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Choices in Song Translation1
Singability in Print, Subtitles and Sung Performance
JOHAN FRANZON
University of Helsinki, Finland
Abstract. This article examines options in song translation and the concept of âsingabilityâ from a functional point of view and describes the strategic choices made by translators/lyricists in translating songs. Moving from the assumption that a song has three properties (music, lyrics and prospective performance) and music has three (melody, harmony and musical sense), it suggests that a song translator may have five options in theory: not translating the lyrics, translating the lyrics without taking the music into consideration, writing new lyrics, adapting the music to the translation, and adapting the translation to the music. In practice, some of these options may of course be combined. The article also suggests that the ambiguous term âsingabilityâ can be defined as a musico-verbal fit of a text to music, and that this musico-verbal unity may consist of several layers â prosodic, poetic and semantic-reflexive. These layers may sometimes be modified, or optional, but they would be united in a fully functional and singable target text lyric. In order to illustrate these points, the article examines a number of examples from different musical genres â a popular song, a hymn, a fictitious song and songs from musical plays (mostly in English, Swedish and Finnish) â translated for sung performance, for subtitles or to be printed in books.
Keywords.
Song translation,
Singability,
Functionalism,
Performability,
Subtitles,
Hymnals.
What can translators do when they are commissioned to translate a song? Generally speaking, among all the other text types with which professional translators engage, such a commission is rare. Song translation may be part of an occasional project for the theatre, of a subtitling/surtitling assignment for a film, or of a special publication where there are lyrics cited. Instead of professional translators, other professionals tackle song translation on a more regular basis: songwriters, singers, opera specialists and playwrights. One should also not forget the amateur fans: keen on grasping and sharing the meaning of foreign popular song lyrics, they use the internet to display or exchange their own translations.
Until quite recently, the translation of songs did not attract much attention within translation studies; one reason might be lack of clarity as to the professional identity of the people who do translate songs. Nevertheless, the fact that songs are translated in various ways, for various purposes, and by a variety of mediators should warrant some focused investigation within the discipline. This article is intended as a contribution to such an investigation.
What, then, are the options open to a translator who is commissioned to translate a song? The answer to this may be a counter question: is the translation going to be singable or not? If the purpose is simply to understand a foreign songâs lyrics, a semantically close, prose translation will do. But if a song is to be performed in another language, the assignment calls for a âsingableâ target text. This article aims to shed some light on this concept of singability, which I see not as an absolute ideal but, from a functional point of view, as consisting of various layers, which sometimes may be modified, or optional.
Earlier research in translation and music focused on opera translation. Discussion of opera tends to put emphasis on inviolable adherence to the music, on the requirements of the singers, and on absolute respect for the composers. However, song translation may have other and often conflicting priorities. The most concise discussion on song translation in English may be found in the works by Apter (1985), GorlĂ©e (1997, 2002, 2005) and Low (2003 and 2005). In particular, Low (2003) has addressed the fact that lyrics may also be translated for non-singing purposes and that in cases where they are going to be sung, ways of matching music and lyrics may be prioritized differently from opera. In Lowâs âpentathlon principleâ of song translation, there are four aspects related to music and performance: singability, rhyme, rhythm and naturalness, which must be balanced with a fifth aspect: fidelity to the sense of the source text (Low 2005).
As a term, singability can be understood in a restricted way, as referring mainly to phonetic suitability of the translated lyrics: to words being easy to sing to particular note values (as in Low 2005:192-94). Yet the term can also be used in a broader sense. It can be used to assess original lyrics as well as translations. Broadway lyricist Alan Jay Lerner explains how he fitted a lyric to the music of his collaborator âFritzâ Loewe (Lerner 1977):
Iâd given Fritz the title [âI Talk to the Treesâ] and heâd written a lovely melody for it. But every lyric I wrote seemed unsingable. And so I wrote it over and over again, until one day I realized what was wrong. For some reason, it was a song that couldnât stand any rhymes. So I took them out, and without them, the song seemed to sing quite well.
For Lerner, unsingable meant unperformable â just as categorically as theatre practitioners may prefer a âperformableâ translation of a play to a âliteraryâ one. In Lernerâs case, the melody seemed to have called for an unrhymed poetic form. Here singability means not just âeasy to singâ but something akin to the way skopos theory describes a good translation: suitable in every relevant way for the particular purpose. Such a broader understanding of the concept, as well as the more restricted approach, can be merged in a definition of singability as the attainment of musico-verbal unity between the text and the composition. This is what makes the lyrics âsingâ, so to speak, what makes them carry their meaning across and deliver their message in cooperation with the music.2
Another counter question to our initial query might be: is the translator going to have to choose between being faithful to the lyricist or the composer? A basic tenet of skopos theory (see Nord 1997 for an overview) is that fidelity follows function: the factor that determines a translatorâs decisions and choices would (or should) be the intended purpose of the target text. This tenet applies most evidently to song translation, where there is a clear need for functionality, not only in relation to the music, but also to the situation of use: a singing performance. Such an understanding of âvariable fidelityâ is reflected, most succinctly in my opinion, in the definition by Hartmann (1980:56) of translation as âtextual approximationâ, by which is meant that the translator âapproximat[es] as much as possible or as little as necessary for the particular situation the formal and stylistic conventions of the text in questionâ. As for explaining the demands of a singing performance (âthe particular situationâ), one can refer to the concept of âthe audio-medial textâ in translation studies, put forth â but not pursued â by Katerina Reiss (1971:49-52). In more recent formulations, namely by Mary Snell-Hornby (1997, 2006:84-90), this concept highlights the fact that some target texts, by nature of their genre or their multimodal medium of communication, must function under certain visual, acoustic, temporal or spatial constraints.
Coming back to our second counter question, there are translators who work with great respect for both the original lyricist and the composer; there are also translated versions of songs which take considerable liberty with the original lyrics, or, conversely, do not take the original music into account. In this article, my aim is to survey this broad spectrum of possibilities by recognizing five theoretically-distinct choices a translator faces when commissioned to translate song lyrics. For the purposes of this survey, I have picked up a number of diverse examples â popular song, songs from musicals, a fictitious song, a hymn, songs in print, subtitled songs, and songs created for performance â in an attempt to cover the broad field of song translation. I have consciously avoided art song and opera, as these are genres that have been widely discussed before. I have instead preferred cases where choices can be observed, where the musical constraints are less absolute, and where a degree of singability may nevertheless be part of a translatorâs goal.
This overview of choices then leads to an analysis of the techniques involved in writing singable lyrics, where three partly distinct functions of musico-verbal unity will be discussed: prosodic, poetic, and semantic-reflexive. These functions may appear on their own under special circumstances, but in all likelihood, they must come tog...
