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Choices in Song TranslationJohan Franzona

a University of Helsinki, FinlandPublished online: 21 Feb 2014.

To cite this article: Johan Franzon (2008) Choices in Song Translation, The Translator,14:2, 373-399, DOI: 10.1080/13556509.2008.10799263

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ISSN 1355-6509 © St Jerome Publishing, Manchester

The Translator. Volume 14, Number 2 (2008), 373-99 ISBN 978-1-905763-10-8

Choices in Song Translation�

Singability in Print, Subtitles and Sung Performance

JOHAN FRANZONUniversity of Helsinki, Finland

Abstract. This article examines options in song translation and the concept of ‘singability’ from a functional point of view and describes the strategic choices made by translators/lyricists in translating songs. Moving from the assumption that a song has three properties (music, lyrics and prospective performance) and music has three (melody, harmony and musical sense), it suggests that a song translator may have five options in theory: not translating the lyrics, translating the lyrics without taking the music into considera-tion, writing new lyrics, adapting the music to the translation, and adapting the translation to the music. In practice, some of these options may of course be combined. The article also suggests that the ambiguous term ‘singability’ can be defined as a musico-verbal fit of a text to music, and that this musico-verbal unity may consist of several layers – prosodic, poetic and semantic-reflexive. These layers may sometimes be modified, or optional, but they would be united in a fully functional and singable target text lyric. In order to illustrate these points, the article examines a number of examples from different musical genres – a popular song, a hymn, a fictitious song and songs from musical plays (mostly in English, Swedish and Finnish) – translated for sung performance, for subtitles or to be printed in books.

Keywords. Song translation, Singability, Functionalism, Performability, Subtitles, Hymnals.

What can translators do when they are commissioned to translate a song? Generally speaking, among all the other text types with which professional translators engage, such a commission is rare. Song translation may be part of an occasional project for the theatre, of a subtitling/surtitling assignment for a film, or of a special publication where there are lyrics cited. Instead of professional translators, other professionals tackle song translation on a

1 I would like to thank Mark Smith, English teacher at the University of Oulu, Finland, for proof-reading an earlier draft of this paper.

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Choices in Song Translation374

more regular basis: songwriters, singers, opera specialists and playwrights. One should also not forget the amateur fans: keen on grasping and sharing the meaning of foreign popular song lyrics, they use the internet to display or exchange their own translations.

Until quite recently, the translation of songs did not attract much attention within translation studies; one reason might be lack of clarity as to the profes-sional identity of the people who do translate songs. Nevertheless, the fact that songs are translated in various ways, for various purposes, and by a variety of mediators should warrant some focused investigation within the discipline. This article is intended as a contribution to such an investigation.

What, then, are the options open to a translator who is commissioned to translate a song? The answer to this may be a counter question: is the translation going to be singable or not? If the purpose is simply to understand a foreign song’s lyrics, a semantically close, prose translation will do. But if a song is to be performed in another language, the assignment calls for a ‘singable’ target text. This article aims to shed some light on this concept of singability, which I see not as an absolute ideal but, from a functional point of view, as consisting of various layers, which sometimes may be modified, or optional.

Earlier research in translation and music focused on opera translation. Discussion of opera tends to put emphasis on inviolable adherence to the music, on the requirements of the singers, and on absolute respect for the composers. However, song translation may have other and often conflicting priorities. The most concise discussion on song translation in English may be found in the works by Apter (1985), Gorlée (1997, 2002, 2005) and Low (2003 and 2005). In particular, Low (2003) has addressed the fact that lyrics may also be translated for non-singing purposes and that in cases where they are going to be sung, ways of matching music and lyrics may be prioritized differently from opera. In Low’s ‘pentathlon principle’ of song translation, there are four aspects related to music and performance: singability, rhyme, rhythm and naturalness, which must be balanced with a fifth aspect: fidelity to the sense of the source text (Low 2005).

As a term, singability can be understood in a restricted way, as referring mainly to phonetic suitability of the translated lyrics: to words being easy to sing to particular note values (as in Low 2005:192-94). Yet the term can also be used in a broader sense. It can be used to assess original lyrics as well as translations. Broadway lyricist Alan Jay Lerner explains how he fitted a lyric to the music of his collaborator ‘Fritz’ Loewe (Lerner 1977):

I’d given Fritz the title [‘I Talk to the Trees’] and he’d written a lovely melody for it. But every lyric I wrote seemed unsingable. And so I wrote it over and over again, until one day I realized what was wrong. For some reason, it was a song that couldn’t stand any rhymes. So I took them out, and without them, the song seemed to sing quite well.

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For Lerner, unsingable meant unperformable – just as categorically as theatre practitioners may prefer a ‘performable’ translation of a play to a ‘literary’ one. In Lerner’s case, the melody seemed to have called for an unrhymed poetic form. Here singability means not just ‘easy to sing’ but something akin to the way skopos theory describes a good translation: suitable in every relevant way for the particular purpose. Such a broader understanding of the concept, as well as the more restricted approach, can be merged in a definition of singability as the attainment of musico-verbal unity between the text and the composition. This is what makes the lyrics ‘sing’, so to speak, what makes them carry their meaning across and deliver their message in cooperation with the music.2

Another counter question to our initial query might be: is the translator going to have to choose between being faithful to the lyricist or the composer? A basic tenet of skopos theory (see Nord 1997 for an overview) is that fidel-ity follows function: the factor that determines a translator’s decisions and choices would (or should) be the intended purpose of the target text. This tenet applies most evidently to song translation, where there is a clear need for functionality, not only in relation to the music, but also to the situation of use: a singing performance. Such an understanding of ‘variable fidelity’ is reflected, most succinctly in my opinion, in the definition by Hartmann (1980:56) of translation as “textual approximation”, by which is meant that the translator “approximat[es] as much as possible or as little as necessary for the particular situation the formal and stylistic conventions of the text in question”. As for explaining the demands of a singing performance (“the particular situation”), one can refer to the concept of ‘the audio-medial text’ in translation studies, put forth – but not pursued – by Katerina Reiss (1971:49-52). In more recent formulations, namely by Mary Snell-Hornby (1997, 2006:84-90), this con-cept highlights the fact that some target texts, by nature of their genre or their multimodal medium of communication, must function under certain visual, acoustic, temporal or spatial constraints.

Coming back to our second counter question, there are translators who work with great respect for both the original lyricist and the composer; there are also translated versions of songs which take considerable liberty with the original lyrics, or, conversely, do not take the original music into account. In this article, my aim is to survey this broad spectrum of possibilities by recognizing five theoretically-distinct choices a translator faces when com-missioned to translate song lyrics. For the purposes of this survey, I have picked up a number of diverse examples – popular song, songs from musicals, a fictitious song, a hymn, songs in print, subtitled songs, and songs created for performance – in an attempt to cover the broad field of song translation.

2 This musico-verbal unity is of course what has been explored in earlier research on opera and art song translation, but, as I mentioned above, with a particular emphasis on adherence to an unchangeable music.

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I have consciously avoided art song and opera, as these are genres that have been widely discussed before. I have instead preferred cases where choices can be observed, where the musical constraints are less absolute, and where a degree of singability may nevertheless be part of a translator’s goal.

This overview of choices then leads to an analysis of the techniques involved in writing singable lyrics, where three partly distinct functions of musico-verbal unity will be discussed: prosodic, poetic, and semantic-reflexive. These func-tions may appear on their own under special circumstances, but in all likelihood, they must come together if the translation is to be perceived as fully functional, i.e. singable.

In relation to existing research on translation and music, my approach in this article accounts for a greater diversity of musical genres. It also allows me to provide a systematic overview of the ways in which songs can be translated for particular purposes, as well as a functional account of how a lyric can be made to match existing music. As a basis for this, I posit three properties of song – music, lyrics and performance – and three properties of music – melody, harmony and perceived sense. I will come back to these musical properties in section 2. �. Five choices in song translation

A song can be defined as a piece of music and lyrics – in which one has been adapted to the other, or both to one another – designed for a singing perform-ance. This third requisite is important for a functional view of song translation. A song in a printed score would still indicate a singing performance as its full or final realization (cf. Gorlée 2002, who offers a similar, triadic definition). Theoretically, this three-part definition would mean that (optimal) song transla-tion is a second version of a source song that allows the song’s essential values of music, lyrics and sung performance to be reproduced in a target language. In practice, this is an impossible ideal. To avoid a categorical split between the optimal and the imperfect (or approximate), a song might be recognized as a translation if it is a second version of a source song that allows some essential values of the source’s music and/or its lyrics and/or its sung performance to be reproduced in a target language.

This definition leaves the translator with a number of choices, including an even more basic and initial one:

1. Leaving the song untranslated;2. Translating the lyrics but not taking the music into account;3. Writing new lyrics to the original music with no overt relation to the ori-

ginal lyrics;4. Translating the lyrics and adapting the music accordingly – sometimes to

the extent that a brand new composition is deemed necessary;5. Adapting the translation to the original music.

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The first option3 is still a ‘translational action’ in Holz-Mänttäri’s terms (1984:17-29), as the translator can decide whether a translation is actually needed or not. If the translator/rewriter decides to go ahead with the task, he or she may choose to give priority to either the words (option two) or the music (option three), or to show a compromised fidelity to both, for the sake of a prospective performance (options four and five). Needless to say, these options are only distinct in theory. In actual cases, the translation brief may make it evident that only one of these options is possible or that some of them may be combined. Examples can nevertheless be found where mainly one of these translational actions is the rational and functional solution.

Before I move on to discuss the examples, however, I would like to further comment on the issue of ‘fidelity’ in relation to song translation and how it shapes translators’ attitude towards their own stance. Even the most respectful song translators may prefer not to call their work ‘translation’, as evident in the following quote (Reynolds 1964:6):

Who translates the foreign songs? I do. You don’t really translate, of course. You make a singing song of it, near as you can to the meaning and feeling of the original. This is especially difficult, because the genius of the language determines the music line in the French, Rus-sian or Greek song, and if you can move it into our language without wrenching the music line or the English idiom, you’ve done something valuable, I think.

I find no reason not to call this practice translation and place it under option five. Malvina Reynolds pays attention to the music (“without wrenching the music line”), the lyrics (“the meaning and feeling of the original”) and the performance (“make a singing song of it”). Of course, in some songs it may be that “the genius of the language” is too deeply embedded in the composition, for example in the use of euphony or onomatopoeia; here, the translated lyrics can never be perceived as doing justice to the original ones. Even with this reservation, I would still call this practice translation, since a singable song translation is inevitably a compromise between fidelity to the music, lyrics and performance. To my mind, songs are an especially strong challenge to the tendency to equate translation with semantic closeness: a song translation that strives to be semantically accurate can hardly be sung to the music written for the original lyrics, and a song translation that follows the original music must sacrifice optimal verbal fidelity. But there are also cases in between, and beyond, this dichotomized opposition, as we shall see below.

3 Here I am only referring to instances where the songs are embedded in a larger work which necessitates translation, such as a book, a film or a musical. Of course, popular songs on their own often travel around the globe without being translated, especially if they are sung in English, but a discussion of this phenomenon is outside the scope of this article.

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1.1 Leaving the song untranslated

This is, to begin with, a question of whether to commission a translator at all – a choice between presenting the song in its original version or in transla-tion. In some cases, the choice may also be up to the translators, after they are commissioned. It happens that subtitlers – e.g. for theatre, television, DVD, feature films containing songs – choose to subtitle the spoken dialogue, but not the musical numbers. This can be a result of lack of time or commission, or an agreed policy with the broadcasting companies. In other cases, however, leaving a song untranslated can be a viable, even the preferable, option.

For instance, part of the song ‘As Time Goes By’ was quoted in a discus-sion of the film Casablanca (1942) in a biography of Ingrid Bergman (Leamer 1986:121); in the Swedish and Finnish translations of the book the lyrics of this well-known song were left in English (Larsson 1986:101, Pakkanen 1987:121). Similarly, in productions or reproductions of stage musicals or musical films portraying famous singers (such as Edith Piaf, Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe), translators may choose to retain the songs in their original languages.

When the English-language musical Mamma Mia! (1999), based on songs by Swedish songwriters Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, was to be pro-duced in Sweden in 2005, the initial plan was, once again, to leave the songs in English; after all, most of them were originally written in that language and were known worldwide in their original versions. Then the producers decided that the integrity of the story demanded that the lyrics be in the same language as the dialogue. Thus several famous ABBA songs were given their very first Swedish lyrics after more than twenty years.4

Reasons for the non-translation in these cases may have to do with the assumption that the lyrics are not that relevant to the rest of the narrative (for example, songs sung on the soundtrack as part of the background music in films are regularly not subtitled), or that retaining the original lyrics enhances authenticity. In both cases, a switch from the target reader/listener’s language to the original language should not result in dysfunctional disruption, as would have been the case with Mamma Mia!, but not with ‘As Time Goes By’.

1.2 Translating the lyrics but not taking the music into account

A translator may translate the lyrics as if they were just another (piece of the) source text, especially when the readers/listeners are assumed to be aware of the original song and its musical form. Typical examples include the work of enthusiasts translating lyrics for fun and information, as well as the cases examined by Low (2003): semantically close prose renderings in concert pro-grammes or album inserts – in short, translations as a supplement to the original

4 See ‘Vi översätter Mamma Mia! till svenska’, http://www.mammamiathemusical.se/start.aspx?pageID=356 (last accessed on 9 June 2008).

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lyrics or performance. This choice is also often adopted in subtitling; in this case for a television broadcast of the film musical The Sound of Music.5

Example �

English source text Swedish subtitles High on a hill was a lonely goatherd Uppe på berget gick getaherdenLay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hooLoud was the voice of the lonely goatherd

Han joddlade högt vår getaherde

Lay ee odl lay ee odl-ooFolks in a town that was quite remote heard

Folket i staden som låg långt bort

Lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hooLusty and clear from the goatherd’s throat heard

Hörde tydligt hur herden joddla’

Lay ee odl lay ee odl-oo ...

Music by Richard Rodgers, Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II (The Sound of Music 1959)© Williamson Music

Subtitles by Agneta Malmborg (TV4)

The focus here is on the sense of the lyrics. The musico-poetic qualities – the repetition and onomatopoeia (yodelling) in this example – are not and need not be transferred, as they are readily available for the enjoyment of the audi-ence in their original form.

The same strategy can apply to a song in print, even to lyrics written only to suggest an existing song. The eponymous song in Song of Solomon, a novel by Toni Morrison (1980:303), is a good example. In the Swedish translation of the book, the lyrics – beginning ‘Jake the only son of Solomon / Come booba yalle, come booba tambee / Whirled about and touched the sun’ – are printed in English, verbatim from the source text, and a close prose translation is given in parentheses immediately below – ‘Jake var ende son till Solomon . . . han snurrade runt och snuddade vid solen’ (Edlund 1978:314-15). The translator’s strategy here is a combination of both options discussed so far (one and two) – once again with the deletion of vocal effects. In Morrison’s novel, the verbal content of the song is important, and so is its (fictitious) function as a song living on in the oral tradition. In the Swedish version, the translation

5 All transcripts of material provided in examples are my own, based on television broadcasts.

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provides the content, while the original lyrics are there to indicate both the ‘songness’ and the singing within the narrative, just like the sung performance in the television broadcast. Like option one, option two may also need to rely on the reader/listener being aware of the existence of the original song, since the target text does little or nothing to reflect its musical form.

1.3 Writing new lyrics to the original music

Conversely, a rewriter in a target language could also take the music into ac-count much more than the lyrics. This would be the case when the music is the most important part of the package. Not translation proper in the linguistic sense, this is nevertheless a translational action: a result of importation and marketing of musico-verbal material between languages and cultures. This option is probably most widespread in certain genres within popular music, where songs have been bought and sold like commodities to be fitted to and marketed by domestic artists, a practice explored in more detail by Klaus Kaindl (2005). This may be the ‘freest’ kind of translation imaginable, as can be seen below in ‘Sadie, the Cleaning Lady’ and its Swedish version ‘Mamma är lik sin mamma’.

The original version of this song was an international hit. This motivated the importation and re-recording of a Swedish version, which also became a hit in Sweden. Not a single word has been directly translated, but the source lyrics still seem to have served as a model. They provided the overall rhyme scheme and the idea to have a first line with internal rhyme (with repeated words in the Swedish case). Also, some of the notions and images in the origin-al lyrics have evidently inspired Anderson. The lightly handled social realism in the story of a cleaning lady is turned into a similarly jocular protest song, put in the mouth of a housewife. The link between Sadie and her daughter is turned into the connection between generations of women; the endless chore of ‘cleaning’ is signalled in the ‘dusting’. The Swedish singer used to perform the song comically dressed as a cleaning lady, with a scrubbing brush in hand. The lyrics thus allowed some of the source song’s performance potential to be carried over into Swedish.

A totally rewritten set of lyrics in a target language may contain only a single word, phrase, image or dramatic element taken from the source lyrics. Also, the original lyrics (and singing performance) may influence the trans-lator’s impression of the melody, and thus the production of the new lyrics. If the new lyrics allow the song, as a cultural artefact, to cross linguistic borders, the practice can be seen as translational action. For example, Rod McKuen’s versions of Jacques Brel’s songs ‘Seasons in the Sun’ (1963) and ‘If You Go Away’ (1966) preserved merely a few phrases from the original French lyrics, but they still carved a place for Brel in the international music

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industry, familiarized audiences with his music, and paved the way for closer renderings some years later.6

English source text Swedish target text Back-translation7

Sadie, the cleaning lady

Mamma är lik sin mamma

Mother is like her mother

With trusty scrubbing brush and pail of water

Ja kvinnans lott i livet är densamma

Yes the woman’s lot in life is the same

Worked her fingers to the bone

Det sa farmor mormors mor

So said grandma’s grandma’s mother

For the life she had at home

Till sin farmors morbrors bror

To her grandma’s uncle’s brother

Providing at the same time for her daughter

Att livet är ett enda damma-damma

That life is nothing but dusting and dusting

... ... ...

Music & lyrics by Raymond Gilmore, John Madara, and David White. Recorded by John Farnham 1967© Champion Music Corp./Double Diamond Music. Lyrics reprinted by permission of Univer-sal Music Publishing AB

Lyrics by Stikkan Anderson. Recorded by Siw Malmkvist, 1968

Example 2

6 For research on Brel translations, see Low (1994) and Tinker (2005).7 All back-translations into English are mine, with occasional help from my polyglot colleagues.

1.4 Translating the lyrics and adapting the music accordingly

If, on the other hand, the lyrics are deemed to be more important than the music, and the song is still to be sung, the music may be changed. In general, a line-by-line translation of lyrics rarely resembles a song, but sometimes a fairly close, if partial, approximation may be achieved by slightly modifying the melody.

Relevant examples include canonical texts set to music, such as Biblical texts or poems by respected authors. Below are four versions of Matthew 21:9, first in the Bible translations, then in the corresponding hymnals:

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Example 3

Swedish Bible (1847)

Finnish Bible (1885)

Norwegian Bible (1930)

Sami Bible (1998)

Hosianna, Davids son,wälsignad ware han, som kommer i Herrans namn: Hosianna i högdene!

Hosianna Dawidin pojalle! Kiitetty olkoon se, joka tulee Herran nimeen! Hosianna korkeudesta!

Hosianna Davids sønn! Velsignet være han som kommer i Herrens navn! Hosianna i det høieste!

Hosianna, Dávveda Bárdni!Buressivdniduvvon lehkos songuhte boahtá Hearrá nammii!Hosianna allagasas!

Swedish lyrics Finnish lyrics Norwegian lyrics Sami lyricsHosianna, Davids son, välsignad vare han, välsignad Davids son, som kommer i Herrens namn. Hosianna i höjden, hosianna, hosianna. Välsignad Davids son, som kommer i Herrens namn.

Hoosianna, Daavidin Poika, kiitetty olkoon hän! Kiitetty Daavidin Poika, joka tulee Herran nimeen. Hoosianna, hoosianna, hoosianna, hoosianna! Kiitetty Daavidin Poika, joka tulee Herran nimeen.

Hosianna, Davids sønn! Velsignet være han,velsignet Davids sønnsom kommer, i Herrens navn! Hosianna i det høyeste,hosianna, hosianna!Velsignet Davids sønnsom kommer, i Herrens navn!

Hosianna, Dávveda Bárdni,giitojun lehkos son!

Giitojun Dávveda Bárdni,guhte boahtá Hearrá nammii.Hosianna, hosianna, hosianna, hosianna!Giitojun Dávveda Bárdni,guhte boahtá Hearrá nammii!

The words are Jerusalem’s greeting to Jesus: “Hosanna to the Son of David!

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” (English Standard Version, Matthew 21:9). In the 18th century, the Swedish text was adapted and set to music. It eventually became a hymn in the three other languages – one closely related (Norwegian) and two quite dissimilar (Finnish and Sami). These versions took the musical format from the Swedish source, but they also modified it, as can be seen in a comparison between the music in the Swedish and Finnish hymnals (Example 4, Figure 1):8

8 Reprinted from Den svenska psalmboken (1986:131) and Virsikirja (1987:13), by permis-sion of Verbum förlag, Stockholm, and Kirkon keskusrahasto, Helsinki.

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Example 4

Figure 1. Music to the Hosanna Hymn: the Swedish and Finnish Hymnal Compared

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Hosianna in Swedish is Hoosianna in Finnish, but the Swedish son (son) and namn (name) are the bisyllabic poika and nimeen in Finnish, respectively. Fortunately, in this case, the composer Vogler put both these words on two-note melismas;9 therefore, all that needed to be done was to remove the slurs that mark the melismas (third and last staffs in the music above). The same solution applied to the pronoun som (who), which is joka in Finnish. In ad-dition to this, a quarter note was split into two eighth notes to make room for Daavidin, instead of Davids (both in the possessive case).

Splitting, merging or adding notes and splitting or creating melismas are minimal ways in which music can be adjusted to fit the lyrics – “wrenched” in Reynolds’ words (1964:6). If such changes do not affect the rhythm or disturb any parallel arrangement of musical phrases, they may hardly be noticed. This strategy may work well between closely related languages. In the above example, the exact same notation was used for the Norwegian version of the hymn. Yet even small disparities will leave their mark: since the Norwegian ‘i det høyeste’ is longer than the Swedish ‘i höjden’ (in the highest), the Nor-wegian version makes a minimally different use of the florid melismas in the refrain, following ‘Hosia–a–a–anna’.10 In Finnish, the corresponding phrase from the Bible verse, ‘Hoosianna korkeudesta’, would have fitted as well, but the hymn inserts an extra ‘hoosianna’ instead. One might surmise that the short vowels and unvoiced, hard consonants of korkeudesta made the word seem unsingable – in the restricted sense of phonetic suitability.

But even this remarkable felicity of word-for-word correspondence may necessitate some deviation from verbal fidelity. An example of this can be found in the Sami hymn, which uses the same musical notation as the Finnish. The words Dávveda, bárdni and nammii fit perfectly where the correspond-ing Finnish Daavidin, poika and nimeen appear, but where the Biblical word buressivdniduvvon (blessed) proves to be too long, the word giitojun, like the Finnish kiitetty (thanked), is used instead.

A prerequisite for the feasibility of this option seems to be that the agents commissioning and using the translation have the power and will to change the music. In the case of these hymns, such authority lies with an editorial board, which has its own music printing facilities and can initiate, prepare and complete the publication of a hymnal on its own. In other cases, when there are more agents involved – for example, conductors, musicians, singers – the translator may spare them some trouble by leaving the music untouched.

Yet these very agents may be more willing and able to adapt music to lyr-ics, if need be. When singers/songwriters translate for their own repertoire, even more significant changes can occur in the melody, rhythm or musical

9 Melisma refers to a single syllable of text sung on two or more notes of music. Melismatic song is opposed to syllabic, where each syllable of text is matched to a single note.10 In Swedish, the original setting no doubt had the similar ‘Hosia–a–a–anna i–i hö–ö–ögdene’, a now-antiquated dative form creating a half-rhyme.

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structure. It may then be a challenge for the musicologists and copyright hold-ers to decide where the limits lie between such changes and the more radical variant: composing completely new music for a lyric translation.11 This strategy also shows particular respect for the original lyricist. Malvina Reynolds, for instance, deserved such a treatment for her famous ‘Little Boxes’:

Example 5

Source text Target lyrics to new music

Target lyrics to the original music

Little boxes on the hillside

Små lådor i rader I en förort står små lådor

Little boxes made of ticky-tacky

Små lådor av tingeltangel

som alla ser likadana ut

Little boxes, little boxes, Små lådor små lådor Just små lådor i en förortLittle boxes all the same Likadana allihop alla liknande varannThere’s a green one and a pink one

En grön och en rosa En är gul, en annan grön och

And a blue one and a yellow one

En blå och en som är gul

en tredje den lyser röd och glad

And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky

Dom är alla tingeltangel

Men dom är ändå samma lådor

And they all look just the same

och ser likadana ut där dom ligger i långan rad

… … …

Music & lyrics by Malvina Reynolds.© Schroder Music Co. (ASCAP) 1962, renewed 1990, used by permission, all rights reserved.

Music by Kaj Chyden-ius, lyrics by Lars Löfgren. Recorded by Kaisa Korhonen 1970

Lyrics by John Ulf Anderson & Håkan Norlén. Recorded by Anderson 1976

As is often the case for such a widely known and performed song, the two translators might or might not have been aware of each version’s existence and seem to have produced the versions independently of each other. In the first set of lyrics in Swedish (1970), even the colours of the boxes – green, pink, blue and yellow – are in the same order as in the English version. The second

11 This is actually what happened to the Hosanna hymn in Norway. In 1977, Egil Hovland set the words of Matthew 21:9 to a new tune (867 in the hymnal Norsk Salmebok). The advantage of this version is that it can be sung in both variants of the Norwegian language, simply by conflating two eighth notes when singing ‘som kjem i Herrens namn’ (nynorsk, New Norse) instead of ‘som kommer i Herrens navn’ (Bokmål, Book language).

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lyrics in Swedish (1976) paraphrases freely: one box is yellow, another green, and a third one shines red and happy. The 1970 version respects the poetry of repetition: små lådor (little boxes), tingeltangel (ticky-tacky) and likadana (the same) are all repeated. The 1976 version again opts for paraphrasing: “in a suburb stand small boxes / which all look just the same … but they’re still the same boxes / where they lie in a long row”. Yet the 1970 version could not have been translated so closely if it were not going to be set to a new and slightly jazzier music by the composer Chydenius, for his wife, singer Ko-rhonen. The 1976 version – sang by Anderson himself, who also played the guitar – sacrifices some of the poetic effect, but allows the box-like quality of the music to interact with the lyrics.

1.5 Adapting the translation to the original music

In fact Anderson’s lyrics above (Example 5) fall under this fifth option, which may be seen as a more common case of singable song translation. Here, as is often the case with professional assignments, the music may not be changed, i.e. either it is difficult to change or the contract does not allow the translator to do so. Nevertheless, the contract asks for a translation – and sometimes even a functionally equivalent one. If the music must be performed as originally scored, as in stage musicals or operas, it must be the translator who modifies the verbal rendering, by approximating more loosely, by paraphrasing or by deleting from and adding to the content of the source lyrics.

One illustrative example is the song ‘Show Me’, from the musical My Fair Lady, which has been translated, for similar purposes, into several European languages:

Example 6

English source text...Don’t talk of starsBurning aboveIf you’re in loveShow meTell me no dreams Filled with desireIf you’re on fireShow me ...

Music by Frederick Loewe, lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner(My Fair Lady 1956)© Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe 1956, renewed 1984, all rights reserved.

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Swedish target text Norwegian target text Dutch target text... ... ...Du lovar att Ikke forklar Altijd maar weermånen ta ner stjernenes brann. bloemen in knopsäj inte mer Er du en mann? Ach hou’ toch opgör det Fang meg! Doe ietsStjärndiadem Ikke beskriv Altijd opnieuwvill du mig ge drømmenes bro. ’n merel die fluitDet vill jag se Brenner ditt blod? Ach schei’ toch uitGör det ... Fang meg ... Doe iets ...

Lyrics by Gösta Rybrant 1959

Lyrics by André Bjerke 1959 Lyrics by Seth Gaaikema 1960

German target text Finnish target text... ...Sprich nicht vom Mond,

Kai tähtiin tien

den du mir schenkst. nyt kaavailet,Wenn du d’ran denkst, mut miksi etTu’s doch! tee niin!Red nicht von Glück, Sun huulillas’das du mir gibst. vain haaveillaan,Wenn du mich liebst, et kuitenkaanTu’s doch! ... tee niin! ...

Lyrics by Robert Gilbert 1961

Lyrics by Reino Helismaa 1962

This song consists of very short musical lines, which is a problem for the translator. In general, the longer the musical lines, the easier it may be for translators to accommodate the syntax of their particular language, perhaps allowing a fairly close translation by moving a few words around. In this case, a key phrase of the song – ‘show me’ – is so prominently and repeatedly dis-played that it can hardly be moved. As seen above, this title phrase emerges as a rhetorical finish after three short lines – each four syllable phrase forming a trochaic and an iambic foot (Don’t talk of stars). There are two strophes built on negative imperative phrases (Don’t/ Tell me no), followed by participles (burning/ filled) and conditional clauses, leading to the same request (show me). The repeated syntax mirrors the repeated melodic strain and thus makes

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the musical structure tangible. All target texts above preserve the prosody, created by the metric structure, and the rhyme scheme. Furthermore, all the translators keep the position and repetition of a key phrase, although this phrase may not always mean ‘show me’, as can be observed in the following back-translations. I have also highlighted in bold here the very few instances where there is a one-to-one correspondence between ST and TT imagery:

Swedish target text Norwegian target text Dutch target textYou promise to Don’t explain Always againtake down the moon the fire of the stars. flowers in budDon’t say anything more

Are you a man? Oh stop it please

Do it! Capture me! Do something!Tiaras of stars Don’t describe Always anewyou want to give me the bridge of the

dreams.a blackbird that warbles

That I want to see Is your blood burning? Oh quit it pleaseDo it! Capture me! Do something!

German target text Finnish target textDon’t talk of the moon So the road to the starsthat you will give me. you now chartIf you think of it, But why don’t youJust do it! do so!Don’t speak of the happiness,

With your lips

that you will give me. You only fantasizeIf you love me, Yet you don’tJust do it! do so!

The Dutch translation appears to be the freest of the five, in the linguistic sense. However, it does reproduce the syntactic parallelism described above (‘Altijd maar weer’ parallel to ‘Altijd opnieuw’, and so on), as does the Norwegian and the German target texts. The Swedish translation does not. It even overrides the musical phrasing with a run-on sentence: ‘You promise to / take down the moon’, placing somewhat unnatural stress on the verbal particle att (to).

It is clear that an assessment of the fidelity of a singable translation should be based not so much on word-by-word comparison, but on contextual ap-propriateness. A singable translation must fit the music and the situation in which it will be performed, even while trying to approximate the source text as much as necessary or possible. Contextual matters such as dramatic intention,

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suitable register or style of language, even potential staging, will be relevant in these cases. In the target lyrics above, the ‘me’ speaking to a ‘you’ can easily be perceived as Eliza Doolittle talking to her suitor Freddy Eynsford-Hill. The gist of her song is caught by other poetic clichés: the moon, flowers in bud, a blackbird, as well as by ‘stars burning above’. Some translators seem to have given some thought to the staging instructions: for instance, the Norwegian translator could have written ‘vis det’ (show it), but instead suggests some physical action with the new phrase ‘fang meg’ (capture me). Still, there are cases where the translated lyrics do not match the general characterization in the story. The phrase ‘tähtiin tien’ in Finnish (the road to the stars) does preserve Lerner’s ‘stars’, but its meaning (the road to success/ you now chart) has nothing to do with Freddy the idler in the play.

The option of adapting a translation to music, while allowing for some deviation in sense, may apply to many cases of song translation. When songs appear in a film that is to be dubbed, neither the music nor the (visual) per-formance can possibly be changed; contextual appropriateness would also include the lip movement with which the target text must be synchronized. In less constrained circumstances, however, one might have freer reign. In a well-known nursery rhyme, the ‘Itsy Bitsy Spider’ climbs up ‘the water spout’ in English. In Swedish and Finnish, it climbs up a thread; in Danish, a wall; in Norwegian, ‘my hat’; and in Icelandic, a tree. All that is required of the ‘trans-lation’ here is that the words rhyme, they fit the same or similar melody, and can be accompanied by movements of the hand imitating a climbing spider.

The conclusion, once again, is that function and performance are of primary importance for singable song translation and that respect for the original lyr-ics must be shown, or assessed, contextually: in relation to both music and intended function. Nevertheless, the examples demonstrate how translations that are accepted as functional can go to different lengths in observing the musico-verbal unity of the song.

2. Three layers of singability

The last three options discussed above – i.e. writing new lyrics, adapting the music to the translation of lyrics, and adapting the translation to fit the music – would thus produce singable target lyrics. The preceding discussion allowed me to touch briefly upon songs translated for different kinds of media and performances. Some further exploration of such examples will now allow me to take the discussion a step further, towards a closer analysis of the concept, and technique, of singability.

When the main purpose of the translational action is to deliver a singable translation, there are certain aspects of the musico-textual fit which seem to require particular attention and which lead to further choices. Here I take as my point of departure the assumption that music, from the lyricist’s point of view, has three main properties: a melody, a harmonic structure, and an impression

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of meaning, mood or action. The way the lyrics function for an audience will inevitably be influenced, if not decided, by the way the music functions simul-taneously. Although not a universal norm, the European melopoetic norm has long required that a song lyric displays a prosodic, poetic, and perhaps even a semantic-reflexive match to the music. The functional consequences of this match are shown in Table 1.

A singable lyric achieves

by observing the music’s which may appear in the text as

1. a prosodic match melody: music as notated, producing lyrics that are comprehensible and sound natural when sung

syllable count; rhythm; intonation, stress;sounds for easy singing

2. a poetic match structure: music as performed, producing lyrics that attract the audience’ attention and achieve poetic effect

rhyme; segmentation of phrases/lines/stanzas; parallelism and contrast; location of key words

3. a semantic-reflexive match

expression: music perceived as meaningful, producing lyrics that reflect or explain what the music ‘says’

the story told, mood conveyed, character(s) expressed; description (word-painting); metaphor

Table 1. Functional Consequences of Match between Lyrics and Music

Firstly, the prosodic match to the melody makes use of elements of prosody: rhythm, stress, and intonation – universal speech phenomena that appear in singing in a stylized and controlled form. Phonetic suitability, which is a problem especially relevant to opera translation, involves ensuring that both vowels and consonants are easy enough to vocalize. Apter (1985) describes this as placing not too heavy a ‘burden’ on the notes. In more speech-like musical genres, this concern can be understood as part of the prosodic fit, as striving for likeness in articulation between text and melody.

Secondly, the poetic match seems to be most closely interwoven with the harmonic structure of a piece of music. It is through the harmonic structure of matched and juxtaposed melodic strains and intensifying or reassuring chord progressions that the audience’s attention is commanded and retained. Lyrics can mirror such structures and properties by verbal means, such as stylistic figures, climax and contrast, euphonious or repeated sounds (e.g. rhyme).12

12 For a discussion of structural correspondences between text and music – and of poetry being much more than rhymes – I find the classic essay of Jakobson (1981) on the poetic function in language most instructive.

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Thirdly, a semantic-reflexive match is easy to pinpoint in its most obvious appearance, in word-painting; as Warren puts it, “[t]he musical depiction in a vocal work of the meaning of a word or of an idea associated with a word, for instance an ascending passage for ‘exalted’, or a dissonance on ‘pain’” (1980:528). The principle may equally apply to a general likeness, such as the notion that happy lyrics should be accompanied by joyful music, or to instances where words reflect or feed on a musical movement and what it appears to express.13

Kaindl (1995) offers a similar discussion of the subject, but is not so much interested in the technique of translating. Gorlée (1997, 2005), too, suggests a four-part categorization between phonetic, prosodic, poetic and semiotic concerns, and Low (2005) finds a comparable balance in his more hands-on approach to naturalness, rhythm, rhyme and fidelity. Nevertheless, to my mind, Table 1 offers a clearer functional categorization than the preceding works in the field. It illustrates the premise that music sets the prosody, influences sty-listic choices and adds (semantic) value to the content of the lyrics. Observed by the original lyricist, the same criteria are also relevant for the translator. Similar to Low’s ‘penathlon principle’, I would like to present these aspects as layers, relevant up to a different degree in each case. A prosodic match would be the most basic requirement, since in its absence it may technically be impossible to sing the lyrics. The need for a poetic or semantic-reflexive match would vary with the particular character of the song. Moreover, the translator may pursue individual features within this categorization – for ex-ample perfect rhymes – to differing lengths, and of course with varied success. In some cases, a song translator may choose to pursue only one of the three layers, most likely the first two, since the semantic-reflexive match seems to presuppose their presence. Such a modification of full singability can be found, for example, in subtitled songs, songs printed as poetry or quoted in novels, as we shall see below.

2.1 Prosodic match with source music

As we have seen in example 1 above, most subtitlers may not feel obliged to deliver more than a prose rendering of source lyrics; yet there are exceptions. For the musical film The King and I, broadcast on Swedish television on 24

13 My use of the concept ‘reflexive’ is mostly indebted to Banfield (1993), who bases his analysis of songs on the observation that well-wrought lyrics often seem to reflect, or de-scribe, the movement or structure of the music. He describes this “melopoetic structural reinforcement” (1993:108) as a mutual function, similar whether the words have been written to music, or the other way around, but claims it may be more easily observed in the former case. For an overview of differing musicological and intersemiotic perspectives on this subject in relation to vocal translation, see Gorlée (1997). For other viewpoints on the topic, see the collected volume edited by Gorlée (2005).

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December 1996, the subtitler took pains to conform to certain prosodic features of the lyrics of the song ‘A Puzzlement’.

Example 7

English source text Swedish subtitles1 When I was a boy När jag var ett barn2 World was better spot. Allting var så bra3 What was so was so, Somligt var som så4 What was not was not. Annat var det ej5 Now I am a man – Nu när jag är man6 World have changed a lot; Allt har ändrat sig7 Some things nearly so, Somligt blivit bra8 Others nearly not. Annat har det ej9 There are times I almost think Det finns dagar då jag inte riktigt10 I am not sure of what I absolutely

know.vet vad jag egentligen har lärt mig

11 Very often find confusion Jag blir ofta rätt förbryllad över12 In conclusion I concluded long ago. slutsatser jag drog för länge sedan13 In my head are many facts Det finns fakta som jag vet att jag14 That, as a student, I have studied to

procure.en gång var så mån om att studera

15 In my head are many facts Det finns fakta som jag vet16 Of which I wish I was more certain att jag nog önskar att jag visste 17 I was sure! mer bestämt

Is a puzzlement! Så besynnerligt!... ...

Music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II (The King and I 1951)© Williamson Music

Subtitles by Ordkedjan (TV4)

Example 7 illustrates the minimum requirement of singability: the words fit the notes syllabically. A Swedish speaker hearing the music would see that the subtitles follow the music in terms of rhythm and stress – ‘When I was a boy / World was better spot’ corresponds to ‘När jag var ett barn / Allting var så bra’ (When I was a child / Everything was so well). A prosodic match is achieved and there is correspondence in syllable count – very interestingly except for the words at the end of lines 10, 12 and 14 above. In the music, those words are set with two-note melismas, but the translation makes them bisyllabic: kno–ow → lärt mig, long ago–o → länge sedan. Nevertheless, the

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effect is pleasing: while hearing the song, viewers can easily read and enjoy the translated lyrics simultaneously with the original melody as sung.

2.2 Poetic match with (non-present) music

Retaining a poetic match without a prosodic fit to the music basically amounts to a verse translation. It can also be a song translation, though, as when a poem happens to be set to music, as in this translation from Swedish:

Example 8

Swedish source text Finnish target text English target lyrics... ... ...Stärkta veck överallt. Tärkit jäykkinä hohtaa. Stiffly starched is each

fold;Allting skiner så kallt. Katse kylmyyden

kohtaa.All is shining and cold;

Kandelabern, den hyrda, bär

Vuokrakynttelikössä et voi

And the hired candelabras bear

sina ljus utan glans, Nähdä lämmintä tulta, Their pale cargo of wax,och den svartaste frans, Mutta mustat kuin multa And the blackest of blackssom fanns köpa, den finnes här.

Sururimpsut he kaupasta toi.

To be had in the shops, is the wear.

... ... ...

‘Bleka dödens minut’, Music and lyrics by Birger Sjöberg 1923

‘Valju Kuoleman hetki’, Trans. Leena Krohn 1989

‘Death’s Hour’, Lyrics by Michael Roberts, recorded by Martin Best 1980

The Finnish target text has poetic qualities, and the end-focus created by rhyme is retained. The rhyme scheme is the same, the rhythm is even, but there are additional syllables: kallt → kohtaa, finnes här → kaupasta toi. Therefore, it cannot be sung to unchanged music, but given that it is printed in a collection of poetry, it is not intended to be sung anyway. The English lyrics to the right are translated to be singable, though, and therefore observe both the prosodic and the poetic match – the latter slightly more than the former, in fact, as a tiny note has to be added to accommodate one the in the last-quoted line.

A poetic form would seem to be the only way to indicate ‘singability’ (or ‘songness’) in print, since the prosody of the melody and effects of musical word-painting cannot be communicated visually. When the music is not present in the presentation, as in Morrison’s Song of Solomon, one might speak of a poetic match with (fictitious) music without the need for a prosodic match. In this case, the Finnish translator chose a more song-like solution than his Swedish colleague (see section 1.2 above):

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Example 9

English source text Finnish target text Back-translationJake the only son of Solomon

Solomonin ainoa poika Jake

Solomon’s only son Jake

Come booba yalle, come booba tambee

tule booba yalle, tule booba tambee

Whirled about and touched the sun

kieppui ja kosketti aurinkoa hei

whirled and touched the sun hey

Come konka yalle, come konka tambee

tule konka yalle, tule konka tambee

... ... ...Solomon done fly,

Solomon done gone

Solomon lentää liihotti, Solomon poies katosi

Solomon flew flutteringlySolomon far away disappeared

Solomon cut across the sky, Solomon gone home.

Solomon taivaalle viipotti, Solomon kotiin palasi.

Solomon to the sky swungSolomon to home returned

Morrison (1980:303)© Toni Morrison 1977, Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Morrison (1996:323-24)

As can be seen in my very close back translation, verbs are placed in final position in some lines, creating syntactic parallelism (poies katosi – kotiin palasi). There is also one half-rhyme (Jake – hei), but the main poetic effect comes from added alliteration, ‘kieppui ja kosketti, lentää liihotti’, reminis-cent of Finnish folk poetry. Elements of onomatopoeia are partly translated – ‘Come booba yalle’ as ‘tule booba yalle’. The example demonstrates how rhyme is not the sole carrier of a poetic function. Syntactic parallelism is but one expression of the “poetry of grammar”, described by Jakobson (1981:47). These target lyrics do not quite copy the form and sense of the source text, but they recreate the markings of oral poetry in this example (and written poetry in example 8), making them at least pleasing and song-like to read.

2.3. Semantic reflexivity

The final example belong to the last, and perhaps most subtle, aspect of musico-verbal matching. In discussing example 7, I claimed that the subtitles to the song ‘A Puzzlement’ were singable to a minimal degree; nevertheless,

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they would probably not function in a sung performance of the musical play, because they lack a semantic-reflexive match. For illustration, compare the-atrical translations of the same song in example 10.

Example �0

Swedish target text 1 Swedish target text 21 När jag växte upp Förr var livet lätt,2 lärde jag mig att bilden ren och hel.3 det och det är vitt – Somligt bara sant4 det och det är svart. annat bara fel.5 Nu är jag en man Jag är vuxen nu.6 och jag har förstått: Livet är ett spel.7 Vitt är stundom svart. Somligt nästan sant,8 Svart är stundom grått. annat nästan fel.9 Det finns stunder då jag frågar mig Det finns stunder då det känns10 med tvivel: är det riktigt vad jag

lärt?Som om jag inte visste vad jag säkert vet.

11 Det jag förr satt värde på – är det så Stor förvirring trots beslut12 självklart att det faktiskt är nåt

värt?Som fordom fattades med auktoritet.

13 Alltför ofta tvivlar jag numer på saker

Tankar trängs och tvivlet gror

14 som jag trodde mig förstå. Och trasar ofta sönder kunskapens kokong.

15 Det finns nästan ingenting tyvärr Tankar trängs och tvivlet gror – vad är

16 som jag numer är riktigt säker på. det värt allt det jag lärde mig en gång?

17 Det är ett bryderi....

Så förbryllande!...

Lyrics by Gösta Rybrant 1958 Lyrics by Gertrud Hemmel 1982

These two translators not only observed the prosodic and poetic match, but they also made the sung performance expressive and persuasive by paying attention to the musical movement and focus. This can be most clearly demonstrated in lines 7-8. In the first lines of the song, the King of Siam is characterized by a series of quick, repeated notes, with every verse line a tone-step higher – a Broadway imitation of an Asian pentatonic scale. By lines 7-8 the music becomes more varied, and two adverbial modifiers are emphasized through

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music and orchestration: ‘Some things nearly so, / Others nearly not’. The King voices his doubts, and the music and words dramatize them. The subtitler’s solution ‘Some things become good / Others have not’ (example 7 above) renders this musical emphasis meaningless. The theatrical translations, on the other hand, recreate the emphasis. Hemmel is rather faithful: ‘Some things almost true / Others almost wrong’. Rybrant paraphrases creatively: ‘White is at times black / Black is at times grey’. Naturally, too, the expressive melismas are kept (line 10): ‘vad jag lä–ärt’ (what I lea–earned).

Rybrant also picks up a semantic-reflexive trick: on lines 15-16, the com-position features a small harmonic hesitation, repeating a two-note melodic figure on ‘In my head are many facts / Of which’, pausing for a moment be-fore going for a harmonic closure on the following words ‘I wish I was more certain I was sure’. In Swedish, the two-note figure is used to put focus on an interjection: ‘There is hardly anything / alas / that I nowadays am really sure of’ (lines 15-16) – thereby adding an extra keyword to the musico-verbal dramatization of the King’s ambivalence.

Hemmel does not make anything significant out of this particular musical figure: ‘Thoughts crowd and doubt grows – what is it worth, that which I learned once?’ (lines 15-16). This seems to imply that this third layer, the mutu-ally reinforced semantic-reflexive match, may also be sacrificed occasionally. For a semantic reflexivity between music and lyrics to register at all, it would need the prosodic and poetic match to communicate the words, and the latter two might be enough to make the target lyrics appear singable.

3. Conclusion

The five options outlined above summarize the choices that are theoretically available to song translators. In real terms, however, different strategies may be combined and individual translators may pursue a particular goal – prosody, poetry and musical sense, or naturalness, phonetic suitability, rhyme or verbal fidelity – more or less vigorously.

In terms of choosing among the various options available for translat-ing a song as (part of) a source text, the main factor seems to be the mode of presentation. Will the target performers and audience be interested in the music, the original lyrics, or the combined musico-verbal effect of a sung performance? Are the original lyrics to be kept, perhaps to give an impression of authenticity? Is the translation intended for singing in the first place? Is the music to be presented as originally written or can it be modified? Which words or aspects of the lyrics are contextually (i.e., dramatically, musically, visually) most vital? Can the musico-verbal properties of the original song be recreated for the target presentation? If the aim is to create a sung performance, how can we combine the three layers (prosodic, poetic and semantic reflexive match), and is a fully functional target ‘singing song’ likely to have to consider

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all three layers of match? These and similar questions all guide the concrete choices made by individual translators in specific contexts out of the myriad of theoretical options available to them.

Singability (like fidelity) remains an ambiguous concept in essence. It can be defined in a restricted fashion, as ‘paying attention to vocalization’. It can also be defined more broadly, as a prosodic and poetic match, or even liberally, as a practical term to sum up everything that makes words and music function together in song. I have favoured the latter interpretation and suggested how three main functions (prosodic, poetic and semantic reflexive match) can be analyzed with a certain degree of precision. Translators of songs for different media – songs in print, subtitles, and sung performance, for popular record-ings, theatre, or hymnals – choose to preserve different aspects of a source song’s character. The variety of decisions they ultimately make can be seen as evidence that relatively distinct options and layers for achieving singability are available, in both the writing and the translating of songs.

JOHAN FRANZONDepartment of Translation Studies, University of Helsinki, PL 94, 45 101 Kouvola, Finland. johan.franzon@helsinki.fi

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Discography

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