Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

50%
+0 −0
Q&A Translating non-English lyrics to English

A song has lyrics and music. Translating the lyrics, you'd want to keep the music. It means that as you're translating, you'd have to try to sing each line to the original music. The beats would ha...

posted 5y ago by Galastel‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-12T21:57:35Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/43126
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T11:05:17Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/43126
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by (deleted user) · 2019-12-08T11:05:17Z (almost 5 years ago)
A song has lyrics and music. Translating the lyrics, you'd want to keep the music. It means that as you're translating, you'd have to try to sing each line to the original music. The beats would have to fall in the same places.

There are other auditory elements you might want to preserve, or at least try to preserve. Alliteration sounds like music in our ears, for example, so whenever possible, it should be kept. Preferably with the same letter, though that might not be possible. Pay attention also to homorganic consonants.

On the other hand, lyrics tend to be less rich in layers of meaning, so that should make your job easier. You should, of course, preserve the general meaning and the overall image created by the song, but consider, for example, Queen's _Fat Bottomed Girls_: if, for reasons of rhyme or meter, a translation to another language changed "blue-eyed floozy" to "brown-eyed floozy", the overall meaning of the song wouldn't change one bit, would it? That is to say, you have a bit more leeway with the particular words, than if you were translating prose.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2019-03-07T12:23:42Z (over 5 years ago)
Original score: 2