Vol/53 No/2 2014
APRIL/MAY The Linguist 23
the revolution can only be fully drawn if the
words of the soundtrack are understood:
The problem of leisure
What to do for pleasure
The body is good business
Sell out, maintain the interest
Ideal love a new purchase
A market of the senses
Dream of the perfect life
3
What can be frustrating is that there is often
little time in the original version of the film to
perceive these subtexts and even less so in a
translated version. Indeed, translators do not
always have the opportunity to provide a
translation, but should if they can.
Transfer a musical reference
Musical allusions are frequent in political and
cultural texts. It is not difficult to translate
such allusions, although they might need
paraphrasing, some explanations or an
imaginative adaptation. However, it is
extremely easy to miss them. A French friend
who recently divorced an Englishman told
me, with conviction, that her next husband
would be French 'because we sung the same
songs at school'. Her remark set me thinking:
often translators were not exposed to songs
in the language of the source text while they
were growing up.
Just before Valentine's Day this year, the
energy company Ovo issued the slogan:
'Roses are red, violets are blue. Dump the
Big Six, Ovo loves you!'. The advertisement
uses a famous song with gentle irony; clearly,
this is one of these instances when we should
see music and adapt. Similarly, most people
would be aware of Haruki Murakami's
Norwegian Wood intertextual reference, but
how many have transferred the song
reference in the titles of The Catcher in the
Rye by J D Salinger or Night Shift by Stephen
King? These references are easy to miss and
a second sense for checking a possible song
title can and should be developed.
Translate songs, absolutely!
In a perfect world, translators with expertise
in music would be asked to translate songs.
However, in the copyright-protected media
world, with fast-paced global production
practices, this is not always the case. Nahima
Ait-Bouzalim has discussed the challenges of
translating a song for dubbing purposes with
no context, because the film providers were
keen to protect the film content before its
release.
4
With no information on the visual
context and no personal musical background,
she did her best, matching rhymes and
stresses, making sure that the number of
syllables used remained the same, finding
equivalent poetic images, hoping that hers
would not clash with the visual content.
Such situations are common, potentially
disastrous for song translation and very
challenging, even if the translator has some
musical knowledge. The best a translator can
do is to make sure that the imagery chosen is
not too specific, so that it can fit any given
visual context, and that the song can be
fluidly sung in the target language,
respecting rhythm and rhyme.
Songs do not always have to be sung in
the foreign language, of course, and, for
most translators, the lyrics will be provided as
subtitles. A good piece of advice is to
translate as if for a sung translation, respecting
the rhythm and poetic life of the song as
much as possible, as this will produce a more
intuitive translation for readers.
There is no space here to discuss the full
range of song translation,
5
but if you are a
translator, the chances are that you will
occasionally need to help your readership
with foreign songs – finding, as The Beatles
sang, a few 'words that go together well'.
Lucile Desblache is the main investigator in
the Translating Music research project, which is
considering all aspects of accessibility and
translation in music-related texts. For details or
to take part, see www.translatingmusic.com.
Notes
1 Watch at www.youtube.com/
watch?v=iKcBNbRSdyI
2 Kevin Bronson, www.mtv.com/artists/
victory/biography/
3 From Entertainment, 1979
4 See www.translatingmusic.com/styled-3/
styled-14/index.html
5 See, for instance, Desblache, L, 2012, 'Low
Fidelity: Opera in translation' in Translating Today
(www.translatingtoday.com/low-fidelity-opera-in-
translation); Tortoriello, A, 2006, 'Funny and
Educational across Cultures: Subtitling Winnie
The Pooh into Italian' in JoSTrans 6, pp. 53-67;
Low, P, 2005, 'The Pentathlon Approach to Song
Translation' in Gorlée, D, Song and Significance.
Virtues and vices of vocal translation, Amsterdam,
Rodopi, pp.185-212
POP CULTURE
The Beatles at John F
Kennedy Airport in 1964
