Music Translationi

The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translation. Washbourne, K. & Van Wyke, B. (eds.). Routldege

Music Translationi

Lucile Desblache

1) Introduction and definitions

For most people, the translation of music evokes the translation of the lyrics of songs. But music translation is much broader in scope. Both music and translation can be treacherous to delineate and their definitions change with time and context. Translation Studies scholars have spilled much ink on the notion of translation, but have only agreed that it be can defined diversely. It is most frequently defined in relation to its mode (written or oral), state of being (process or product), category (interlinguistic, intralinguistic and intersemiotic, as expressed canonically by Jakobson ([1959] 2012), subject field (literary, audiovisual, technical…), or according to the paradigm it refers to (linguistic, cultural, social…). Music is even more challenging to define universally. Some human societies do not have a word corresponding accurately to the Western concept of music and even within Western confines, the notion of music varies depending on whether it refers to acts of composition, performance, listeners’ experience, genre (pop song, symphony…) or style (classical, baroque, jazz…). However, a working definition is needed and music is understood here as a combination of sounds in movement ─ primarily non semantic ─ meant to be listened to.

For some musicians, such as Igor Stravinsky, music is a self-sufficient form of creation and expresses nothing but itself. Such formalistsii do not deny that it can be inspired by other art forms, natural phenomena, living beings, emotions or events. Nevertheless, they argue that it is the listeners who project extra-musical meaning on to it:

The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translation. Washbourne, K. & Van Wyke, B. (eds.). Routldege

I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at

all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, a psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature,

etc. . . . . If, as is nearly always the case, music appears to express something, this is only

an illusion and not a reality. (Stravinsky 1936, 83)

If music is self-mediated, it should, by essence, not require translation. Indeed, not everything can or should be translated in musical texts. However, music’s versatile capacity for translation is inseparable from its ability to accommodate human projections, which leads to extra-musical interpretations. There are also other reasons why translation and music are interdependent.

First, like every other cultural product or practice, music’s evolution depends on exchanges, interactions and transformations, which include translations in the linguistic and/or cultural sense of the word. Most historians, musicians and musicologists now agree that while the ability to appreciate and make music is a universal human feature — except for the 5% of humans who are amusic and unable to hear music meaningfully — and while musical experiences can connect people from different cultures and generations, music does not use a universal language.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, music has become both an instrument of diversity — playing a key role in the expression of collective and individual ethnic, political and artistic identities — and an instrument of hegemony. As the philosopher Theodor Adorno ([1941]

2002) has argued, the commodification of music also entailed its standardisation. Some argue that the digital era, facilitating the production and dissemination of marginalised music, has weakened this standardisation phenomenon and allows music to be a direct articulation of creativity. For instance, Tropicália, an early fusion movement started in the 1960s by artists such as Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, revolutionised Brazilian music, opening it to different

The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translation. Washbourne, K. & Van Wyke, B. (eds.). Routldege

styles and cultural influences while introducing Brazilian music to Western audiences.

Translation, whether in its literal meaning or broader sense is also contributing creatively to giving power to end-users. From fan-translation or crowd translation of songs to the ‘cover’ of existing music, audiences and composers alike have been encouraged into different forms of translation provision since the beginning of the 21st century. This involves translating all or some aspects of the source content, most frequently, the words linked to it, but not exclusively.

However, translation can also promote hegemony and therefore, dominant discourses as well as be a liberating instrument for the peripheral voices. An ambivalent example of this is the

‘gentrification’ of rock: while Black musicians were the creators of the rock’n roll style after the Second World War, their work was marginalised while being translated into White mainstream products by artists such as Elvis Presley.

A second reason for musical and translational interrelations is that music responds to extra- musical stimulation and interacts meaningfully with all other art forms. Some of these, such as dance, are nearly unthinkable without music. In pop music video clips, the choreography of a song is often used to translate its narrative for instance. When used in combination with different art forms, music acquires contextual and extra-musical meaning while keeping its exclusive musical significance when performed on its own. Some would argue that it is not always the case. For instance, will John Barry’s title music for the James Bond films ever be listened to in exclusively musical ways, free from its filmic references? Does it not always trigger the suspense, the excitement and the fun associated with Ian Fleming’s hero and his adventures? Yet if even the most enthusiastic referentialist has to admit that no extra-musical meaning can be objectively associated to a musical piece, music can give fresh meaning to other art forms, as the power of a film soundtrack attests. Numerous silent films have been rescored

The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translation. Washbourne, K. & Van Wyke, B. (eds.). Routldege

with the aim of producing hybrid products, both faithful to the original as regards the film itself but remediated musically for a new public. The remakes of some classic films often keep the original soundtrack though, contributing to reconstructing its authenticity. For example, Gus

Van Sant’s remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1998) reuses Bernard Herrmann's original score, although rearranged by Danny Elfman and recorded in stereo. Nevertheless, as 21st century audiences demand more novelty, rescoring films is a common way of translating them for contemporary audiences. A niche area of live rescoring is also emerging, giving a new creative dimension to classic or cult movies. The band Asian Dub Foundation have thus given musical performances of Matthieu Kassovitz’ La Haine in 2001, Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers in 2004 and George Lucas’s THX1138 in 2015.

A third reason for the interdependence of translation and music is that the very act of listening to music implies, like any act of communication, a form of translation. A composer hears music internally, he or she encodes it in ways that will be decipherable by performers. A performer interprets music; and listeners construe the meaning of external sounds, be they musical or not.

The very acts of encoding music by means of a written language and its deciphering imply multiple interpretations. Reading music is not undertaken in a linear way as for most texts based exclusively on words, but in simultaneous ones, so that the wide range of musical parameters necessary to make music meaningful (such as pitch, dynamics, rhythm, timbre, tempo, emotional tone…) is included in the deciphering of the text. This implies a complex interpretative process. In non-Western music, the borders between composer and interpreter are much looser and the written encoding of the musical text, when it exists, is just meant to be a reminder, a starting point for the musical performance, as in jazz improvisation.

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Music and the various texts that relate to it can also require translation in the most commonly accepted sense of the word. In spite of Western composers’ efforts to use a global language for musical terms relating to tempo, style and even mood (often Italian or Latin with phrases such as a capella, allegro moderato, accelerando, affettuoso, etc.), this is not always the case and some of these indications may need to be translated. Other paratexts may also be crucial to the main musical text, such as editor’s notes and pieces’ titles, etc. In addition, vocal music relies on words and a semantic message which leads to various forms of translation, as is discussed below.

A final reason for the interrelation of music and translation resides in music’s intrinsic nature as an art of transmission through repetition and variation. This, in turn, relates to the notion and practice of translation as an instrument of diffusion of knowledge and emotion, which is part of human evolution, or at least, human history. There seems little doubt that “the sound of the wild determined the first music” (Hendy 2014, 23) and that creating sounds analogous to natural sounds played an important part in early musical development. Yet the human purpose of mimicking sounds has not been so much to imitate as to capture the subject of inspiration, be it material (e.g. birds) or immaterial (e.g. wind). Imagination also corrupts reproduction in human enterprises, and mediating the original sound listened to was as inevitable in prehistory as it is today, because an exact equivalent is always impossible, but also, out of playfulness.

2) Musical translations

In spite of their partial untranslatability, the translation of musical texts can make those texts

(more) meaningful musically, linguistically, culturally, modally, sensorially. One of the characteristics of these translations, common to media translation, is that they are ‘partial,’ in the sense that while taking the whole text into consideration, they choose to transfer one or

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several aspects of this text while others are left untouched. For instance, the literal translation of the lyrics of a song will aim to add a level of semantic comprehension while the listener enjoys the original experience of the song at other levels. Similarly, the audio description of an opera will mediate the visual context of the piece, in order to allow blind listeners to make sense of the opera as a whole.

Scholars only started to provide comprehensive models of music translation in the 21st century.

Some areas, such as opera and song translation (Gorlée 2005; Kaindl 2005; Low 2005, 2010,

2013 and 2016; Mateo 2012; Susam-Sarajeva 2008) or the transnational circulation of vocal music (Bohlman 2011; Evans 2008; Fernández 2015; Kaindl 2013) have been explored extensively, while others are still neglected (see Translating Music). While many aspects of music, including genre, form or style can be translated, we shall focus in the following paragraphs on transfers which include words. This means considering the ‘partial’ translation that is most often needed in music: that of the lyrics in vocal music, whether for a general or specialist audience, and of audio description for the blind. Target texts can also be created to mediate a musical text that does not include words: for the purpose of cultural transference or accessibility for audiences with special needs for instance.

a) Listening spaces and places

The context for which music is intended impacts on all agents of music making and on listeners of course, but it also determines its translation to some degree. There are unwritten norms of translation provision in music, as is shown below:

- Live concerts

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Recorded music is the primary source of musical consumption, but live music attendance has strongly increased in the 21st century. Live music attendance has increased worldwide in spectacular ways in the last two decades (Music Industry Blog 2017). In addition, most streaming companies, such as Amazon Prime, now offer some live concerts in addition to recorded music. Since the 1980s, opera houses have been champions of accessibility, providing interlinguistic (when the opera is sung in a foreign language) or intralinguistic subtitles for all members of the audience, audio-introductions for the blind and in some cases, signed performances for the deaf. Surtitling the sung libretto (or subtitling it in the case of live HD cinema performances) was piloted in Hong Kong in the late 1970s to facilitate the comprehension of European opera for Chinese audiences (Chan 2009, 166–172) and caught on as an efficient way to reach audiences across linguistic, cultural and sometimes disability barriers. In the case of staged musicals, a primarily Anglo-American genre, an expansion towards more surtitling has been visible in the last decade. In Europe, large co-productions presented on stage are increasingly adapted to be sung in different languages. By contrast, recorded productions often offer a single show in English with surtitles in the non-English speaking countries. Until the end of the first decade of the 21st century, surtiting for English- speaking countries was limited to some performances and provided by disability charities.

The translation of musical live events for special needs audiences is notoriously neglected. They entail text that can be scripted (for instance song lyrics that can be known and prepared in advance of the live event) or unscripted events (off the cuff interviews with performers for instance). When accessibility provision is made, unscripted events are usually respoken, while traditionally scripted events are cued in with a pre-prepared script. With a trend towards more automatic translation, respeaking techniques are becoming more prevalent, in the televised retransmissison of live events in particular.

The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translation. Washbourne, K. & Van Wyke, B. (eds.). Routldege

Other live musical events have not benefited from such comprehensive translation provision.

In the classical field, the tradition of written programmes available to the audience has survived for centuries. Moreover, publications intended for amateur and professional singers exist, providing translations, phonetic and stylistic information on the classical repertoire. This is a reasonably rarefied field, but these publications are relevant for many years and attract a regular readership. For instance, Pierre Bernac’s The Interpretation of French Song, first published in

1970, is still in print in 2017.

In other areas though, translation provision is scant. Popular music festivals, for instance, generally give little background information on performance and performers, let alone translations of lyrics. In the UK, there is presently a move towards access provision to live music events, particularly in small venues, driven by charities such as Stagetext or Attitude is

Everything. Yet in spite of the fact that live concerts are increasingly popular worldwide and primarily driven by songs, it is astonishing to note that no translation is provided in most cases.

- Radio

Some radio portals support multilingual outputs (such as DeliCast Radio, where language and musical genre can be selected and a list of available radios is offered). Overall though, most radio stations are monolingual and offer no translations as such. With the rise of global radios such as Apple Beats1, transmissions in English seem to be given increasing global power.

Nevertheless, radios offer information on music which is aired, its composers, performers and lyrics writers on their websites and by means of oral presentation, summaries of song narratives and secondary texts such as interviews with performers. In 2008, the BBC piloted synchronised

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subtitles customised for operas on the classical station Radio 3, but due to budget cuts, this translation project was discontinued.

- Listening on the move: MP3s

Since the late 1970s when the first Walkman players made music portable for individuals, music listening habits have changed dramatically. Individuals have, of course, been able to enjoy or play music on their own, but in the last few decades, devices have allowed them to create their own listening space and exclude their environment and others from it. Besides, in an era of media convergence (Jenkins 2008), music is rarely produced and disseminated without extra- musical elements, in particular visuals. Perhaps surprisingly, these extra-musical preferences have not led to the systematic presence of translation related to digital musical items. Yet the translation of lyrics is now expected to be part of this experience.

Translations are generated on the internet in a wide range of formats: ‘official’ translation of the lyrics of songs provided by music companies on companion websites, fan translation on sites dedicated to songs or subtitled music videos, comments on lyrics as part of social network discussions, background information on songs and writers on music discovery services such as

Last.fm, instant lyrics provisions on music translation sites or applications such as Lyrics

Translate, Musixmatch or SongMeanings. Internet translation is increasingly part of a multiscreen environment culture where users interact with each other as they consume music.

Applications such as Shazam can also recognize music and give information on the song listened to, including lyrics. In the contemporary media convergence arena, soundtracks tend to be listened to on devices that provide access to all these services. The translations of lyrics are present as an optional service, although their quality varies and they are rarely synchronised

The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translation. Washbourne, K. & Van Wyke, B. (eds.). Routldege

to the music. 21st century music, for the first time in human history, can be a solely individual experience and its translation provision reflects this fact.

- Vinyl, CDs and DVDs

Lyrics translation provision on CDs and DVDs is rather poor overall. Again, this is not the case in classical music, where opera is subtitled intra/interlinguistically, and art songs generally transcribed and translated multilingually on a companion website, rather than in a booklet included in the CD case as was the practice until the second decade of the 21st century. Equally, some niche areas, such as KPop products, provide subtitles as a large proportion of their audience is Western. They are thus marketed to this effect. After two decades of favouring portability and quantity over product quality, the music industry seems to prioritise quality again, with pop singers such as Taylor Swift offering her music on a range of formats including

CDs and vinyls for instance. Information and translations though have to be fished out by users in various spaces, ranging from social networks to related books.

- Videogames

Most videogame music is instrumental but vocal music not only can be part of the soundtrack

(Grand Theft Auto), it can also play an integral role in the game (Dance Dance Revolution).

When songs are not essential to the action, they are usually left in their original language. The theme song Baba Yetu, a Swahili version of the Lord’s Prayer in Civilization IV, was thus not translated in the game for an exoticising effect. When games include diegetic music, such as in

Rock Band or in the Guitar Hero series for instance, where the player is the hero and the agent of the game, songs are generally localised or replaced with successful local items. Frequently

The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translation. Washbourne, K. & Van Wyke, B. (eds.). Routldege

and increasingly, they are chosen by individual players among a pool made available to them which varies according to territories. Today’s young musicians are used to the convergence of music and images provided in multimedia products. They favour, or even expect intersemiotic translation or some form of fusion between art forms. The singer Woodkid thus explains that his creations are covers which include the reinterpretation of existing music, films and images:

“It is this type of ‘translations’ which makes Woodkid. The essence of art is to find a vehicle for expression, be it in painting, dance, cooking or cinema” (Siankowski 2013).

- Television and internet streaming

The provision of the translation of lyrics on television channels and on the internet is inconsistent. On mainstream television channels, a verbatim transcription is generally provided as part of an accessibility service for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. In dubbed films, songs are mostly ignored, although they may be crucial to the narrative. The main exception to this concerns children’s programmes, which tend to be dubbed throughout, especially animation programmes. Even in a country such as France, where the law mandates the use of the French language in all broadcast audiovisual programmes, an exception is made for musical texts, often left untranslated. In series, treatment of the title songs varies according to programme and countries. Rather than translating existing songs, new ones are often used, to reflect a different image for the programme it introduces: The title song of the “Prison Break” series broadcast on

Fox was hence replaced with an entirely different rap song, “Pas le temps” (Faf Larage 2006), for the French version, cover songs of the original, "Ich glaub' an Dich” (Azad feat. Adel Tawil

2007) for the German version, and “Prison Break Anthem” (Kaye Styles 2007) for the Belgian version. The ‘YouTube generation’ born in the 1990s, which has grown up with online music videos, and, in Europe at least, with the growth of largely public-funded accessibility provision

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(initially with Teletex and now with various hybrid television systems), is subtitling friendly and belongs to a participatory culture where information given on music programmes as on other programmes is either expected on a companion site and in popular music, generally produced by fans.

A battle of copyrights is enacted, with enthusiasts adding subtitled musical clips on the internet, which they are often required to take down. Nevertheless, YouTube and other video-sharing websites provide a fair number of music video clips which include intralinguistic or interlinguistic subtitled lyrics. With the growth of video-on-demand services such as Netflix, programmes are often available multilingually. Subtitling services such as Opensubtitles (for films) and Seriessub (for series) which allow the downloading of subtitling for streamed audiovisual material do not apply to music programmes. For music, users tend to rely on lyrics catalogue applications such as Musixmatch, officially used by the music streaming service

Spotify since 2015.

- Cinema

While instrumental music is frequently composed for a specific movie, existing songs have been more often chosen for film vocal soundtracks since the 1970s. Songs in films appear as mere background (e.g. a radio programme playing or a street singer performing while action takes place) or play an integral part in the construction of the film narrative (in Almodóvar’s

Volver (2006) for instance, where the eponymous theme song is at the centre of the narrative).

They can have a diegetic (if a singer/singers perform in the film) or a non-diegetic role, which is independent from the impact of the song on the meaning of the film.

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The translation of songs in films also poses cultural and technical problems (Chaume 2004;

2014). Songs are often culture-bound and trigger connotations to mood or references in an instant. Films often use well-known songs. Dubbing them for international versions includes recording separate music sequences, dealing with copyrights, economic cost and possible loss of reference to the established version of the songs. Moreover, as Chaume reminds us, “[s]ongs often work as narrative punctuation signs and usually involve a take cut (the translator uses a new dubbing unit or take for the song), or a subtitle change (the translator does not mingle lyrics and dialogue in the same subtitle)” (2004, 18). Sadly, many songs are thus left untranslated in dubbed or subtitled versions. In many cases, the extra layer of semantic text provided by the song, which can contradict or enhance the film script is denied to the foreign viewer. For instance, the narrative of The Graduate (1967) is strongly underpinned by “The Sound of

Silence” by Simon and Garfunkel. The song, played in its entirety at the beginning and at the end of the film, expresses the emotional difficulties that people have communicating with each other, a key theme of The Graduate. In the opening scene of the film, immediately after the theme song has been heard, Ben (Dustin Hoffman) is seen to avoid contact with people. The song in this scene echoes very potently the sense of isolation that permeates the film. Similarly, at the end, it is played to anticipate Ben and Elaine’s feelings of uncertainty and anxiety as they face to the reality of their life together, but are unable to discuss its challenges.

- Music and literature

Finally, in a Handbook of Literary Translation, it is important to stress the crucial position of literature in vocal music, and of vocal music in literature. In the first instance, music is often inspired from existing literary texts which are edited or adapted, intralingually or interlingually.

For instance, the libretto of Bizet’s opera Carmen (1875) was adapted by Henri Meilhac et

Ludovic Halévy from a novella from Prosper Mérimée published in 1847; Verdi’s librettist,

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Arrigo Boito adapted his Falstaff into Italian for the musical stage from Shakespeare’s The

Merry Wives of Windsor; the libretto of 1964 musical Man of La Mancha was loosely based on

Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote. Songs can use poems which composers either leave untouched (Benjamin Britten’s Les Illuminations (1939) for instance, on excerpts from

Rimbaud’s poems from his eponymous volume), translate (Mikis Theodorakis’s use of a Greek translation of Federico Garcia Lorca’s Romancero Gitano [1967]) or adapt (Hans Bethge's free translation of Chinese poems for Gustav Mahler’s symphony Das Lied von der Erde [1907], which Mahler himself amended again in places). Operas, musicals and songs, as they travel across borders can in turn be translated for audiences who speak different languages, as is discussed in the next section.

Musical references can also be inserted in literature and play an important structural and thematic role. Folk or popular songs, in particular, can play a crucial role as agent of authenticity and identity construction and require explicitations for foreign audiences. If the poems of

Alexander Pushkin were set to music by many composers, the novelist also used many Russian songs in his work, in Eugene Onegin and the Southern Poems in particular. In a country divided socially and ethnically, these songs acted as a link between the aristocracy and the people. His last novel, The Captain’s Daughter (1836) is thus structured in 14 chapters, 7 of which have a

Russian folk song as epigraph. The Russian essence of this historical novel, which also makes use of Russian songs within the chapters (Pushkin 2004, 253), is expressed through folk music, which resonates in Russian readers’ ears but have to be suggested in translation for non-Russian speaking readers.

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b) Translation types and strategies for vocal music translation

While musical texts entail a wide range of mediations and translations, the most complex forms of music translation are the transfers of lyrics. The next paragraphs focus on the main types of translation which these transfers entail in vocal music, and on the main strategies suitable for their completion, drawing on the existing literature on the topic.

This concerns all forms of vocal music, mainly songs (popular and traditional songs, opera arias, vocal ensembles of all musical genres and styles, ‘a cappella’ pieces for one or several voices, instrumental music with spoken or semi-spoken narration…). The semantic translation of the words of a song is what most people understand the translation of music to be. Even within this limited understanding, these lyrics exist in a multimodal and cultural context, and may require different types of translation. The main ones are listed below:

- A transcription of lyrics: the exact record of the words being sung. For issues relating to copyrights, such transcriptions are common, on television or internet platforms for instance, where content providers are only allowed (as well as required in most European countries) to transcribe the verbatim text of songs for legal reasons. This requirement varies from country to country: in the UK for instance, music programmes are not seen as different from other programmes by Ofcom, the national communications regulator, but in Finland, media companies are currently exempt from any translation obligation for such programmes. With the development of music identification software, verbatim transcriptions are increasingly provided automatically and just checked prior to transmission. In the world of pop music, primarily sung in English, non-native English viewers, who often have some knowledge of English, appreciate a script which is faithful to the original text. Song identification applications are now able to

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transcribe lyrics in a large number of cases. The multiscreen culture that is currently ubiquitous allows and even favours such practices, which are currently available only in mainstream

European languages but have potential for development, as software development companies encourage the population of information by music prosumers.

In live events and their retransmission, and particularly for musicals and mainstream music festivals, surtitles may be provided for some performances and in some cases, live-subtitled.

In printed sheet music, transcriptions can also take the form of transliterations for languages which are less commonly sung on the Western scene. For instance, scripts can be transliterated into the Roman alphabet, as in the example below:

FIGURE 22.1: Maurice Ravel, opening bars of "Kaddisch" from Deux mélodies hébraïques

(1915).

In choir practices, a simple phonetic transliteration may also be given by a choirmaster so that gross errors of pronunciation are avoided, as the example of a famous Russian folk song below shows:

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FIGURE 22.2: Kalinka

As Brian Mossop (2013) has discussed in detail, sheet music for choirs may contain guidance, essential for singers who are not familiar with the phonetics of the languages that they sing into.

- An intralingual translation of lyrics: Unlike a verbatim transcription, transliteration or phonetic transcription, this may include rewording a song within the same language to take into account various elements of the piece being translated, including repetitions, intertextual references and non-verbal aspects relevant to the text. As audiences have been exposed to regular text provision, they have become increasingly hungry for information. Opera houses now surtitle shows (at least their singing parts) even if performances are taking place in the language of the country in which they are taking place. The translator of the libretto, who provides the text, and the subtitler, who cues it in during the performance, are two different professionals. The subtitler is usually a musician who reads the music and works in response to the conductor for cueing text.

Songs also frequently require adaptation within the same language. In fact, not adapting a famous song for a long period of time is in itself a statement. For instance, keeping the Robert

Burns verse of the Scottish “Auld Lang Syne” when celebrating New Year sends a message about preserving traditions. Similarly, national anthems generally show resistance to change, as they are perceived as symbols of unity and continuity. The transformational essence of translation can therefore be resisted and resented in some cases.

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Yet for historical, ideological or cultural reasons, reappropriating a familiar tune has always been widespread. Martin Luther, for instance, borrowed existing melodies for some psalms and hymns, and created or translated texts from non-liturgical sacred pieces in order to establish a new musical genre. As far as lyrics are concerned, these ‘transcreations’ as they may be called today, generally do not involve strictly semantic translation as such. New words, which are intended to fit the old tune, convey a fresh semantic and poetic message, which may or may not be in line with the original text. The reverse also happens with a fresh tune fitting existing words. It is less common in folk and popular music but happens frequently in classical music.

For instance, the famous poem by Paul Verlaine, “Clair de lune” (1869) has not only been set to music by dozens of composers in the original French – Debussy even set it twice—but also in various translations from Finnish to German (see Gribenski 2013).

- An interlingual translation of the lyrics: This takes three main forms. Lyrics are provided to be read/heard independently from or in conjunction with the original song or musical text; they are intended to be sung in another language than the original language with the aim of remaining largely faithful to the message of the original language; they are free adaptations into another language.

In the first instance, translations can take various forms. An oral interlingual summary of a song, of the plot of an opera or musical can be provided. This can be pre-recorded for optional use (on opera houses websites for instance), aired on radio, television, or prepared for live retransmissions at the cinema. A script or libretto can also act as support for the listener. This was one of the main methods of translation provision in opera and classical concerts until the post-second world war era. Going back to the 18th and 19th centuries, Lorenzo Da Ponte, The

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Man Who Wrote Mozart (Holden 2007), largely earned a living by providing libretti translation sold as programmes for live performances. Various forms of translation provision were offered in opera houses until the 1980s, when surtitles took over. Since then, they have been “here to stay” (Bredin 2005, 32) as the expected form of textual support.

Although the interlingual translation of a live or recorded musical performance plays an important role in the production and transmission of culture the most common form of interlingual translation is provided for films or video programmes in the form of subtitling. This is in spite of the fact that many songs are left untranslated, as discussed above. Song translation in films is of course subjected to the same constraints as any subtitled text: the need for concision and for meaning that takes the multisemiotic content of the original into consideration. They need to convey some of the musicality of the original songs, specially their rhyming and rhythm qualities (see Tortoriello 2006). Songs which are part of films or television programmes are often reversioned:

- as part of a foreign language production. For instance, large companies such as Disney issue new vocal versions of films otherwise unchanged. Large-scale animation films are thus entirely redubbed, songs included. Classic films can undergo several reversionings. Films made by

Disney are generally readapted if successful, including as regards their songs: 1938, 1962 and

2001 are different French versions of the 1937 Disney’s Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs, for instance.

- as part of a “remediation” (Deuze 2006 in Pérez González 2014) or localisation process where new material is integrated or cut from an existing version. This has been common for centuries and is still popular. Mozart’s Magic Flute, for instance has been remediated numerous times in

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different countries linguistically, musically and theatrically since its creation in 1791. Such remediation can of course be intralingual, and often is in the first instance. Thus Newsies The

Musical (2011) was remediated for the stage after the film Newsies (1992), on Broadway first, but then in Italy and Germany.

The second form of translation relevant to song/opera translation relates to ‘singing’ or

‘singable’ translations. This timeless strategy has existed since singers have travelled across countries, languages and cultures. A very prominent form of translation in folk music throughout the ages, it has been widespread in Western classical and popular music until the

Second World War. In opera and classical concerts, singers largely sung in the language of the country of production. These singable translations primarily intend to carry the narrative meaning of the plot across language and time barriers, in the context of their multimodal content and of the production that they belong to. The translation strategies required for such singing adaptations imply a successful dialogue with the musical setting, which cannot change substantially, and with the staged production, which can do. Less popular in opera and musicals since surtitling took over as the main form of translation, singable translations are key to children’s films. Strategies for this type of translation have been summarised by Peter Low in his pentathlon principle of singable translation: singability, sense, naturalness, rhythm and rhyme (2005; 2017).

In popular music, as Klaus Kaindl has argued (2005; 2013), singable translations and adaptations tend to take more distance from the original, musically as well as semantically.

Cover songs involve social and aesthetic transfers implying substantial changes from the original. Fruela Fernández (2015, 12) has analysed how they reveal both “translation’s role as a tool of cultural and historical analysis” and priorities as well as “anxieties within the target

The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translation. Washbourne, K. & Van Wyke, B. (eds.). Routldege

culture. One of the most famous examples of the 20th century is “Comme d’habitude”, adapted into “My Way”, which became Frank Sinatra’s theme song, and into many other covers (see “Comme d’habitude / My Way”). As the beginning of the songs show, the initial ending love story of Claude François becomes in English a meditation on mortality by an older man taking stock of his life. The themes and tones of the two songs are entirely different: Claude François' original song relates the ending of a relationship while Sinatra's version expresses the philosophical attitude of the singer at the end of his life.

In pop and rock music, where the original lyrics can usually be provided by software applications as mentioned above, interlingual translations are frequently offered by fan translators whether on a music blog, below the video of the song or dubbed on a separate site.

- An intersensorial mediation of the lyrics and the musical show in general, which operates across different senses. This can include subtitling/surtitling, signing for the deaf and the hard- of-hearing, as well as audio describing or audio introducing for the blind and the visually impaired. In musical live events and products, intra/interlingual surtitles are provided for all members of the public, regardless of their ability. Unlike on television, no subtitling/surtitling is offered during the musical performance. Transcriptions, interlingual and intralingual translations take the form of surtitles, seatback titles, subtitles, printed texts, electronic texts or audiorecordings while intersensorial translation can also use video recordings. These translations can be hosted for the stage, the cinema, television, all video and web platforms, including mobile phones and other electronic devices. They can abide by standard norms of publishing applying to each specific platform, or depart from them. For instance, song translation for the stage can offer standard static surtitles projected above the stage or animated writing with special effects, different speeds, spacings and directions, created as part of the

The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translation. Washbourne, K. & Van Wyke, B. (eds.). Routldege

production. Thus, in the 2013 Macerata Opera Festival, surtitles for the Midsummer Night’s

Dream (music by Mendelssohn and Britten), projected on the huge outdoor wall of the

Sferisterio building, were given the shape of 1920s cinema intertitles, reflecting the production:

FIGURE 22.3 : “ da accendere agli occhi delle lucciole” (to light up the eyes of the fireflies)

(Midsummer Night’s Dreams. August 2013. Macerata Opera Festival.

Fonts, layouts, colours, levels of brightness can also be used as variations, which are meaningful to the target text. Although on the whole, sung text is produced slower than spoken text, the simultaneous or very rapidly succeeding emission of lines is common in vocal ensembles.

Different lines sung by different characters may then mirror their position on the stage and are

The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translation. Washbourne, K. & Van Wyke, B. (eds.). Routldege

separated by a dash as in the example below from Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro produced by the Royal Opera House, London (Palmer 2013, 31):

- Him? – You? – Figaro?

- My mother? – Who?

Some theatres provide signing for the deaf with a sign interpreter mediating rhythms, tempi and musical emotion with one hand and using sign language to translate the lyrics with the other hand.

Provision for the blind is often more comprehensive with a choice of recorded audio introductions or audio descriptions for opera and some musicals. Some theatres also offer pre- performance touch tours to give blind or visually impaired members of the audience an opportunity to touch costumes, props, explore the stage set and talk to members of the cast.

3) Conclusion

From specialised publications comprising complex music terminologies to live interviews with musicians provided on different media platforms, texts including or involving music encompass an extraordinarily wide spectrum. Their transfers concern musical content and words. They can take place across time, genre, styles, as well as cultural, artistic and linguistic borders. They require every known form of translation. Music is at the heart of the worldwide participatory culture that is driving the world today, defying the ways multinational companies provide and disseminate it. It is playing a crucial role in constructing the world, fostering both diversity and global reach. In the last decade, it has inspired new forms of translation. Perhaps paradoxically, as music has becoming more individualised through technology devices, it has also favoured

The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translation. Washbourne, K. & Van Wyke, B. (eds.). Routldege

collective forms of translation. Lyrics websites, music recognition software, song lyrics catalogues, music sharing community sites all depend on the resources that ordinary listeners and viewers make available. This chapter could only give a bird’s eye view of the processes and products that music translation entails. The decision to focus on texts including music itself and words was driven by the fact that most translators will at some stage encounter the challenge of translation involving music. Such translations, whether or not they involve the transfer of lyrics, require specific strategies and knowledge for a successful mediation. The challenges and scopes of music translations go beyond those of vocal music. They can involve texts about music and various ways of interpreting music. For music, according to Victor Hugo, is that

“which cannot be told and cannot be kept silent” (1864, 120). It depends on interpretation to be meaningful to its audience. In this sense, just as for Umberto Eco “translation [was] the language of Europe” (1993), translation is also the language of music.