Introduction to Screen Translation

Lecture 5 & 6: Challenges and Rewards

of Libretto Adaptation Lucile Desblache
By Amna Anwar
 Libretti – past and present

• As far as content is concerned, there rarely seems

to be a happy medium in opera. Texts tend to be
either over-simplistic or repetitive or based on
fiendishly complicated historical plots.
• As a quintessential product of the Renaissance,
opera, at least originally, was fuelled by a desire
to convey a universal message, beyond local or
national significance.
• French opera was soon also established as a
school and composers often wrote operas in
collaboration with Italian or French librettists
to be performed for audiences.
 Opera and art songs

• Opera and art songs, as artistic expressions of

high culture, were written for an educated
audience who expected to hear Italian, French
and, to a lesser degree, German.
• Several versions of operas, such as Glück’s
Orfeo, were composed to please audiences –
and patrons – of different nationalities.
• This not only resulted in linguistic transfer but
also in substantial musical or production
modifications
• The situation changed in the nineteenth
century. The main operatic and song repertoire
was mostly adapted to the language of the
country in which they were performed from
the mid-nineteenth to the midtwentieth
centuries
• . Major operas were composed in Russian,
Czech, Hungarian, Norwegian and other
‘minor’ languages.
• World-class opera houses, such as the New
York Metropolitan Opera always performed
works in their original language, whereas
provincial and less prestigious houses adapted
original pieces
• While world-class theatres and opera festivals
relied on international audiences, smaller
houses, in a spirit of popularisation, adapted
operas to entice a local public
• In point of fact, and even disregarding the
atrocities that masquerade as translations of
opera into English, opera should be sung in
the language in which it is written.
 Surtitling

• The advent of surtitling, with its relatively

unobtrusive ways of conveying the semantic
message of operatic works, made it possible to
watch and hear operas in their original
language while conveying the libretto’s
message
• This method of transfer works extremely well
and surtitles allow the audience to understand
the gist of the plot
• Complex historical plots, which at times would
obscure intelligibility, can now be summarised
very efficiently with surtitles, and often are,
even in the case of operas performed in the
native tongue of the audience, as opera
singers are notoriously difficult to understand.
• Summarising text, as must be done in
surtitling, and conveying the message through
an intermediary screen may damage the
immediacy of communication needed in
humour, where timing is supremely important
and semantic subtleties are not always
transferable.
Benjamin Britten’s and Eric Crozier’s Albert Herring

• In light music the purpose of the translation is

slightly different in that the plot is often
deliberately ridiculous: the informative function
of the text is therefore played down to the
profit of appellative and persuasive functions.
• Libretto translators usually work from a vocal
score, showing piano and vocal parts. They may
also have access to the orchestral score and to
a published libretto
• A libretto is extremely useful, as some
additional information (foreword, stage
directions, capitalisation of words for
emphasis) may be included. It also shows
clearly the text forms used, line rhymes and
breaks and any structural aspect of the text
which may be easily overlooked when
considered in its musical context
• When the libretto is written and the composer
is working on the music, possible alterations
may be suggested by the flow of the music
and the libretto altered accordingly . The
composer and poet should at all stages be
working in the closest contact.
• Britten’s intimate relationship with the singer
Peter Pears also made him very aware of
issues regarding text and ‘singability’ in opera
and songs. It may also have intensified his
need to write for the voice and to set words to
music.
 Difficulty of rhyme

• Near-rhyming
• Near-rhyming is not used as readily in French
as in English, but the square model of French
rhyming used in opérettes and other light
works was hardly suited to the music of
Benjamin Britten, with its many disjointed
effects and syncopations
• Cultural and linguistic solutions
• In Albert Herring, cultural references are mostly
linked to social representations (allusion to social
class issues, ways of celebrating events). The
problem of cultural transfer was not so much that of
finding an exact equivalent, since the translator is
not tied to finding a literal semantic counterpart.
The difficulty, given the music constraints, consisted
in finding an equally English concept which a French
audience would understand.
• Restriction
• In some cases, rhyming/near-rhyming could not be
achieved because of these restrictions: writing a text
which gave a clear message and which flowed with the
music were the two priorities.
• Singers are very exposed at this stage, as the priority is
to communicate the text to the audience. Through the
speech and the music they express their social
character, their personality as well as the basic
message that has been composed in verse to be sung.
 CONCLUSION
• It is certainly arguable that the translation strategy should
depend on possibilities of expression inherent in the
human voice.
• Snell-Hornby emphasises here both the key elements in
libretti which determine their translation: their hybrid,
textual nature and the absolute priority needed to make
them singable. So many transfer problems are inherent in
libretto adaptation that some translators find it a more
frustrating than rewarding experience. In this sense, the
screen translation offered through surtitling may be more
satisfactory