Choices in Song Translation

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 consideration, 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.