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Questions of Song Translation
by Prem Srajano
It has been said of translation that like a woman, the more she is beautiful, the less she is faithful. Whether or not this is true in real life, it is particularly so in the case of song translation. I also work professionally as a translator of technical documents, but the way I do song "translation" is very different.
The poetic use of words is too dependant on the particular national language to survive a literal translation. A literal translation may preserve the meaning, but lose the beauty of the images, sounds and rhythm. And conversely, while seeking to equal the beauty of the original poem, one may deviate from the original meaning to the point of creating a new poem. An approach to poetic translation must fall somewhere between faithfulness to the letter, and faithfulness to the spirit of the original work.
In translating songs, which are a form of poetry, the challenge is even greater. A song must be "singable". Fitting the words to the notes of a melody is a stricter constraint than simply writing in a poetic rhythm. Furthermore, although poetry today is often non-rhyming, songs are generally strongly dependent on rhyme. In order to preserve the rhyming scheme it is necessary to apply considerable ingenuity. My own experience is that this is impossible without considerable adaptation of the song's original ideas.
It becomes highly subjective to decide whether the original spirit and feeling of the song has been preserved or not. In any case I make no bones about the fact that I am a songwriter in my own right, and if I have created a new song instead of a translation, that is legitimate too. Beyond song adaptation is "imitation", in which the translated song is inspired by the original but can hardly be said to be equivalent to the original.
If the aim of the translation is to explain the meaning of the song to an audience that listens to the song in the original language, but does not understand the language, a prose translation is appropriate to be read in parallel by the listener, without trying to be too poetic, and ignoring rhyme and melody. If on the other hand the goal is to create a song to be sung in another language, it is necessary to be more creative, and to become songwriter as much as a translator.
The following table summarizes the different levels of difficulty of song translation
| Constraints | Type of writing | Equivalence | Type of "translation" |
| literal meaning | prose | faithful to literal meaning | literal translation |
| poetic qualities | poetry | less literal | approximation /adaptation |
| singability | poetry / song lyrics | more creative | approximation /adaptation |
| rhyme | song lyrics | reinvents song | adaptation / imitation |
Examples of the same song translated in two different ways :
La complainte du phoque en Alaska
Other examples of song adaptations from this site :
- Songs That Will Surprise You
- Quebec Popular
Songs...Adapted in English
Links :
For titles of various songs adapted between
French and English
see list of Adaptations
which is part of
the French Music Database.
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Site created July 29, 1998.
Page last modified : March 10, 2000
visits since Mar. 6, 2000