Article published In:
TargetVol. 15:1 (2003) ► pp.91–110
Translating poetic songs
An attempt at a functional account of strategies
Poems have often been turned into songs, notably as German Lieder. Classical singers use translations of these in several different ways: as cribs for themselves, in printed programmes for their audiences, as singable versions, etc. Since no single target-text is ideal for all of these purposes, the Skopostheorie of Hans J. Vermeer may help translators to match their strategy with the particular skopos (“goal or purpose”) of their translation. The author identifies five specific functions which a song-translation may serve, and proposes a range of five translation strategies intended to match these particular skopoi. A demonstration is given of how these strategies produce different English versions of a few lines from a Baudelaire poem.
Keywords: art-song, Lieder, poem-translating, skopos, translation theory
Article outline
- Introduction
- A diversity of functions
- a.A performer’s crib
- b.A recording insert
- c.A programme text
- d.A spoken text
- e.A sung text
- Some practitioners’ thoughts
- Cultural and contextual issues
-
Proposed strategies
- a.For a performer’s crib: Gloss translation
- b.For a recording insert: Semantic translation
- c.For a programme text: Communicative translation
- d.For a spoken text: Gist translation
- e.For a sung text: A singable translation
- A comparative example
- a.performer’s crib
- b.recording insert
- c.programme text
- d.spoken text
- e.sung text
- Notes
-
References
References
Baker, Mona
1992 In other words. London and New York: Routledge 1992. 
ed. 1998 Routledge encyclopedia of Translation Studies. London and New York: Routledge.
Bernac, Pierre
1970 The interpretation of French song. London: Gollancz.
Burnshaw, Stanley
ed. 1960 The poem itself. New York: Holt, Rinehart.
Even-Zohar, Itamar
1990 “Polysystem studies”, special issue of Poetics today 11:1.
Fischer-Dieskau, Dietrich
1977 The Fischer-Dieskau book of Lieder. New York: Knopf.
Graham, Arthur
1989 “A new look at recital song translation”. Translation review 291. 31–37.
Holmes, James S.
1988 Translated!: Papers on literary translation and translation Studies. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Le Van, Timothy
1991 Masters of the French Art Song. Metuchen NJ: Scarecrow.
Lefevere, André
1975 Translating poetry: Seven strategies and a blueprint. Assen: Van Gorcum.
Marsh, Edward
trans. 1941 The Odes of Horace. London: MacMillan
McGowan, James
trans. 1993 The Flowers of Evil. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Miller, Philip
1963.The ring of words: An anthology of song texts. New York: Norton.
Newmark, Peter
1982 Approaches to translation. Oxford: Pergamon.
1988 A textbook of translation. New York: Prentice Hall.
Nida, Eugene A.
1964 Toward a science of translating, with special reference to principles and procedures involved in Bible translating. Leiden: Brill.
Nord, Christiane
1997 Translating as a purposeful activity. Manchester: St Jerome.
Phillips, Lois
1979 Lieder line by line, and word for word. London: Duckworth.
Raffel, Burton
1988 The art of translating poetry. Pennsylvania and London: Pennsylvania State University.
Reiss, Katharina and Hans J. Vermeer
1984 Grundlegung einer allgemeinen Translations-theorie. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Stokes, Richard and Graham Johnson
1999 A French song companion. Oxford: O.U.P.
Vermeer, Hans J.
1989 “Skopos and commission in translational action”. Lawrence Venuti, ed. The Translation Studies reader. London and New York: Routledge 2000: 221–232.
Weissbort, Daniel
ed. 1989 Translating poetry. Basingstoke: MacMillan.
Cited by
Cited by 19 other publications
Al-Azzam, Bakri & Aladdin Al-Kharabsheh
2012. Jordanian Folkloric Songs in Translation: Mousa’s Song They Have Passed by Without a Company as a Case Study. Meta 56:3 ► pp. 557 ff. 
Antosz-Rekucki, Jakub
2023. Poetycka piosenka autorska a przekład – przegląd badań w językach angielskim i polskim. Przekładaniec :45 ► pp. 19 ff.
Bradford, Terry J.
2023. Jacques Brel's Ne me quitte pas in English: On putting the record straight… and queering it?. French Cultural Studies
Chandra, Rohitash & Venkatesh Kulkarni
2022. Semantic and Sentiment Analysis of Selected Bhagavad Gita Translations Using BERT-Based Language Framework. IEEE Access 10 ► pp. 21291 ff.
Chen, Xi
2020. When the classic speaks for children. Babel. Revue internationale de la traduction / International Journal of Translation 66:4-5 ► pp. 780 ff.
Cintrão, Heloísa Pezza
2010. Translating “Under the Sign of Invention”: Gilberto Gil’s Song Lyric Translation. Meta 54:4 ► pp. 813 ff.
Cruz Durán, Belén
2022. Películas musicales para adolescentes: características y estrategias de traducción. Estudios de Traducción 12 ► pp. 173 ff.
García Jiménez, Rocío
2017. Susam-Saraeva, Şebnem (2015): Translation, popular music and transcultural intimacy in Turkish-Greek relations. Oxford: Peter Lang, 180 p.. Meta: Journal des traducteurs 62:2 ► pp. 474 ff.
Jiménez, Rocío García
2017. Song translation and AVT. Babel. Revue internationale de la traduction / International Journal of Translation 63:2 ► pp. 200 ff.
Hassan, Sundus & Ahmad S Haider
2024. Options for subtitling English movie lyrics into Arabic. Studies in Linguistics, Culture, and FLT 12:1 ► pp. 82 ff.
Jaka Irizar, Aiora
2020. Traduction basque de chansons populaires : entre transformation minimale et reparolisation1. TTR 32:2 ► pp. 81 ff.
Low, P.
2006. Song Translation. In Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics, ► pp. 511 ff.
Low, Peter
2008. Translating Songs that Rhyme. Perspectives 16:1-2 ► pp. 1 ff.
Mateo, Marta
2020. Multilingual libretti across linguistic borders and translation modes. In Opera in Translation [Benjamins Translation Library, 153], ► pp. 337 ff.
METİN TEKİN, Bilge
2022. A CASE STUDY ON THE TRANSLATION STRATEGIES IN WALT DISNEY ANIMATED MUSICAL MOVIES’ SONGS: FROM PAST TO PRESENT. Ankara Üniversitesi Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi Dergisi 62:2 ► pp. 1014 ff.
OKYAYUZ, Şirin & Mümtaz KAYA
2021. Türkçe Sözlü Hafif Batı Müziğinin Oluşumunda Fransızcadan Çevrilen Şarkılarda ‘Yerli Ve Millî Aşk’a Dair. Çeviribilim ve Uygulamaları Dergisi 2021:30 ► pp. 133 ff.
Pekkanen, Hilkka
2014. Who’s got rhythm? Rhythm-related shifting in literary translation. Palimpsestes :27
Wilson-deRoze, Karen
2020. Translating Wagner’s Versmelodie. In Opera in Translation [Benjamins Translation Library, 153], ► pp. 243 ff.
[no author supplied]
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.