Thoughts and tips in translating song lyrics
Thread poster: Clarissa Soriano
Clarissa Soriano
Clarissa Soriano  Identity Verified
Canada
Local time: 05:27
English to Tagalog
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May 19, 2020

Hello,

Any tips from those who have already translated song lyrics which should eventually fit a given melody?

Also, would it be better to charge per song or per word? How much?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks.


rohit sharma
 
Thayenga
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Germany
Local time: 10:27
Member (2009)
English to German
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Song lyrics May 19, 2020

First you should just do a rough translation, usually an easy task. Then you should try to make the lyrics rhyme to the best of your abilities, if this is part of the original lyrics. Once this is done, the lyrics of the target language have to be adjusted to the song, especially if it's in a video, either sung or as subtitles.

Lyrics are usually charged per word. Applying a flat rate per song might result in several unpaid words to be translated. A good example of a rather long son
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First you should just do a rough translation, usually an easy task. Then you should try to make the lyrics rhyme to the best of your abilities, if this is part of the original lyrics. Once this is done, the lyrics of the target language have to be adjusted to the song, especially if it's in a video, either sung or as subtitles.

Lyrics are usually charged per word. Applying a flat rate per song might result in several unpaid words to be translated. A good example of a rather long song (many words) is "Hey Jude" by the Beatles.

Only you know how much you should charge for your work because you are the only one who knows how much income you must generate in order to make ends meet.
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P.L.F. Persio
Clarissa Soriano
 
Sheila Wilson
Sheila Wilson  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 09:27
Member (2007)
English
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To actually be performed? May 19, 2020

switchboard wrote:
Any tips from those who have already translated song lyrics which should eventually fit a given melody?

In my very limited experience, it absolutely has to be translated by someone who's a musician and can both play and sing the new version of the song.

My husband has released a couple of albums of original stuff. Almost all has been in English, although he set some French poetry (written by a French friend) to music and he wrote one song in French, dedicated to the campsite where we spent the summers. The site was very popular with Dutch visitors, and many were frustrated that they could neither understand it nor get their tongues round singing it. So they asked him to do a version in English. He discovered it was a quite impossible task for him (he could of course have provided a translation of the words, and so could I , but that wasn't the request). So a Dutch woman, a secondary school French teacher, translated it into Dutch. She spent days and days on it, taking great care to make it fit the music. Then it was passed to a professional Dutch singer -- who promptly pronounced it unperformable. As he said, it isn't just about the number of syllables; word and sentence stress, individual word beginnings, endings and links, etc. all need to be just right. In this case, the music and the words simply didn't work together. He was happy to read it, as poetry, but he couldn't and wouldn't try to sing it.

Have a look at two of the few successful songs that have leapt the Channel: Comme d'Habitude, which became My Way and House of the Rising Sun that rose again as Le Pénitentier. I doubt that a simple rate per word would have been appropriate. You could also have a look back at the entries in a ProZ.com translation competition a while back (if that's possible), where the task was to translate part of Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down. I don't know if any of those can be sung.

I'm really not the person to advise on this, but I do think you should take advice. I would put this up for discussion on a song-writers' forum. Even if you don't find anyone who writes in two languages, I expect they'll have some valuable input for you.


Josephine Cassar
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Gerard de Noord
Zeineb Nalouti
Tina Vonhof (X)
Melanie Meyer
Clarissa Soriano
 
DZiW (X)
DZiW (X)
Ukraine
English to Russian
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Not if a McDonald's guy earns more per hour May 19, 2020

Different times, registers, tempos, words lengths, stanzas sizes, rhyme schemes...

As far as people should translate not mere words but convey the meaning, doing justice to the original, one must consider the author’s and the audience’s peculiarities in the context of 2× Language vs. Structure. Neither MT/PEMT nor CAT would do.
(Semantics and Pragmatics Stylistics just kills!)
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Different times, registers, tempos, words lengths, stanzas sizes, rhyme schemes...

As far as people should translate not mere words but convey the meaning, doing justice to the original, one must consider the author’s and the audience’s peculiarities in the context of 2× Language vs. Structure. Neither MT/PEMT nor CAT would do.
(Semantics and Pragmatics Stylistics just kills!)

Literary translation is one of the most exhausting and underpaying one, especially if it has to do with a complete equirhythmic translation. It does require extra efforts and time for researching and adapting (transcreation), so I would charge extra too—or a bulk price when your minimum is $50 a virtual page/one song.


While it's a good practice, still it's but a bottom-feeders' niche nowadays... Unless you are a businessperson very good at negotiations and presentations. Could you justify your $0.15/word—and the purpose?
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Sheila Wilson
Clarissa Soriano
 
Gerard de Noord
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France
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Member (2003)
English to Dutch
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Charge per hour or do it out of love May 19, 2020

When your translation rimes and has the right metre, sing it out aloud. Singers like long ahs, aihs, eehs, ohs etc. at the end of words. Like Sheile mentioned, some words are only singable on short notes or without emphasis.

The Dutch can pronounce "herfst" without a problem, but it becomes very hard when you have to sing the word for two seconds.

Good luck,
Gerard


Sheila Wilson
Jessica Noyes
Kevin Fulton
Clarissa Soriano
 
Samuel Murray
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Netherlands
Local time: 10:27
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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@Switch May 19, 2020

Here is a thesis (150 pages) about lyrics translation:
http://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/25373
It contains a discussion of various Beatles songs, including about 50 pages of multiple translations (in Dutch).

For example:
yesterday


Clarissa Soriano
P.L.F. Persio
 
Sheila Wilson
Sheila Wilson  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 09:27
Member (2007)
English
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Fascinating May 19, 2020

Samuel Murray wrote:
a discussion of various Beatles songs, including about 50 pages of multiple translations (in Dutch).

Thanks for that, Samuel. My husband sings one Dutch song that someone asked him for over 10 years ago: Zalfs je naam is mooie (or something like that). Like me, he speaks little Dutch nowadays, but he sings it fluently, or so we're told. It seems to be an awful lot less wordy than those lines you've given above.


 
Lauren Higgins
Lauren Higgins
United States
Local time: 04:27
Chinese to English
Does the song remain the same? May 20, 2020

Sheila Wilson wrote:

Have a look at two of the few successful songs that have leapt the Channel: Comme d'Habitude, which became My Way and House of the Rising Sun that rose again as Le Pénitentier. I doubt that a simple rate per word would have been appropriate.


The first of these is a really interesting example because a friend told me that the lyrics and theme of "Comme d'Habitude" are not at all the same as those of "My Way". Another example that comes to mind is Dusty Springfield's "I Only Wanna Be With You". The Spanish version "Ahora Te Puedes Marchar" expresses the complete opposite!

So this seems to be another approach you can take, and I'm not sure how musicians decide which one to use. However, from the perspective of a translator, adhering to the original meaning is surely the way to go, unless the client is open to changing things up.


 
Sheila Wilson
Sheila Wilson  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 09:27
Member (2007)
English
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Does the client want a translation of the words, or a song to sing? May 20, 2020

Lauren Higgins wrote:
I'm not sure how musicians decide which one to use. However, from the perspective of a translator, adhering to the original meaning is surely the way to go, unless the client is open to changing things up.

I absolutely agree that the translator won't know what the musician client wants. But that's all the more reason to explain the problems and possibilities to the client, rather than wasting their money -- which in turn would risk wasting a lot of the translator's time if the client ended up refusing to pay. After all, by definition, a song that can't be sung must be considered unfit for purpose.


 


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Thoughts and tips in translating song lyrics







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