 |
| |
|
Breaking Free of the Language Barrier in Musicby Gregory H. Bontrager | |||||||||||
|
In my opinion, it is problematic that this phenomenon has not received much attention. A typical Hispanic fan, for example, must frequently seek the translation of his/her favorite American song in order to understand the lyrics that accompany the melody which so enthralls him/her. After having found it, the best he/she can do to imitate the total experience of an Anglophone fan is to memorize the translation in order to have the meaning in mind when he/she listens to the song. In such a situation, the two key elements of any song (melody and lyrics) remain separate. To the Anglo-American listener, sound and sense both derive from the arrangement to which he/she is listening, but to the Hispanic listener, the recording provides only the sound while his/her own memory provides the sense. This impairment of the musical experience because of the language barrier is reduced but not eliminated completely. Some popular American singers do sing in other languages. These are almost always pop stars who are already bilingual due to their Hispanic heritage and presumably wish to offer something special to their fans of the same heritage. Christina Aguilera is a good example. She released at least one complete album in the Spanish language (called Mi Reflejo1) that contained versions adapted into Spanish of songs originally written and debuted in English. Given the fact that the vast majority of popular singers who do this are from a heritage that already gives them a good command of the relevant language, one might deduce that such adaptations are carried out only when it is sufficiently convenient. That is to say, a stronger appeal to Hispanic fans is worth hiring a translator to write Spanish lyrics but not worth paying for pronunciation lessons for a singer who is not a native speaker. Furthermore, agents probably do not want to hire other performers to record Spanish-language versions because it would detract from their own purpose, which is to promote only their clients. To a certain extent, I depend on deduction and assumption to analyze these facts, because the creation of versions in other languages of music originally written in English is a matter that has not been duly explored. There is little information available to the public that discusses the process, and the translators that participate therein often remain anonymous. To adapt a song well from one language to another is no small feat, and it is a task that deserves more respect and attention.
The most remarkable case with respect to this phenomenon is that of Disney. This iconic company has a long history of carrying out adaptations of its music in several languages, which extends back decades and continues even today. While other film studios present dubbings that only affect the dialogue, the dubbings that Disney has done for almost all of its animated classics include complete versions in more than 30 languages of the pertinent songs. "A Whole New World," "Part of Your World," and "Circle of Life,"2 and many more are presented to foreign children in their respective tongues. The reason behind this unique diligence with respect to translating songs is unclear, but the most probable causes can be identified. The first is the large role that music often plays in the storytelling of Disney's animated movies. In the works of other companies, the music is almost always heard in the background and serves to establish the appropriate mood. When it comes to Disney, on the contrary, the characters use songs to express themselves. The second cause is probably the age of the target audience at whom these films are primarily aimed. By and large, this audience is too young to have learned enough English to understand the lyrics that are sung with such entertaining melodies. Therefore Disney must frequently face a problem that is less severe for other filmmakers. Nevertheless, this has not succeeded in preventing the process by which these adapted versions are created from remaining very obscure. It is much easier to uncover the names of the original authors (among whom Tim Rice stands as a lyricist and Alan Menken as a composer) than it is to shed light on who are the adaptors who write the translated lyrics (among whom no one stands out). Does Disney depend on a permanent and stable staff, or do they hire freelance translators on an ad hoc basis? What norms are stipulated to assure the quality of each adaptation? Has the process changed throughout its history? All of these questions remain difficult to answer because Disney seems to have never believed that people would be interested in knowing about it, and generally, they had reason to believe that. With all that this great conglomerate does, this process is relatively trivial, both for the public and for the executives. I have recently observed signs of an ad hoc and poorly organized protocol, mainly with respect to the televised music of Disney Channel. The task of translating songs that appear there seem to have been delegated to international branches of the channel. The fidelity of these adaptations demonstrates surprising variability. Some convey the meaning of the original lyrics very well, while others sound like completely different songs that merely by happenstance share the same melodies as the English-language versions. So there is something missing in this protocol, whatever it may be exactly, and I firmly believe that it merits investigation.
On January 30, 2006, High School Musical premiered on Disney Channel and soon became an unexpected hit. This global phenomenon inspired two sequels, the last of which debuted in theaters, and an entire franchise of merchandise and derived products. Many high schools across the country performed and continue to perform the stage version, and I suspect that its flagship song, "Breaking Free," will one day be considered a classic on par with "A Whole New World" and others like it. On my part, the first film inspired me to undertake the project of translating/adapting the entire soundtrack. After several months of work, I accomplished it, and through this work, the philosophy and methodology that I apply in order to bring what was initially a mere hobby to a more serious level became better organized and defined. Meanwhile, Disney also began to release adapted versions of a few songs from the movie, and thus it was that I began to truly notice the varying quality of these official adaptations. When I first discovered the title of the Latin American version of "Breaking Free" ("Sólo hay que intentar"), I was stupefied. In the same way, the title of the Spanish version of the same song ("No dejes de soñar) increased my confusion. I realized that, if these titles truly reflected the lyrics, they would not achieve the quality I expected. And so it continued. The French version was called "Briser mes chaînes" (literally "To Break My Chains"). The Italian version, which I later learned was written by the singer Luca Dirisio himself, was called "Se provi a volare" ("If You Try to Fly"). Particularly in the French version, the sense of togetherness, which in my opinion is so important in the original, was completely lost. It would have at least remained a little more faithful to the original in English if it had been written as "Briser nos chaînes," ("To Break Our Chains"), but it was not. I became disillusioned, and in the years that followed, I paid more attention to the diversity of songs adapted into Spanish that appeared on the international branches of Disney Channel. The fidelity of some impressed me favorably; others seriously disappointed me. I could not determine why the apparent quality of these translations varied so much, and even today I still cannot explain it. Did the executives tell the adaptors to simply write something that sounded good without paying any attention to the original meaning of the lyrics? Therefore, I now present an initial approach to the problem with the aim of illuminating this topic and letting the reader arrive at his/her own opinions. In spite of my own personal preferences regarding how one should manage syllabification, beat, and rhythm, I will only analyze faithfulness to rhyme and meaning. Is the overall message of the song maintained? Is something lost that does not necessarily need to be lost? I shall pose and attempt to answer such questions and in doing so hope to clarify the lack of regularity that characterizes the official process that Disney uses to adapt its music. First, however, let us examine the norms and concepts that become especially relevant in the translation of sung lyrics.
The philosopher whose ideas are perhaps the most relevant to translating sung lyrics is Friedrich Schleiermacher, a theologian and philologist whose philosophical essay on themes very pertinent to this one I first read in a translation class that I took at the university. Schleiermacher classifies styles of interpretation and translation on three key spectra. The first important one is that which lies between interpretation and translation. Oral interpretation is implemented primarily in the world of business and commercial transactions, while written translation dominates in the world of arts and sciences. This distinction is important because in business, the parameter, norms, and entities that are involved in the discussion are well defined and commonly understood without ambiguities or differences in nuance. The work of the interpreter is therefore more mechanical. Schleiermacher reminds us that the meaning of any word in a language rarely coincides exactly with the meaning of the generally equivalent term in another language, but he furthermore states that the role of this lack of perfect equivalence is minimized in commercial interpretation. The translator, who on the contrary tends much more to participate in the transmission of artistic and scientific works, faces situations that exacerbate this lack of equivalence so much that the more his work differs from oral interpretation, the more worthy he becomes of being called an artist because of a certain creativity which is required to undertake the task. (Schleiermacher 44-46) Another comparison that Schleiermacher shows to us is that which distinguishes two types of translators: paraphrasts and imitators. The paraphrast, according to him, tries to resolve the imperfect equivalence between terms in different tongues by using modifiers that augment or diminish the meaning of a word so that the original sense is conveyed more precisely. He explains that "the paraphrast treats the elements of the two languages as though they were mathematical signs that can be reduced to the same value by mans of addition or subtraction." The imitator, on his/her part, "strives only to give the [foreign] reader an impression similar to the one received by readers who shared a language and an age with the author of the original." (Schleiermacher 47-48) Imitation, is, at least for me, the most important approach in lyrical translation. The translator must maintain specific imagery if he/she can, but it is a higher priority to preserve the lyrics' general message. A third distinction that Schleiermacher clarifies is that which lies between the drive to maintain a sense of the foreign in the translated text by preserving the syntactical twists and turns of the original and the drive to render the work as it would have been written by a native speaker of the target language. This idea is fundamentally about the concept of transparency. That is, the capacity that a translation demonstrates to appear to have been written originally in the reader's language. For example, the very essay in which I read these eloquent theories is ironically a translation into English of the original German text. An impeccably transparent translation of this work would be identical to the text that Schleiermacher himself would have written if he were a native English speaker. (Schleiermacher 49-53) In my view, transparency is the crucial criterion, and it figures prominently in my own adaptation philosophy. In fact, transparency and fidelity are often the key qualities between which one must reach a stable balance in order to arrive at an acceptable adaptation. The respected translator John Dryden proposes a similar model, although the terms that these two schemes have in common differ significantly in meaning. According to Dryden, there are three modalities of translation/interpretation. Metaphrasis is the simple word-for-word transliteration of a text, paraphrasis shifts the focus in favor of the deeper meaning instead of the words themselves, and imitation gives the translator the liberty to create a work almost completely his/her own with only some insinuations and inspirations from the original. (Dryden 38) We will soon see that the first of the case studies which follow below could be described as an example of Drydenian imitation, while the second seems to exemplify Schleiermacherian imitation. The translation of songs is perhaps the farthest from the mechanical workings of interpretation in the commercial sphere. The conflicts and challenges that the translator faces to a certain extent in any job are exacerbated when he/she attempts to adapt sung lyrics. Songs are a form of poetry, and poetry is the most artistic form of writing. The lack of perfect equivalence between the distinct vocabularies of languages remains relevant not only through the obvious difficulties that it tends to present but also because at times the difference in nuance between two terms paradoxically succeed at helping the adaptor at his work. Furthermore, grammar and syntax clearly play a key role in maintaining transparency, but the restrictions of rhyme and beat often oblige the translator to turn into a syntactic acrobat, rejecting the simplest arrangements in favor of those that are in good accordance with the rhyme and melody. The specific images can be better preserved by paraphrasis, but imitation as defined by Schleiermacher better preserves the total meaning of the lyrics.
I selected the two songs that we analyze below with the intention of showing how varied the quality is of the work that the Disney translators do. I present my analysis with respect to two key characteristics: fidelity to meaning and fidelity to poetic structure (rhyme, repetition, etc.). The first adaptation is the least faithful in both aspects, and the second is the most faithful. In presenting the two extremes of the spectrum, I hope to reveal the variation that exists in these official lyrics.
Less severe are the lapses in poetic structure. A few rhymes are lost, like that which exists between "see us" and "between us," which has no equivalent in the adapted version of the same verse. The adaptation is also more repetitive, since it repeats the first chorus with twice the frequency instead of translating the second. All in all, there is a very vague resemblance between the themes of the two versions. Someone who "sube hasta el cielo," "alcanza [su] estrella," and "no [deja] de soñar" ("climbs to the heavens," "reaches his/her/their star," and "does not stop dreaming") in a certain sense does "break free," but the connection is extremely weak and simply does not succeed in communicating the same message as the original song.
Upon reading these two sets of lyrics, we discover much greater faithfulness in the adaptation. Some elements of meaning are lost such as the "favorite" in the first line of the chorus or the "common thread" in the first verse, but the vast majority of the images and ideas that the original song conveys are maintained. Paraphrasis and transposition/modulation are very well employed in the adapted lyrics. The part that reads "Al ritmo de la canción / Siento la conexión" ("To the rhythm of the song / I feel the connection") seems excellently done to me, and in some instances a technique is used with which I am very familiar. This trick is changing an affirmative phrase into a negation of its opposite or vice versa. Thus "Can't keep it all inside" is adapted as "Lo tengo que expresar" ("I have to express it"). Instead of saying that something cannot be done, the singer says that she must do the opposite. The same idea is expressed, but musical compatibility is also maintained. There is only one specific rhyme that is sacrificed (the one between "am" and "understand," which has no equivalent in the Spanish version), and the adaptation respects the poetic structure of the original lyrics quite well. The only possible lapse that I see is the line "Son las palabras 'Había una vez,'" ("It's the words 'Once upon a time'"), which must be sung as "Son las palabras 'habyaunavez.'" Even if we apply the less severe standards of elision that Disney's professional translators seem to demonstrate, such compression of syllables seems too extreme and uncomfortable to me. I appreciate the attempt to maintain the greater fidelity, but in this case, it does not work well. In my opinion, it would have been better to paraphrase this part in some other way.
My own style of lyrical translation is, in certain aspects, even more difficult than the conventional one because of parameters and standards to which I pay greater attention than many professional translators. I tend to place greater emphasis on transparency (perhaps as a precaution developed by a non-native speaker) and on ease of singing and understanding, focusing on some details that seem insignificant to others. If a performer needs much instruction on how the syllables of the song must be arranged, the adaptation will be a failure in my estimation. As much as I can, I try to preserve the specific images of the original text, but maintaining the overall message of the song is always of higher priority. I carry out each adaptation of mine taking into account my three pillars of lyrical translation. The first pillar is syllabification. This refers simply to the number of syllables in each line. I never write a translated line that adds or subtracts more than a single syllable to the original, and even this minimal leeway I permit myself only rarely. This does not seem so strange until one considers my aversion to the vocalic elisions that abound in many professional translations. It is as simple as this: unless the terminal vowel of a word is identical to the initial vowel of the following word, I never make a vocalic elision. For example, the line "Sólo hay que intentar," which must be sung as "solwykintentar," does not strike me well at all. In my opinion, such compression of syllables impedes the clarity of the lyrics upon listening, and clarity is particularly important to me. Nonetheless, I do not judge severely those adaptations in which such elisions do appear because I recognize the frequency with which they occur in everyday speech. It is only that I personally prefer to avoid them. The second pillar is rhyme, and it is probably the one that more professional adaptors share. In my case, consonants generally do not count at all with respect to rhymes. Only 'l' and 'r' sometimes influence my decisions. As long as the vowels or vowel sequences are identical between two different lines that need to rhyme, it is enough. Very rarely do I sacrifice a rhyme and perhaps compensate it with another one nearby, but I almost always maintain in my adaptation all the rhymes that appear in the original lyrics. The third pillar is melodic stress, and it is without a doubt the one that bears the most originality. With rare exceptions, I insist that the stress imposed by the melody on certain syllables of a line coincides with grammatical stress. That is to say that I prefer to avoid situations like the one that occurs in the Mexican version of the Disney song "What I've Been Looking For," 3 in which the first word of the line "Tienes que saber" must be pronounced like "tienés" because of the poor alignment of stress. Here, the natural features of the Spanish language help slightly. For example, if the stress falls at the end of a line, it suffices to structure the phrase so that it ends in an infinitive, a certain form of a regular verb in the preterit, etc. The need to maintain a rhyme and the need to maintain prescribed stress often join forces to create special difficulty in finishing a particular group of lines. In my experience, the singers who perform my adapted lyrics do not always sing them exactly as I imagined upon writing them. Sometimes unexpected vocalic elisions or changes in stress occur, but in the final recordings, these deviations remain minimal, and as long as the performers feel comfortable singing my lyrics, they do not really bother me. The most important thing is that they appeal to native speakers, and they do to the majority thereof. Since most of my translations adapt lyrics originally written in my native tongue into a foreign tongue (instead of the reverse), I am often faced with an inherent disadvantage. Something I have learned during my seven years of doing this is that a phrase which is technically correct according to grammar and syntax can nevertheless sound clumsy to native speakers for reasons of perception that are often difficult to define. Grammar, spelling, and syntax have easily definable rules that can be learned well through study and application. It requires many years of pure experience, however, to equal a native speaker's intuitive sense of what sounds natural in his/her language. Therefore, there is a distinction between grammatical correctness and idiomatic correctness. Upon completing an initial translation, my first step is always to seek out constructive critique from a native. Something more surprising that I have discovered since the institution of this rule is that native speakers do not always agree among themselves. Whenever I receive comments from various people, my subsequent revisions are generally based on the issues that most or all of them have in common. I give less attention to comments expressed by one isolated critic, identifying them with regional variations or simple difference of opinion. The education, the country of origin of each commentator, and the distribution of commentators across the Hispanophone world are also important factors. I tend to do my best to write adaptations with pan-Hispanic appeal. Above all, the opinion of any person born and raised in a Spanish-speaking country or whose family speaks enough Spanish to have passed to him/her a native command of the language matters greatly to me. This is how I learn and improve my command of Spanish.
The Disney model is unique in the popular music industry. No other company demonstrates such constant and systematic efforts to provide versions of its songs adapted into so many languages. Even so, there does not seem to be, even in Disney's case, any established norms or well-organized systems for arriving at such adaptations. The majority of American popular songs never undergo such a process, and the many foreign fans who listen to performers like Rihanna or Taylor Swift continue to accept the need to learn English or memorize translations in order to better enjoy their favorite songs. It is a great testimony to the fondness and enthusiasm that these foreigners feel towards American stars and, to a certain degree, the culture that they represent. However, perhaps it can also be a testimony to American cultural imperialism. Almost all American movies and television programs are dubbed, but the songs sung by the musical artists of this country are rarely adapted into other languages. Is this linguistic imperialism? Is it unfair to deny foreigners the integrated experience of simultaneously listening to and naturally understanding a song? The separation of sound and sense does not seem to bother most of them, but I wonder if that is simply because it has never occurred to them that there is another option. On YouTube, many Hispanic fans are appearing who attempt to translate, in a singable way, their favorite songs.4 This reveals that a growing desire does exist to listen to these tunes in their native language. Adapting popular songs well into the various languages of international fans would be a good way to repay the positive reception to which those songs have been subject in Hispanophone circles, but if we want to do such work, better adaptation norms and more exploration of the various approaches and methods that can be applied to the task are required. In short, the time has come to emerge from obscurity. Interpretation and translation are, in general, professions which often do not receive all the respect that they deserve, and the special challenges which stand out in the adaptation of sung lyrics make this type of translation particularly worthy. We should give to the translators who accomplish such lyrical adaptations almost the same recognition as the original authors of these lyrics, because they must successfully manipulate many of the same tools and artistic/creative sensitivities. By encouraging and supporting the adaptors in this way, we can perhaps reinforce even more the cultural exchange, which the global popularity of American music illuminates.
Appendix 1: My Own Adaptation of "Breaking Free"
Appendix 2: Another Adaptation of Mine ("White Horse" by Taylor Swift)
1 Released by RCA in 2000 2 From the animated films Aladdin (1992), The Little Mermaid (1989), and The Lion King (1994), respectively 3 Another song from High School Musical, the Mexican version of which we speak was performed by the band Belanova in 2006. 4 Examples include the users http://www.youtube.com/MidnightSingers and http://www.youtube.com/kuri202
Efron, Zac, Vanessa A. Hudgens, and Drew Seeley. Breaking Free. By Jamie Houston. Walt Disney Records, 2006. MP3. Efron, Zac, Vanessa A. Hudgens, et al. You Are the Music in Me. By Jamie Houston. Walt Disney Records, 2006. MP3. González, Roger, and Paula Holguin. Eres la Música en Mí. By Jamie Houston. Walt Disney Records, 2007. MP3. Houston, Jamie. No dejes de soñar. Conchita. Walt Disney Records, 2006. MP3. Schleiermacher, Freidrich. "On The Different Methods of Translating." Trans. Susan Barnofsky. The Translation Studies Reader. Ed. Larwence M. Venuti. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2005. 43-63. Print. Swift, Taylor. White Horse. By Taylor Swift and Liz Rose. Big Machine Records, 2008. MP3. |
|||||||||||
|
|
have always been impressed by the widespread diffusion of American popular culture across the entire world. Whatever people think of American policy, American culture is embraced in some way or other throughout much of the globe. Celebrities from this country are known in almost all other countries, especially the true icons such as Elvis Presley or Michael Jackson. Some specifically American products and services (Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Hollywood) enjoy worldwide popularity. The current status of the English language owes much to the cultural expansion of the United States. Those who are at least aware of and understand it, if not embrace it (in part or in its entirety) as part of their own lives, nowadays compose a majority of the global population. Many local cultures have become hybrids, sharing American culture as an important, common ingredient. In comparison, the ignorance too many Americans display towards all things foreign becomes even more glaring. We can speculate and theorize about the specific attributes that attract so many people, but in any case, the phenomenon of Americanization is here to stay.