 音质

duration 持续 时值 second 第二 二度 staff 员工 谱表 interval 间隔 音程 key 关键 调

flat 平地 降号 sharp 尖头 升号 natural 自然的 还原 major 主要的 大调 minor 次要的 小调

bar 条 小节 time 时间 拍子 measure 测量 小节 value 价值 时值 rest 休息 休止符

tie 领带 延音线 slur 污点 连音线 wind 风 管乐器 scale 刻度 音阶 step 步骤 音程，度

mode 模式 调式 dominant 显性 属音 perfect 完美的 纯音程 sequence 顺序 模进 binary 二进制的 二部曲式

…

The following are some common musical terms:

Pl. Neums 纽姆谱 rhythm节奏 dynamics 力度 duple 二拍子

triple三拍子 fortissimo最强音的 pianissimo最弱音的 crescendo 渐强

diminished渐弱 timbre音色 tempo 速度 metronome节拍器

Adagio慢板 Andante行板 Moderato中板 Allegretto小快板

Allegro快板 Presto急板 key signature 调号 time signature 拍号

semibreve全音符 quaver八分音符 semiquaver十六分音符 minim二分音符

crotchet四分音符 staccato 跳音