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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...
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#4: Attribution notice removed
by
System
·
2019-12-12T21:57:35Z (over 4 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
System
·
2019-12-08T11:05:17Z (over 4 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
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
System
·
2019-03-07T12:23:42Z (about 5 years ago)
Original score: 2