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: 1 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 2 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 3 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. 4 The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translation. Washbourne, K. & Van Wyke, B. (eds.). Routldege 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,

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