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Choices in Song Translation

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DOI: 10.1080/13556509.2008.10799263

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The Translator. Volume 14, Number 2 (2008), 373-99 ISBN 978-1-905763-10-8

Choices in Song Translation

Singability in Print, Subtitles and Sung Performance

JOHAN FRANZON
University of Helsinki, Finland

Abstract. 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 considera-
tion, 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.

Keywords. Song translation, Singability, Functionalism, Performability,

Subtitles, Hymnals.

What can translators do when they are commissioned to translate a song?

Generally speaking, among all the other text types with which professional
translators engage, such a commission is rare. Song translation may be part
of an occasional project for the theatre, of a subtitling/surtitling assignment
for a film, or of a special publication where there are lyrics cited. Instead
of professional translators, other professionals tackle song translation on a


I would like to thank Mark Smith, English teacher at the University of Oulu, Finland, for
proof-reading an earlier draft of this paper.

ISSN 1355-6509 © St Jerome Publishing, Manchester

374 Choices in Song Translation

more regular basis: songwriters, singers, opera specialists and playwrights.

One should also not forget the amateur fans: keen on grasping and sharing
the meaning of foreign popular song lyrics, they use the internet to display or
exchange their own translations.
Until quite recently, the translation of songs did not attract much attention
within translation studies; one reason might be lack of clarity as to the profes-
sional identity of the people who do translate songs. Nevertheless, the fact that
songs are translated in various ways, for various purposes, and by a variety
of mediators should warrant some focused investigation within the discipline.
This article is intended as a contribution to such an investigation.
What, then, are the options open to a translator who is commissioned to
translate a song? The answer to this may be a counter question: is the translation
going to be singable or not? If the purpose is simply to understand a foreign
song’s lyrics, a semantically close, prose translation will do. But if a song is to
be performed in another language, the assignment calls for a ‘singable’ target
text. This article aims to shed some light on this concept of singability, which
I see not as an absolute ideal but, from a functional point of view, as consisting
of various layers, which sometimes may be modified, or optional.
Earlier research in translation and music focused on opera translation. Dis-
cussion of opera tends to put emphasis on inviolable adherence to the music,
on the requirements of the singers, and on absolute respect forthe composers.
However, song translation may have other and often conflicting priorities.
The most concise discussion on song translation in English may be found in
the works by Apter (1985), Gorlée (1997, 2002, 2005) and Low (2003 and
2005). In particular, Low (2003) has addressed the fact that lyrics may also
be translated for non-singing purposes and that in cases where they are going
to be sung, ways of matching music and lyrics may be prioritized differently
from opera. In Low’s ‘pentathlon principle’ of song translation, there are four
aspects related to music and performance: singability, rhyme, rhythm and
naturalness, which must be balanced with a fifth aspect: fidelity to the sense
of the source text (Low 2005).
As a term, singability can be understood in a restricted way, as referring
mainly to phonetic suitability of the translated lyrics: to words being easy to
sing to particular note values (as in Low 2005:192-94). Yet the term can also
be used in a broader sense. It can be used to assess original lyrics as well as
translations. Broadway lyricist Alan Jay Lerner explains how he fitted a lyric
to the music of his collaborator ‘Fritz’ Loewe (Lerner 1977):

I’d given Fritz the title [‘I Talk to the Trees’] and he’d written a lovely
melody for it. But every lyric I wrote seemed unsingable. And so I
wrote it over and over again, until one day I realized what was wrong.
For some reason, it was a song that couldn’t stand any rhymes. So I took
them out, and without them, the song seemed to sing quite well.
Johan Franzon 375

For Lerner, unsingable meant unperformable – just as categorically as theatre

practitioners may prefer a ‘performable’ translation of a play to a ‘literary’ one.
In Lerner’s case, the melody seemed to have called for an unrhymed poetic
form. Here singability means not just ‘easy to sing’ but something akin to the
way skopos theory describes a good translation: suitable in every relevant way
for the particular purpose. Such a broader understanding of the concept, as well
as the more restricted approach, can be merged in a definition of singability as
the attainment of musico-verbal unity between the text and the composition.
This is what makes the lyrics ‘sing’, so to speak, what makes them carry their
meaning across and deliver their message in cooperation with the music.
Another counter question to our initial query might be: is the translator
going to have to choose between being faithful to the lyricist and the com-
poser? A basic tenet of skopos theory (see Nord 1997 for an overview) is that
fidelity follows function: the factor that determines a translator’s decisions
and choices would (or should) be the intended purpose of the target text. This
tenet applies most evidently to song translation, where there is a clear need for
functionality, not only in relation to the music, but also to the situation of use:
a singing performance. Such an understanding of ‘variable fidelity’ is reflected,
most succinctly in my opinion, in the definition by Hartmann (1980:56) of
translation as “textual approximation”, by which is meant that the translator
“approximat[es] as much as possible or as little as necessary for the particular
situation the formal and stylistic conventions of the text in question”. As for
explaining the demands of a singing performance (“the particular situation”),
one can refer to the concept of ‘the audio-medial text’ in translation studies,
put forth – but not pursued – by Katerina Reiss (1971:49-52). In more recent
formulations, namely by Mary Snell-Hornby (1997, 2006:84-90), this con-
cept highlights the fact that some target texts, by nature of their genre or their
multimodal medium of communication, must function under certain visual,
acoustic, temporal or spatial constraints.
Coming back to our second counter question, there are translators who
work with great respect for both the original lyricist and the composer; there
are also translated versions of songs which take considerable liberty with the
original lyrics, or, conversely, do not take the original music into account.
In this article, my aim is to survey this broad spectrum of possibilities by
recognizing five theoretically-distinct choices a translator faces when com-
missioned to translate song lyrics. For the purposes of this survey, I have
picked up a number of diverse examples – popular song, songs from musicals,
a fictitious song, a hymn, songs in print, subtitled songs, and songs created
for performance – in an attempt to cover the broad field of song translation.


This musico-verbal unity is of course what has been explored in earlier research on opera
and art song translation, but, as I mentioned above, with a particular emphasis on adherence
to an unchangeable music.
376 Choices in Song Translation

I have consciously avoided art song and opera, as these are genres that have
been widely discussed before. I have instead preferred cases where choices
can be observed, where the musical constraints are less absolute, and where a
degree of singability may nevertheless be part of a translator’s goal.
This overview of choices then leads to an analysis of the techniques involved
in writing singable lyrics, where three partly distinct functions of musico-verbal
unity will be discussed: prosodic, poetic, and semantic-reflexive. These func-
tions may appear on their own under special circumstances, but in all likelihood,
they must come together if the translation is to be perceived as fully functional,
i.e. singable.
In relation to existing research on translation and music, my approach in
this article accounts for a greater diversity of musical genres. It also allows me
to provide a systematic overview of the ways in which songs can be translated
for particular purposes, as well as a functional account of how a lyric can be
made to match existing music. As a basis for this, I posit three properties of
song – music, lyrics and performance – and three properties of music – melody,
harmony and perceived sense. I will come back to these musical properties
in section 2.

1. Five choices in song translation

A song can be defined as a piece of music and lyrics – in which one has been
adapted to the other, or both to one another – designed for a singing perform-
ance. This third requisite is important for a functional view of song translation.
A song in a printed score would still indicate a singing performance as its full
or final realization (cf. Gorlée 2002, who offers a similar, triadic definition).
Theoretically, this three-part definition would mean that (optimal) song transla-
tion is a second version of a source song that allows the song’s essential values
of music, lyrics and sung performance to be reproduced in a target language.
In practice, this is an impossible ideal. To avoid a categorical split between the
optimal and the imperfect (or approximate), a song might be recognized as a
translation if it is a second version of a source song that allows some essential
values of the source’s music and/or its lyrics and/or its sung performance to
be reproduced in a target language.
This definition leaves the translator with a number of choices, including
an even more basic and initial one:

1. Leaving the song untranslated;

2. Translating the lyrics but not taking the music into account;
3. Writing new lyrics to the original music with no overt relation to the ori-
ginal lyrics;
4. Translating the lyrics and adapting the music accordingly – sometimes to
the extent that a brand new composition is deemed necessary;
5. Adapting the translation to the original music.
Johan Franzon 377

The first option is still a ‘translational action’ in Holz-Mänttäri’s terms

(1984:17-29), as the translator can decide whether a translation is actually
needed or not. If the translator/rewriter decides to go ahead with the task,
he or she may choose to give priority to either the words (option two) or the
music (option three), or to show a compromised fidelity to both, for the sake
of a prospective performance (options four and five). Needless to say, these
options are only distinct in theory. In actual cases, the translation brief may
make it evident that only of these options is possible or that some of them may
be combined. Examples can nevertheless be found where mainly one of these
translational actions is the rational and functional solution.
Before I move on to discuss the examples, however, I would like to further
comment on the issue of ‘fidelity’ in relation to song translation and how it
shapes translators’ attitude towards their own stance. Even the most respectful
song translators may prefer not to call their work ‘translation’, as evident in
the following quote (Reynolds 1964:6):

Who translates the foreign songs? I do. You don’t really translate, of
course. You make a singing song of it, near as you can to the meaning
and feeling of the original. This is especially difficult, because the
genius of the language determines the music line in the French, Rus-
sian or Greek song, and if you can move it into our language without
wrenching the music line or the English idiom, you’ve done something
valuable, I think.

I find no reason not to call this practice translation and place it under option
five. Malvina Reynolds pays attention to the music (“without wrenching the
music line”), the lyrics (“the meaning and feeling of the original”) and the
performance (“make a singing song of it”). Of course, in some songs it may be
that “the genius of the language” is too deeply embedded in the composition,
for example in the use of euphony or onomatopoeia; here, the translated lyrics
can never be perceived as doing justice to the original ones. Even with this
reservation, I would still call this practice translation, since a singable song
translation is inevitably a compromise between fidelity to the music, lyrics
and performance. To my mind, songs are an especially strong challenge to the
tendency to equate translation with semantic closeness: a song translation that
strives to be semantically accurate can hardly be sung to the music written
for the original lyrics, and a song translation that follows the original music
must sacrifice optimal verbal fidelity. But there are also cases in between, and
beyond, this dichotomized opposition, as we shall see below.


Here I am only referring to instances where the songs are embedded in a larger work which
necessitates translation, such as a book, a film or a musical. Of course, popular songs on
their own often travel around the globe without being translated, especially if they are sung
in English, but a discussion of this phenomenon is outside the scope of this article.
378 Choices in Song Translation

1.1 Leaving the song untranslated

This is, to begin with, a question of whether to commission a translator at all

– a choice between presenting the song in its original version or in transla-
tion. In some cases, the choice may also be up to the translators, after they are
commissioned. It happens that subtitlers – e.g. for theatre, television, DVD,
feature films containing songs – choose to subtitle the spoken dialogue, but
not the musical numbers. This can be a result of lack of time or commission,
or an agreed policy with the broadcasting companies. In other cases, however,
leaving a song untranslated can be a viable, even the preferable, option.
For instance, part of the song ‘As Time Goes By’ was quoted in a discus-
sion of the film Casablanca (1942) in a biography of Ingrid Bergman (Leamer
1986:121); in the Swedish and Finnish translations of the book the lyrics
of this well-known song were left in English (Larsson 1986:101, Pakkanen
1987:121). Similarly, in productions or reproductions of stage musicals or
musical films portraying famous singers (such as Edith Piaf, Marlene Dietrich,
Marilyn Monroe), translators may choose to retain the songs in their original
languages.
When the English-language musical Mamma Mia! (1999), based on songs
by Swedish songwriters Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, was to be pro-
duced in Sweden in 2005, the initial plan was, once again, to leave the songs
in English; after all, most of them were originally written in that language and
were known worldwide in their original versions. Then the producers decided
that the integrity of the story demanded that the lyrics be in the same language
as the dialogue. Thus several famous ABBA songs were given their very first
Swedish lyrics after more than twenty years.
Reasons for the non-translation in these cases may have to do with the
assumption that the lyrics are not that relevant to the rest of the narrative (for
example, songs sung on the soundtrack as part of the background music in
films are regularly not subtitled), or that retaining the original lyrics enhances
authenticity. In both cases, a switch from the target reader/listener’s language
to the original language should not result in dysfunctional disruption, as would
have been the case with Mamma Mia!, but not with ‘As Time Goes By’.

1.2 Translating the lyrics but not taking the music into account

A translator may translate the lyrics as if they were just another (piece of the)
source text, especially when the readers/listeners are assumed to be aware of
the original song and its musical form. Typical examples include the work
of enthusiasts translating lyrics for fun and information, as well as the cases
examined by Low (2003): semantically close prose renderings in concert pro-
grammes or album inserts – in short, translations as a supplement to the original


See ‘Vi översätter Mamma Mia! till svenska’, http://www.mammamiathemusical.se/start.
aspx?pageID=356 (last accessed on 9 June 2008).
Johan Franzon 379

lyrics or performance. This choice is also often adopted in subtitling; in this

case for a television broadcast of the film musical The Sound of Music.

Example 1

English source text Swedish subtitles 1

High on a hill was a lonely goatherd Uppe på berget gick getaherden
Lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hoo
Loud was the voice of the lonely Han joddlade högt vår getaherde
goatherd
Lay ee odl lay ee odl-oo
Folks in a town that was quite remote Folket i staden som låg långt bort
heard
Lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hoo
Lusty and clear from the goatherd’s Hörde tydligt hur herden joddla’
throat heard
Lay ee odl lay ee odl-oo
...

Music by Richard Rodgers, Lyrics by Oscar Subtitles by Agneta Malmborg

Hammerstein II (The Sound of Music 1959) (TV4)
© Williamson Music

The focus here is on the sense of the lyrics. The musico-poetic qualities – the
repetition and onomatopoetia (yodelling) in this example – are not and need
not be transferred, as they are readily available for the enjoyment of the audi-
ence in their original form.
The same strategy can apply to a song in print, even to lyrics written only
to suggest an existing song. The eponymous song in Song of Solomon, a novel
by Toni Morrison (1980:303), is a good example. In the Swedish translation
of the book, the lyrics – beginning ‘Jake the only son of Solomon / Come
booba yalle, come booba tambee / Whirled about and touched the sun’ – are
printed in English, verbatim from the source text, and a close prose translation
is given in parentheses immediately below – ‘Jake var ende son till Solomon
. . . han snurrade runt och snuddade vid solen’ (Edlund 1978:314-15). The
translator’s strategy here is a combination of both options discussed so far (one
and two) – once again with the deletion of vocal effects. In Morrison’s novel,
the verbal content of the song is important, and so is its (fictitious) function as
a song living on in the oral tradition. In the Swedish version, the translation


All transcripts of material provided in examples are my own, based on television
broadcasts.
380 Choices in Song Translation

provides the content, while the original lyrics are there to indicate both the
‘songness’ and the singing within the narrative, just like the sung performance
in the television broadcast. Like option one, option two may also need to rely
on the reader/listener being aware of the existence of the original song, since
the target text does little or nothing to reflect its musical form.

1.3 Writing new lyrics to the original music

Conversely, a rewriter in a target language could also take the music into ac-
count much more than the lyrics. This would be the case when the music is
the most important part of the package. Not translation proper in the linguistic
sense, this is nevertheless a translational action: a result of importation and
marketing of musico-verbal material between languages and cultures. This
option is probably most widespread in certain genres within popular music,
where songs have been bought and sold like commodities to be fitted to and
marketed by domestic artists, a practice explored in more detail by Klaus
Kaindl (2005). This may be the ‘freest’ kind of translation imaginable, as can
be seen below in ‘Sadie, the Cleaning Lady’ and its Swedish version ‘Mamma
är lik sin mamma’.
The original version of this song was an international hit. This motivated the
importation and re-recording of a Swedish version, which also became a hit in
Sweden. Not a single word has been directly translated, but the source lyrics
still seem to have served as a model. They provided the overall rhyme scheme
and the idea to have a first line with internal rhyme (with repeated words in
the Swedish case). Also, some of the notions and images in the original lyrics
have evidently inspired Anderson. The lightly handled social realism in the
story of a cleaning lady is turned into a similarly jocular protest song, put in
the mouth of a housewife. The link between Sadie and her daughter is turned
into the connection between generations of women; the endless chore of
‘cleaning’ is signalled in the ‘dusting’. The Swedish singer used to perform
the song comically dressed as a cleaning lady, with a scrubbing brush in hand.
The lyrics thus allowed some of the source song’s performance potential to
be carried over into Swedish.
A totally rewritten set of lyrics in a target language may contain only a
single word, phrase, image or dramatic element taken from the source lyrics.
Also, the original lyrics (and singing performance) may influence the trans-
lator’s impression of the melody, and thus the production of the new lyrics.
If the new lyrics allow the song, as a cultural artefact, to cross linguistic
borders, the practice can be seen as translational action. For example, Rod
McKuen’s versions of Jacques Brel’s songs ‘Seasons in the Sun’ (1963) and
‘If You Go Away’ (1966) preserved merely a few phrases from the original
French lyrics, but they still carved a place for Brel in the international music
Johan Franzon 381

industry, familiarized audiences with his music, and paved the way for closer
renderings some years later.6

Example 2

English source text Swedish target text Back-translation7

Sadie, the cleaning Mamma är lik sin Mother is like her
lady mamma mother
With trusty scrubbing Ja kvinnans lott i livet Yes the woman’s lot in
brush and pail of är densamma life is the same
water
Worked her fingers to Det sa farmor mormors So said grandma’s
the bone mor grandma’s mother
For the life she had at Till sin farmors To her grandma’s uncle’s
home morbrors bror brother
Providing at the same Att livet är ett enda That life is nothing but
time for her daughter damma-damma dusting and dusting
... ... ...

Music & lyrics by Lyrics by Stikkan

Raymond Gilmore, Anderson. Recorded by Siw
John Madara, and David Malmkvist, 1968
White. Recorded by John
Farnham 1967
© Champion Music
Corp./Double Diamond
Music. Lyrics reprinted
by permission of Univer-
sal Music Publishing AB

1.4 Translating the lyrics and adapting the music accordingly

If, on the other hand, the lyrics are deemed to be more important than the
music, and the song is still to be sung, the music may be changed. In general,
a line-by-line translation of lyrics rarely resembles a song, but sometimes a
fairly close, if partial, approximation may be achieved by slightly modifying
the melody.
Relevant examples include canonical texts set to music, such as Biblical
texts or poems by respected authors. Below are four versions of Matthew 21:9,
first in the Bible translations, then in the corresponding hymnals:

6
For research on Brel translations, see Low (1994) and Tinker (2005).
7
All back-translations into English are mine, with occasional help from my polyglot
colleagues.
382 Choices in Song Translation

Example 3

Swedish Bible Finnish Bible Norwegian Bible Sami Bible

(1847) (1885) (1930) (1998)
Hosianna, Hosianna Hosianna Hosianna, Dávveda
Davids son, Dawidin pojalle! Davids sønn! Bárdni!
wälsignad ware Kiitetty olkoon Velsignet være Buressivdniduvvon
han, se, han lehkos son
som kommer i som kommer i guhte boahtá
Herrans namn: joka tulee Herran Herrens navn! Hearrá nammii!
Hosianna i nimeen! Hosianna i det Hosianna allagasas!
högdene! Hosianna høieste!
korkeudesta!

Swedish lyrics Finnish lyrics Norwegian lyrics Sami lyrics

Hosianna, Hoosianna, Hosianna, Hosianna, Dávveda
Davids son, Daavidin Poika, Davids sønn! Bárdni,
välsignad vare kiitetty olkoon Velsignet være giitojun lehkos son!
han, hän! han,
välsignad Davids velsignet Davids Giitojun Dávveda
son, Kiitetty Daavidin sønn Bárdni,
som kommer i Poika, som kommer, i guhte boahtá
Herrens namn. joka tulee Herran Herrens navn! Hearrá nammii.
Hosianna i nimeen. Hosianna i det Hosianna,
höjden, Hoosianna, høyeste, hosianna,
hosianna, hoosianna, hosianna, hosianna,
hosianna. hoosianna, hosianna! hosianna!
Välsignad hoosianna! Velsignet Davids Giitojun Dávveda
Davids son, Kiitetty Daavidin sønn Bárdni,
som kommer i Poika, som kommer, i guhte boahtá
Herrens namn. joka tulee Herran Herrens navn! Hearrá nammii!
nimeen.

The words are Jerusalem’s greeting to Jesus: “Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!”
(English Standard Version, Matthew 21:9). In the 18th century, the Swedish
text was adapted and set to music. It eventually became a hymn in the three
other languages – one closely related (Norwegian) and two quite dissimilar
(Finnish and Sami). These versions took the musical format from the Swedish
source, but they also modified it, as can be seen in a comparison between the
music in the Swedish and Finnish hymnals (Example 4, Figure 1):8

8
Reprinted from Den svenska psalmboken (1986:131) and Virsikirja (1987:13), by permis-
sion of Verbum förlag, Stockholm, and Kirkon keskusrahasto, Helsinki.
Johan Franzon 383

Example 4

Figure 1. Music to the Hosanna Hymn: the Swedish and Finnish Hymnal
Compared
384 Choices in Song Translation

Hosianna in Swedish is Hoosianna in Finnish, but the Swedish son (son) and
namn (name) are the bisyllabic poika and nimeen in Finnish, respectively.
Fortunately, in this case, the composer Vogler put both these words on two-
note melismas;9 therefore, all that needed to be done was to remove the slurs
that mark the melismas (third and last staffs in the music above). The same
solution applied to the pronoun som (who), which is joka in Finnish. In ad-
dition to this, a quarter note was split into two eighth notes to make room for
Daavidin, instead of Davids (both in the possessive case).
Splitting, merging or adding notes and splitting or creating melismas are
minimal ways in which music can be adjusted to fit the lyrics – “wrenched” in
Reynolds’ words (1964:6). If such changes do not affect the rhythm or disturb
any parallel arrangement of musical phrases, they may hardly be noticed.
This strategy may work well between closely related languages. In the above
example, the exact same notation was used for the Norwegian version of the
hymn. Yet even small disparities will leave their mark: since the Norwegian
‘i det høyeste’ is longer than the Swedish ‘i höjden’ (in the highest), the Nor-
wegian version makes a minimally different use of the florid melismas in the
refrain, following ‘Hosia–a–a–anna’.10 In Finnish, the corresponding phrase
from the Bible verse, ‘Hoosianna korkeudesta’, would have fitted as well, but
the hymn inserts an extra ‘hoosianna’ instead. One might surmise that the short
vowels and unvoiced, hard consonants of korkeudesta made the word seem
unsingable – in the restricted sense of phonetic suitability.
But even this remarkable felicity of word-for-word correspondence may
necessitate some deviation from verbal fidelity. An example of this can be
found in the Sami hymn, which uses the same musical notation as the Finnish.
The words Dávveda, bárdni and nammii fit perfectly where the correspond-
ing Finnish Daavidin, poika and nimeen appear, but where the Biblical word
buressivdniduvvon (blessed) proves to be too long, the word giitojun, like the
Finnish kiitetty (thanked), is used instead.
A prerequisite for the feasibility of this option seems to be that the agents
commissioning and using the translation have the power and will to change
the music. In the case of these hymns, such authority lies with an editorial
board, which has its own music printing facilities and can initiate, prepare and
complete the publication of a hymnal on its own. In other cases, when there
are more agents involved – for example, conductors, musicians, singers – the
translator may spare them some trouble by leaving the music untouched.
Yet these very agents may be more willing and able to adapt music to lyr-
ics, if need be. When singers/songwriters translate for their own repertoire,
even more significant changes can occur in the melody, rhythm or musical

9
Melisma refers to a single syllable of text sung on two or more notes of music. Melismatic
song is opposed to syllabic, where each syllable of text is matched to a single note.
10
In Swedish, the original setting no doubt had the similar ‘Hosia–a–a–anna i–i hö–ö–
ögdene’, a now-antiquated dative form creating a half-rhyme.
Johan Franzon 385

structure. It may then be a challenge for the musicologists and copyright hold-
ers to decide where the limits lie between such changes and the more radical
variant: composing completely new music for a lyric translation.11 This strategy
also shows particular respect for the original lyricist. Malvina Reynolds, for
instance, deserved such a treatment for her famous ‘Little Boxes’:

Example 5

Source text Target lyrics to new Target lyrics to the

Little boxes on the
hillside
Little boxes made of
ticky-tacky
Little boxes, little boxes,
Little boxes all the same
There’s a green one and
a pink one
And a blue one and a
yellow one
And they’re all made out
of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the
same
… …
music original music
Små lådor i rader I en förort står små lådor
Små lådor av som alla ser likadana ut
tingeltangel
Små lådor små lådor Just små lådor i en förort
Likadana allihop alla liknande varann
En grön och en rosa En är gul, en annan grön
och
En blå och en som en tredje den lyser röd
är gul och glad
Dom är alla Men dom är ändå samma
tingeltangel lådor
och ser likadana ut där dom ligger i långan
rad
…

Music & lyrics by Malvina
Reynolds.
© Schroder Music Co.
(ASCAP) 1962, renewed
1990, used by permission,
all rights reserved.
Music by Kaj Chyden- Lyrics by John Ulf
ius, lyrics by Lars Anderson & Håkan Norlén.
Löfgren. Recorded by Recorded by Anderson
Kaisa Korhonen 1970 1976

As is often the case for such a widely known and performed song, the two
translators might or might not have been aware of each version’s existence and
seem to have produced the versions independently of each other. In the first
set of lyrics in Swedish (1970), even the colours of the boxes – green, pink,
blue and yellow – are in the same order as in the English version. The second
11
This is actually what happened to the Hosanna hymn in Norway. In 1977, Egil Hovland
set the words of Matthew 21:9 to a new tune (867 in the hymnal Norsk Salmebok). The
advantage of this version is that it can be sung in both variants of the Norwegian language,
simply by conflating two eighth notes when singing ‘som kjem i Herrens namn’ (nynorsk,
New Norse) instead of ‘som kommer i Herrens navn’ (Bokmål, Book language).
386 Choices in Song Translation

lyrics in Swedish (1976) paraphrases freely: one box is yellow, another green,
and a third one shines red and happy. The 1970 version respects the poetry of
repetition: små lådor (little boxes), tingeltangel (ticky-tacky) and likadana
(the same) are all repeated. The 1976 version again opts for paraphrasing: “in
a suburb stand small boxes / which all look just the same … but they’re still
the same boxes / where they lie in a long row”. Yet the 1970 version could
not have been translated so closely if it were not going to be set to a new and
slightly jazzier music by the composer Chydenius, for his wife, singer Ko-
rhonen. The 1976 version – sang by Anderson himself, who also played the
guitar – sacrifices some of the poetic effect, but allows the box-like quality of
the music to interact with the lyrics.

1.5 Adapting the translation to the original music

In fact Anderson’s lyrics above (Example 5) fall under this fifth option, which
may be seen as a more common case of singable song translation. Here, as is
often the case with professional assignments, the music may not be changed,
i.e. either it is difficult to change or the contract does not allow the translator
to do so. Nevertheless, the contract asks for a translation – and sometimes even
a functionally equivalent one. If the music must be performed as originally
scored, as in stage musicals or operas, it must be the translator who modifies
the verbal rendering, by approximating more loosely, by paraphrasing or by
deleting from and adding to the content of the source lyrics.
One illustrative example is the song ‘Show Me’, from the musical My Fair
Lady, which has been translated, for similar purposes, into several European
languages:

Example 6

English source text

...
Don’t talk of stars
Burning above
If you’re in love
Show me
Tell me no dreams
Filled with desire
If you’re on fire
Show me ...

Music by Frederick Loewe, lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner

(My Fair Lady 1956)
© Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe 1956, renewed 1984, all rights reserved.
Johan Franzon 387

Swedish target text Norwegian target text Dutch target text

... ... ...
Du lovar att Ikke forklar Altijd maar weer
månen ta ner stjernenes brann. bloemen in knop
säj inte mer Er du en mann? Ach hou’ toch op
gör det Fang meg! Doe iets
Stjärndiadem Ikke beskriv Altijd opnieuw
vill du mig ge drømmenes bro. ’n merel die fluit
Det vill jag se Brenner ditt blod? Ach schei’ toch uit
Gör det ... Fang meg ... Doe iets ...
Lyrics by Gösta Lyrics by André Bjerke Lyrics by Seth
Rybrant 1959 1959 Gaaikema
1960

German target text Finnish target text

... ...
Sprich nicht vom Kai tähtiin tien
Mond,
den du mir schenkst. nyt kaavailet,
Wenn du d’ran denkst, mut miksi et
Tu’s doch! tee niin!
Red nicht von Glück, Sun huulillas’
das du mir gibst. vain haaveillaan,
Wenn du mich liebst, et kuitenkaan
Tu’s doch! ... tee niin! ...

Lyrics by Robert Gilbert Lyrics by Reino Helismaa

1961 1962

This song consists of very short musical lines, which is a problem for the
translator. In general, the longer the musical lines, the easier it may be for
translators to accommodate the syntax of their particular language, perhaps
allowing a fairly close translation by moving a few words around. In this case,
a key phrase of the song – ‘show me’ – is so prominently and repeatedly dis-
played that it can hardly be moved. As seen above, this title phrase emerges as
a rhetorical finish after three short lines – each four syllable phrase forming a
trochaic and an iambic foot (Don’t talk of stars). There are two strophes built
on negative imperative phrases (Don’t/ Tell me no), followed by participles
(burning/ filled) and conditional clauses, leading to the same request (show
me). The repeated syntax mirrors the repeated melodic strain and thus makes
388 Choices in Song Translation

the musical structure tangible. All target texts above preserve the prosody,
created by the metric structure, and the rhyme scheme. Furthermore, all the
translators keep the position and repetition of a key phrase, although this
phrase may not always mean ‘show me’, as can be observed in the following
back-translations. I have also highlighted in bold here the very few instances
where there is a one-to-one correspondence between ST and TT imagery:

Swedish target text Norwegian target text Dutch target text

You promise to Don’t explain Always again
take down the moon the fire of the stars. flowers in bud
Don’t say anything Are you a man? Oh stop it please
more
Do it! Capture me! Do something!
Tiaras of stars Don’t describe Always anew
you want to give me the bridge of the a blackbird that warbles
dreams.
That I want to see Is your blood burning? Oh quit it please
Do it! Capture me! Do something!

German target text Finnish target text

Don’t talk of the moon So the road to the stars
that you will give me. you now chart
If you think of it, But why don’t you
Just do it! do so!
Don’t speak of the With your lips
happiness,
that you will give me. You only fantasize
If you love me, Yet you don’t
Just do it! do so!

The Dutch translation appears to be the freest of the five, in the linguistic sense.
However, it does reproduce the syntactic parallelism described above (‘Altijd
maar weer’ parallel to ‘Altijd opnieuw’, and so on), as does the Norwegian and
the German target texts. The Swedish translation does not. It even overrides
the musical phrasing with a run-on sentence: ‘You promise to / take down the
moon’, placing somewhat unnatural stress on the verbal particle att (to).
It is clear that an assessment of the fidelity of a singable translation should
be based not so much on word-by-word comparison, but on contextual ap-
propriateness. A singable translation must fit the music and the situation in
which it will be performed, even while trying to approximate the source text as
much as necessary or possible. Contextual matters such as dramatic intention,
Johan Franzon 389

suitable register or style of language, even potential staging, will be relevant in

these cases. In the target lyrics above, the ‘me’ speaking to a ‘you’ can easily
be perceived as Eliza Doolittle talking to her suitor Freddy Eynsford-Hill. The
gist of her song is caught by other poetic clichés: the moon, flowers in bud, a
blackbird, as well as by ‘stars burning above’. Some translators seem to have
given some thought to the staging instructions: for instance, the Norwegian
translator could have written ‘vis det’ (show it), but instead suggests some
physical action with the new phrase ‘fang meg’ (capture me). Still, there are
cases where the translated lyrics do not match the general characterization
in the story. The phrase ‘tähtiin tien’ in Finnish (the road to the stars) does
preserve Lerner’s ‘stars’, but its meaning (the road to success/ you now chart)
has nothing to do with Freddy the idler in the play.
The option of adapting a translation to music, while allowing for some
deviation in sense, may apply to many cases of song translation. When songs
appear in a film that is to be dubbed, neither the music nor the (visual) per-
formance can possibly be changed; contextual appropriateness would also
include the lip movement with which the target text must be synchronized.
In less constrained circumstances, however, one might have freer reign. In a
well-known nursery rhyme, the ‘Itsy Bitsy Spider’ climbs up ‘the water spout’
in English. In Swedish and Finnish, it climbs up a thread; in Danish, a wall; in
Norwegian, ‘my hat’; and in Icelandic, a tree. All that is required of the ‘trans-
lation’ here is that the words rhyme, they fit the same or similar melody, and
can be accompanied by movements of the hand imitating a climbing spider.
The conclusion, once again, is that function and performance are of primary
importance for singable song translation and that respect for the original lyr-
ics must be shown, or assessed, contextually: in relation to both music and
intended function. Nevertheless, the examples demonstrate how translations
that are accepted as functional can go to different lengths in observing the
musico-verbal unity of the song.

2. Three layers of singability

The last three options discussed above – i.e. writing new lyrics, adapting the
music to the translation of lyrics, and adapting the translation to fit the music
– would thus produce singable target lyrics. The preceding discussion allowed
me to touch briefly upon songs translated for different kinds of media and
performances. Some further exploration of such examples will now allow me
to take the discussion a step further, towards a closer analysis of the concept,
and technique, of singability.
When the main purpose of the translational action is to deliver a singable
translation, there are certain aspects of the musico-textual fit which seem to
require particular attention and which lead to further choices. Here I take as my
point of departure the assumption that music, from the lyricist’s point of view,
has three main properties: a melody, a harmonic structure, and an impression
390 Choices in Song Translation

of meaning, mood or action. The way the lyrics function for an audience will
inevitably be influenced, if not decided, by the way the music functions simul-
taneously. Although not a universal norm, the European melopoetic norm has
long required that a song lyric displays a prosodic, poetic, and perhaps even
a semantic-reflexive match to the music. The functional consequences of this
match are shown in Table 1.

A singable lyric by observing the music’s which may appear in the

achieves
1. a prosodic match melody: music as notated,
producing lyrics that are
comprehensible and sound
natural when sung
2. a poetic match structure: music as
performed, producing
lyrics that attract the
audience’ attention and
achieve poetic effect
3. a semantic- expression: music
reflexive match perceived as meaningful,
producing lyrics that
reflect or explain what the
music ‘says’
text as
syllable count; rhythm;
intonation, stress;
sounds for easy singing
rhyme; segmentation of
phrases/lines/stanzas;
parallelism and contrast;
location of key words
the story told, mood
conveyed, character(s)
expressed; description
(word-painting); metaphor

Table 1. Functional Consequences of Match between Lyrics and Music

Firstly, the prosodic match to the melody makes use of elements of prosody:
rhythm, stress, and intonation – universal speech phenomena that appear in
singing in a stylized and controlled form. Phonetic suitability, which is a
problem especially relevant to opera translation, involves ensuring that both
vowels and consonants are easy enough to vocalize. Apter (1985) describes
this as placing not too heavy a ‘burden’ on the notes. In more speech-like
musical genres, this concern can be understood as part of the prosodic fit, as
striving for likeness in articulation between text and melody.
Secondly, the poetic match seems to be most closely interwoven with the
harmonic structure of a piece of music. It is through the harmonic structure of
matched and juxtaposed melodic strains and intensifying or reassuring chord
progressions that the audience’s attention is commanded and retained. Lyrics
can mirror such structures and properties by verbal means, such as stylistic
figures, climax and contrast, euphonious or repeated sounds (e.g. rhyme).12

12
For a discussion of structural correspondences between text and music – and of poetry
being much more than rhymes – I find the classic essay of Jakobson (1981) on the poetic
function in language most instructive.
Johan Franzon 391

Thirdly, a semantic-reflexive match is easy to pinpoint in its most obvious

appearance, in word-painting; as Warren puts it, “[t]he musical depiction in
a vocal work of the meaning of a word or of an idea associated with a word,
for instance an ascending passage for ‘exalted’, or a dissonance on ‘pain’”
(1980:528). The principle may equally apply to a general likeness, such as
the notion that happy lyrics should be accompanied by joyful music, or to
instances where words reflect or feed on a musical movement and what it
appears to express.13
Kaindl (1995) offers a similar discussion of the subject, but is not so much
interested in the technique of translating. Gorlée (1997, 2005), too, suggests
a four-part categorization between phonetic, prosodic, poetic and semiotic
concerns, and Low (2005) finds a comparable balance in his more hands-on
approach to naturalness, rhythm, rhyme and fidelity. Nevertheless, to my mind,
Table 1 offers a clearer functional categorization than the preceding works in
the field. It illustrates the premise that music sets the prosody, influences sty-
listic choices and adds (semantic) value to the content of the lyrics. Observed
by the original lyricist, the same criteria are also relevant for the translator.
Similar to Low’s ‘penathlon principle’, I would like to present these aspects
as layers, relevant up to a different degree in each case. A prosodic match
would be the most basic requirement, since in its absence it may technically
be impossible to sing the lyrics. The need for a poetic or semantic-reflexive
match would vary with the particular character of the song. Moreover, the
translator may pursue individual features within this categorization – for ex-
ample perfect rhymes – to differing lengths, and of course with varied success.
In some cases, a song translator may choose to pursue only one of the three
layers, most likely the first two, since the semantic-reflexive match seems
to presuppose their presence. Such a modification of full singability can be
found, for example, in subtitled songs, songs printed as poetry or quoted in
novels, as we shall see below.

2.1 Prosodic match with source music

As we have seen in example 1 above, most subtitlers may not feel obliged to
deliver more than a prose rendering of source lyrics; yet there are exceptions.
For the musical film The King and I, broadcast on Swedish television on 24

13
My use of the concept ‘reflexive’ is mostly indebted to Banfield (1993), who bases his
analysis of songs on the observation that well-wrought lyrics often seem to reflect, or de-
scribe, the movement or structure of the music. He describes this “melopoetic structural
reinforcement” (1993:108) as a mutual function, similar whether the words have been
written to music, or the other way around, but claims it may be more easily observed in
the former case. For an overview of differing musicological and intersemiotic perspectives
on this subject in relation to vocal translation, see Gorlée (1997). For other viewpoints on
the topic, see the collected volume edited by Gorlée (2005).
392 Choices in Song Translation

December 1996, the subtitler took pains to conform to certain prosodic features
of the lyrics of the song ‘A Puzzlement’.

Example 7

English source text Swedish subtitles

1 When I was a boy När jag var ett barn
2 World was better spot. Allting var så bra
3 What was so was so, Somligt var som så
4 What was not was not. Annat var det ej
5 Now I am a man – Nu när jag är man
6 World have changed a lot; Allt har ändrat sig
7 Some things nearly so, Somligt blivit bra
8 Others nearly not. Annat har det ej
9 There are times I almost think Det finns dagar då jag inte riktigt
10 I am not sure of what I absolutely vet vad jag egentligen har lärt mig
know.
11 Very often find confusion Jag blir ofta rätt förbryllad över
12 In conclusion I concluded long ago. slutsatser jag drog för länge sedan
13 In my head are many facts Det finns fakta som jag vet att jag
14 That, as a student, I have studied to en gång var så mån om att studera
procure.
15 In my head are many facts Det finns fakta som jag vet
16 Of which I wish I was more certain att jag nog önskar att jag visste
17 I was sure! mer bestämt
Is a puzzlement! Så besynnerligt!
... ...

Music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Subtitles by Ordkedjan (TV4)

Hammerstein II (The King and I 1951)
© Williamson Music

Example 7 illustrates the minimum requirement of singability: the words fit

the notes syllabically. A Swedish speaker hearing the music would see that
the subtitles follow the music in terms of rhythm and stress – ‘When I was
a boy / World was better spot’ corresponds to ‘När jag var ett barn / Allting
var så bra’ (When I was a child / Everything was so well). A prosodic match
is achieved and there is correspondence in syllable count – very interestingly
except for the words at the end of lines 10, 12 and 14 above. In the music,
those words are set with two-note melismas, but the translation makes them
bisyllabic: kno–ow → lärt mig, long ago–o → länge sedan. Nevertheless, the
Johan Franzon 393

effect is pleasing: while hearing the song, viewers can easily read and enjoy
the translated lyrics simultaneously with the original melody as sung.

2.2 Poetic match with (non-present) music

Retaining a poetic match without a prosodic fit to the music basically amounts
to a verse translation. It can also be a song translation, though, as when a poem
happens to be set to music, as in this translation from Swedish:

Example 8

Swedish source text Finnish target text English target lyrics

... ... ...
Stärkta veck överallt. Tärkit jäykkinä hohtaa. Stiffly starched is each
fold;
Allting skiner så kallt. Katse kylmyyden All is shining and cold;
kohtaa.
Kandelabern, den Vuokrakynttelikössä And the hired candelabras
hyrda, bär et voi bear
sina ljus utan glans, Nähdä lämmintä tulta, Their pale cargo of wax,
och den svartaste frans, Mutta mustat kuin multa And the blackest of blacks
som fanns köpa, den Sururimpsut he To be had in the shops, is
finnes här. kaupasta toi. the wear.
... ... ...

‘Bleka dödens minut’, ‘Valju Kuoleman hetki’, ‘Death’s Hour’, Lyrics by

Music and lyrics by Birger Trans. Leena Krohn 1989 Michael Roberts, recorded by
Sjöberg 1923 Martin Best 1980

The Finnish target text has poetic qualities, and the end-focus created by rhyme
is retained. The rhyme scheme is the same, the rhythm is even, but there are
additional syllables: kallt → kohtaa, finnes här → kaupasta toi. Therefore, it
cannot be sung to unchanged music, but given that it is printed in a collection
of poetry, it is not intended to be sung anyway. The English lyrics to the right
are translated to be singable, though, and therefore observe both the prosodic
and the poetic match – the latter slightly more than the former, in fact, as a tiny
note has to be added to accommodate one the in the last-quoted line.
A poetic form would seem to be the only way to indicate ‘singability’ (or
‘songness’) in print, since the prosody of the melody and effects of musical
word-painting cannot be communicated visually. When the music is not present
in the presentation, as in Morrison’s Song of Solomon, one might speak of a
poetic match with (fictitious) music without the need for a prosodic match.
In this case, the Finnish translator chose a more song-like solution than his
Swedish colleague (see section 1.2 above):
394 Choices in Song Translation

Example 9

English source text Finnish target text Back-translation

Jake the only son of Solomonin ainoa poika Solomon’s only son Jake
Solomon Jake
Come booba yalle, come tule booba yalle, tule
booba tambee booba tambee
Whirled about and kieppui ja kosketti whirled and touched the
touched the sun aurinkoa hei sun hey
Come konka yalle, come tule konka yalle, tule
konka tambee konka tambee
... ... ...
Solomon done fly, Solomon lentää Solomon flew
Solomon done gone liihotti, flutteringly
Solomon poies katosi Solomon far away
disappeared
Solomon cut across the Solomon taivaalle Solomon to the sky
sky, viipotti, swung
Solomon gone home. Solomon kotiin palasi. Solomon to home
returned

Morrison (1980:303) Morrison (1996:323-24)

© Toni Morrison 1977,
Alfred A. Knopf, a division
of Random House, Inc.,
New York.

As can be seen in my very close back translation, verbs are placed in final
position in some lines, creating syntactic parallelism (poies katosi – kotiin
palasi). There is also one half-rhyme (Jake – hei), but the main poetic effect
comes from added alliteration, ‘kieppui ja kosketti, lentää liihotti’, reminis-
cent of Finnish folk poetry. Elements of onomatopoeia are partly translated
– ‘Come booba yalle’ as ‘tule booba yalle’. The example demonstrates how
rhyme is not the sole carrier of a poetic function. Syntactic parallelism is but
one expression of the “poetry of grammar”, described by Jakobson (1981:47).
These target lyrics do not quite copy the form and sense of the source text, but
they recreate the markings of oral poetry in this example (and written poetry
in example 8), making them at least pleasing and song-like to read.

2.3. Semantic reflexivity

The final examples belong to the last, and perhaps most subtle, aspect of
musico-verbal matching. In discussing example 7, I claimed that the subtitles
to the song ‘A Puzzlement’ were singable to a minimal degree; nevertheless,
Johan Franzon 395

they would probably not function in a sung performance of the musical play,
because they lack a semantic-reflexive match. For illustration, compare the-
atrical translations of the same song in example 10.

Example 10

Swedish target text 1 Swedish target text 2

1 När jag växte upp Förr var livet lätt,
2 lärde jag mig att bilden ren och hel.
3 det och det är vitt – Somligt bara sant
4 det och det är svart. annat bara fel.
5 Nu är jag en man Jag är vuxen nu.
6 och jag har förstått: Livet är ett spel.
7 Vitt är stundom svart. Somligt nästan sant,
8 Svart är stundom grått. annat nästan fel.
9 Det finns stunder då jag frågar mig Det finns stunder då det känns
10 med tvivel: är det riktigt vad jag Som om jag inte visste vad jag
lärt? säkert vet.
11 Det jag förr satt värde på – är det så Stor förvirring trots beslut
12 självklart att det faktiskt är nåt Som fordom fattades med
värt? auktoritet.
13 Alltför ofta tvivlar jag numer på Tankar trängs och tvivlet gror
saker
14 som jag trodde mig förstå. Och trasar ofta sönder kunskapens
kokong.
15 Det finns nästan ingenting tyvärr Tankar trängs och tvivlet gror
– vad är
16 som jag numer är riktigt säker på. det värt allt det jag lärde mig en
gång?
17 Det är ett bryderi. Så förbryllande!
... ...

Lyrics by Gösta Rybrant 1958 Lyrics by Gertrud Hemmel 1982

These two translators not only observed the prosodic and poetic match, but they
also made the sung performance expressive and persuasive by paying attention
to the musical movement and focus. This can be most clearly demonstrated
in lines 7-8. In the first lines of the song, the King of Siam is characterized
by a series of quick, repeated notes, with every verse line a tone-step higher
– a Broadway imitation of an Asian pentatonic scale. By lines 7-8 the music
becomes more varied, and two adverbial modifiers are emphasized through
396 Choices in Song Translation

music and orchestration: ‘Some things nearly so, / Others nearly not’. The King
voices his doubts, and the music and words dramatize them. The subtitler’s
solution ‘Some things become good / Others have not’ (example 7 above)
renders this musical emphasis meaningless. The theatrical translations, on the
other hand, recreate the emphasis. Hemmel is rather faithful: ‘Some things
almost true / Others almost wrong’. Rybrant paraphrases creatively: ‘White is
at times black / Black is at times grey’. Naturally, too, the expressive melismas
are kept (line 10): ‘vad jag lä–ärt’ (what I lea–earned).
Rybrant also picks up a semantic-reflexive trick: on lines 15-16, the com-
position features a small harmonic hesitation, repeating a two-note melodic
figure on ‘In my head are many facts / Of which’, pausing for a moment be-
fore going for a harmonic closure on the following words ‘I wish I was more
certain I was sure’. In Swedish, the two-note figure is used to put focus on
an interjection: ‘There is hardly anything / alas / that I nowadays am really
sure of’ (lines 15-16) – thereby adding an extra keyword to the musico-verbal
dramatization of the King’s ambivalence.
Hemmel does not make anything significant out of this particular musical
figure: ‘Thoughts crowd and doubt grows – what is it worth, that which I
learned once?’ (lines 15-16). This seems to imply that this third layer, the mutu-
ally reinforced semantic-reflexive match, may also be sacrificed occasionally.
For a semantic reflexivity between music and lyrics to register at all, it would
need the prosodic and poetic match to communicate the words, and the latter
two might be enough to make the target lyrics appear singable.

3. Conclusion

The five options outlined above summarize the choices that are theoretically
available to song translators. In real terms, however, different strategies may
be combined and individual translators may pursue a particular goal – prosody,
poetry and musical sense, or naturalness, phonetic suitability, rhyme or verbal
fidelity – more or less vigorously.
In terms of choosing among the various options available for translat-
ing a song as (part of) a source text, the main factor seems to be the mode
of presentation. Will the target performers and audience be interested in the
music, the original lyrics, or the combined musico-verbal effect of a sung
performance? Are the original lyrics to be kept, perhaps to give an impression
of authenticity? Is the translation intended for singing in the first place? Is
the music to be presented as originally written or can it be modified? Which
words or aspects of the lyrics are contextually (i.e., dramatically, musically,
visually) most vital? Can the musico-verbal properties of the original song be
recreated for the target presentation? If the aim is to create a sung performance,
how can we combine the three layers (prosodic, poetic and semantic reflexive
match), and is a fully functional target ‘singing song’ likely to have to consider
Johan Franzon 397

all three layers of match? These and similar questions all guide the concrete
choices made by individual translators in specific contexts out of the myriad
of theoretical options available to them.
Singability (like fidelity) remains an ambiguous concept in essence. It can
be defined in a restricted fashion, as ‘paying attention to vocalization’. It can
also be defined more broadly, as a prosodic and poetic match, or even liberally,
as a practical term to sum up everything that makes words and music function
together in song. I have favoured the latter interpretation and suggested how
three main functions (prosodic, poetic and semantic reflexive match) can be
analyzed with a certain degree of precision. Translators of songs for different
media – songs in print, subtitles, and sung performance, for popular record-
ings, theatre, or hymnals – choose to preserve different aspects of a source
song’s character. The variety of decisions they ultimately make can be seen
as evidence that relatively distinct options and layers for achieving singability
are available, in both the writing and the translating of songs.

JOHAN FRANZON
Department of Translation Studies, University of Helsinki, PL 94, 45 101
Kouvola, Finland. johan.franzon@helsinki.fi

References

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Opera for Performance in English’, Meta 30(4): 309-19.
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versity of Michigan Press.
Bibelen eller den heliga Skrift (1847), Stockholm: Samuel Kumstedt.
Den svenska psalmboken (1986), Stockholm: Verbum.
Edlund, Mårten (trans.) (1978) Solomons sång by Toni Morrison, Stockholm:
Bokförlaget Trevi.
Gorlée, Dinda L. (1997) ‘Intercode Translation. Words and Music in Opera’,
Target 9(2): 235-70.
------ (2002) ‘Grieg’s Swan Songs’, Semiotica 142(1/4): 153-210.
------ (ed.) (2005) Song and Significance: Virtues and Vices of Vocal Translation,
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Discography

Anderson, John Ulf (1976) ‘Små lådor’, in Om sommaren sköna, Polar.

Andrews, Julie (1956) ‘Show Me’, in My Fair Lady, CBS.
Johan Franzon 399

Brynner, Yul (1977) ‘A Puzzlement’, in The King and I, RCA.

Best, Martin (1980) ‘Death’s Hour’, in When First I Ever Saw You, Sonet.
de Groot, Margriet (1960) ‘Doe iets’, in My Fair Lady, Philips.
Farnham, John (2003) ‘Sadie, the Cleaning Lady’, in One Voice: The Greatest
Hits, Goth/BMG.
Huebner, Karin (1961) ‘Tu’s doch’, in My Fair Lady, Philips.
Korhonen, Kajsa (1999) ‘Små lådor, in Kaj Chydenius, Love Records/Siboney.
Lerner, Alan Jay (1977) Spoken words in An Evening with Alan Jay Lerner, DRG
Records.
Malmkvist, Siw (1968) ‘Mamma är lik sin mamma’, in Siw, Metronome.
Martin, Mary (1959) ‘The Lonely Goatherd’, in The Sound of Music, Columbia.
Reynolds, Malvina (2000) ‘Little Boxes’, in Ear to the Ground, Smithsonian
Folkways.
Sallert, Ulla (1959) ‘Gör det!, in My Fair Lady, BFB.
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