20 20 When SongsCross WHEN SONGS Language Borders Language CROSS LANGUAGE BORDERS NİHAL İNCE İSTANBUL 29 MAYIS ÜNİVERSİTESİ Lisans Bitirme Tezi EDEBİYAT FAKÜLTESİ İstanbul, 2020 Lisans Tezi WHEN SONGS CROSS LANGUAGE BORDERS NİHAL İNCE ÇEVİRİBİLİM BÖLÜMÜ İstanbul 29 Mayıs Üniversitesi, İstanbul Haziran 2020 WHEN SONGS CROSS LANGUAGE BORDERS NİHAL İNCE Danışman: Dr. Öğr. Üyesi Sinan Okan Çavuş İstanbul 29 Mayıs Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Lisans Bitirme Tezi Yönetmeliği Uyarınca Bölüm LİSANS BİTİRME TEZİ Olarak Hazırlanmıştır BEYAN Bu tezin yazılmasında bilimsel ahlak kurallarına uyulduğunu, başkalarının eserlerinden yararlanılması durumunda bilimsel normlara uygun olarak atıfta bulunulduğunu, kullanılan verilerde herhangi bir tahrifat yapılmadığını, tezin herhangi bir kısmının bu üniversite veya başka bir üniversitedeki başka bir tez çalışması olarak sunulmadığını beyan ederim. NİHAL İNCE HAZİRAN 2020 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my adviser Assistant Professor Sinan Okan ÇAVUŞ for his instructions throughout the thesis project. I would like to thank Inst. Bekir DİRİ for enabling me to use CAT Tools. I would like to thank Ins. Kadir İlbey ÇAKIROĞLU for helping me to analyze the paper in previous semester. I would like thank my all instructors throughout my university education. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS BEYAN ........................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................... iv 1. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................... 1 2. PRE-TRANSLATION PROCESS ............................................................................ 1 2.1 Source text selection ........................................................................................ 2 2.2 Source text analysis ......................................................................................... 3 2.3 Terminology ..................................................................................................... 7 3. TRANSLATION PROCESS ...................................................................................... 8 4. COMMENTARY ........................................................................................................ 8 4.1 Translation decisions and problems ................................................................. 8 5. POST-TRANSLATION PROCESS ........................................................................ 11 6. CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................... 11 7. SOURCE TEXT ........................................................................................................ 11 8. TARGET TEXT ........................................................................................................ 40 9. REFERENCES .......................................................................................................... 66 10. TERM LIST ............................................................................................................ 66 11. APPENDIX .............................................................................................................. 67 v 1. INTRODUCTION This thesis is prepared for the requirement of the course TRE 402 Thesis as a part of translation thesis Project. It is about translating a paper which is about song translations. The article that I have translated is called “When Songs Cross Language Borders”, written by Peter Low. It discusses the available options when a song that is created in a culture is sung in another culture. When a song cross language borders what happens? According to the paper there are three practices: translation, adaptation, and replacement text. The paper is written to differentiate these three options and also mentions about presenting and advertising songs with proper label. 2. PRE-TRANSLATION PROCESS Thanks to practical skills about CAT Tools that I acquired in the course Translation Technologies, which we took this lesson in third semester, I could easily upload my text to the CAT Tool which is called Smartcat and divided it into tasks and easily translate the text in this platform. I also learned how to use Xbench in that course, which I benefitted from it while I was detecting my mistakes such as double space and inconsistencies in the translated text. 1 I decided to divide the text into two tasks so that audiences might follow the text in an easy way: translation and editing. According to my calculations, translating a page of the text per week was enough for finishing my translation task in time. The number of words which is required to be translated each week is about 450. 2.1 Source text selection We were told that if the article that we will translate as a thesis is related to the translation field, we can choose any text that is also related to the other fields. Actually, I wanted to see music as a translation itself, since it had been told that we translate our thoughts into words, I think that translating our thoughts into music notes can also be regarded as a translation process. However, when I tried to find articles about that, I could not find any. What I could only find were a few articles which unite translation and music. What I realized after looking into details about articles is that this topic is not discussed and examined seriously in the field of translation on grounds that I could not see a clear pattern that inquirers might follow. I firmly believe that special attention to song translations should be given due to the fact that they close wide gap between music and translation. Differences among reactions to foreign elements by various cultures can be seen by means of song translations. In this context, these questions can also be answered: Does a specific culture ready to take all the elements of foreign cultures and languages or does it alter culture-specific elements according to its own culture and world-view. When a song is known and liked by the public and spreads around the world, it is obvious that 2 songwriters should make a decision as to how the lyrics should be translated. One of the most important things that I have encountered in my researches concerning the issue while I was analyzing this article is that some foreign songs have more than one form in Turkish by different songwriters. Different approaches to the same subject matter are valuable as I believe that they open new perspectives. I think this is important because these practices have been taken place for many years and believing that it is a good opportunity to analyze the translating process, I chose this article to translate and by translating it, I wanted it to be heard again, but this time in Turkish. 2.2 Source text analysis In the paper, it is mentioned that vocal music always crosses language borders, yet there has been nearly no serious discussion about song translations. According to the paper, one of the reasons of it is that it might be thought that lyrics retain the same meaning. This is because most of the people might not distinguish the music from lyrics of it. In other words even though music is the same of the original, lyrics might be changed drastically. It might therefore be claimed that the distinction should be made between the instrumental aspect of songs and the lyrics of them so that audience are not misled. What I have realized when reading this sentence is that most of the people do not have concrete concept about songs. They do not immediately think that songs consist of two separate elements. Therefore, I find this distinction very helpful in terms of making people conscious of what songs are really are. Another reason of not discussing song translation is that there are certain aspects of song translation which should be considered when translating songs, two of which are rhythm and singability. For these 3 reasons song translations are untypical translations and it might be neglected because of it. On the other hand, since there are different aspects of song translations which I have mentioned above, complete semantic transfer of the song translation would be less achievable than informative text translation. Therefore, narrow definition of translation is not useful in the context of song translation. Since I have encountered various translation definition throughout my education and since I would not understand what these terms refers and would be struggled to understand the paper, definition of terms “translation” and “adaptation” in the paper to make them clear to understand what they mean exactly seemed very reasonable to me. All of these are defined in the paper as such: The term “translation” is extended to target texts that do not keep insignificant details but keep the significant details and of course, remains faithful to its source text. The term “adaptation” is used to describe target texts that draws on a source text but has elements that do not exist in its source texts. Furthermore target texts include unforced modification and show extensive semantic departures from its source text. Peter Low, says his idea aligns with Georges Bastin (1998:6), “there is a point at which adaptation ceases to be translation at all” and Bastin is impatience with scholars who think “the concept of translation can be stretched to cover all types of translation as long as the main function of the activity