Il processo a Carmela (Italian Edition)

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However, when a translation is supposed to be read, interpretation comes into play. The more a lyric is suggestive, intricate and ambivalent, the more the translation will require a deep textual and contextual analysis to be done. This is just few of the many issues about translating song we will analyze in this chapter.

Hence, the process of translation needs to take into account not only the text and all its features, but also the music, the rhythm, the so-called singability and many other elements. This is why for a very long time translation scholars have not given attention to music matter. It is a challenging task, which needs a multidisciplinary approach, involving the fields of musicology, media studies, cultural studies, literary studies and semiotics Susam-Sarajeva, To this day, the professional identity of the people who translate songs remains unclear.

In such a complicated matter, translatology can be very helpful, identifying the many sociocultural and aesthetic faces of translation Hurtado, From the mental processes involved when translating, to the semantic and semiotic features of a text, it is an exhaustive science that covers almost every field of translation, including the innovative song-lyric one. The first step to analyze a song relates to the main question that discerns the two principal elements of the song itself: Low, , 10 This question opens two wide perspectives in our analysis, e.

Logocentric means word-centric, referring to a song which power relies in the words of the lyrics. Musico-centric, on the other hand, is a song in which music plays a substantial role, making the text a minor feature. Nevertheless, it is not so easy. There are many songs that need the audience to follow the words, as Low points out with a useful list of generally logocentric songs: In such pieces of music, stories, jokes and dialogues are the principal reason of the song existence, they are surely worth translating, in order to make their meaning crossing the language borders in a singable version or, as we will see below, in a written, printed or study translation.

An example of musico-centric song can be the Italian operatic arias. They usually have few words repeated many times in several acrobatic ways. They focus on the virtuosity of the singer, making the repeated words just means to exercise the voice Low, This analysis is useful to understand when it is worth translating, and when, on the contrary, the usage of a foreign language will not compromise the listener enjoyment of the piece of music. The structure of a song may differ in many features. This structure enables each verse to be sung to the same music, differently to the through-composed songs, in which every strophe has its own music Low, Strophic songs have often a refrain, e.

Every song can have a syllabic setting or melismas. The syllabic setting is typical of simple songs, consisting in one note sung per syllable. On the contrary, a melisma involves two or more notes sung within a single syllable, and is more typical of musico-centric songs. The song-lyric construction is similar to the one of poetry. He states that, when translating poems, both the structure and the poetic images created through content are important for a proper translation. In this respect, Kolahi as cited in Risso, , 6 identifies three elements to distinguish the poetic form: Versification is the act of writing in verses.

Each verse has its own rhythm, marked by the tonic accent on each syllable. Denotation and connotation refer to the relation linking a word and its correspondent object with the implicit meaning that goes beyond the dictionary definition. Hence, form and content, in both song-lyrics and poems, work together to achieve that purpose. Nevertheless, the song, unlike poetry, is essentially an oral text combined with music. Thus, the words are meant to fit with a melody and a rhythm, and need to be interpret alongside their musical language, their harmonic and rhythmic setting.

Text and music have, in this regard, an intersemiotic relation. Furthermore, performance is one of the key aspects in a song, capable of changing the entire perception of the audience. Being an oral text, the song needs to sound good, effective Low, , to be memorable for the listeners. That is why phonic figures like alliterations, onomatopoeias, rhymes, repetitions become important in the text and in its further translation.

In a performed song, the length of vowels and syllable may vary greatly, especially when singing important words with open vowels Low, Ultimately, the oral nature of song changes even the way the lyric is composed. The language used is often informal, colloquial and even vulgar for instance in rap music. Emotion is a common feature, channeled through emotionally charged words, such as basic verbs cry, dream, fall , basic adjective bright, sad, sweet and basic nouns star, fear, eyes Low, , Besides, song-lyrics have often very short verses, ideal to fit with music. Therefore, a complex sentence of twenty words is quick to read in written form, but it could fill thirty seconds of song or more.

The language used is always very personal, with first- person speech, autobiographical details, second-person addresses, imperatives and questions Low, An expressive text like the one of the song allows the author to use uncommon words or collocations, often for aesthetic or communicative reasons. Just like common translations, losses and gains are unavoidable. In conclusion, such a multidisciplinary matter needs a wide range of knowledges, especially of music, vocal techniques and rhythm Mateo, A singable translation for a text not intended to be sung would be not only useless, but even misleading for its real purpose.

A better option is to choose a strategy according to the following questions: To be read during a concert? Any of these usages has a different purpose, and thus a different technique will be used to make the target text appropriate. Skopos Kind of translation 1. Printed programme Communicative 3. CD insert Semantic 4. Surtitles and subtitles Communicative Table 1. Non-singable texts and corresponding translation strategies P. A translator can offer to musicians many useful kinds of translation, starting from the so- called study translation.

A study translation is of marginal interest only Low, , It is made for performers, directors or singing teachers, often of classical vocal music, who need a deep understanding of the text, its functional and cultural details. A poetic translation, as well as paraphrase, would be misguiding in this case. A study translation is often presented in parallel layout with the source text, in a line-by-line comparison.

The target text in this case should be as literally and meaningfully near as possible to the original text Nida, , Brackets, explanatory footnotes and comments should be added, together with cultural insights, explanations of allusions and double meanings, different propositional meanings and even advices on pronunciation with an IPA transcription1. The reader of this text must get as close as possible to the deep meaning of the entire song-lyric, including the cultural and social shades.

It can be written in unrhymed verses with normal punctuation, but the larger structures of the source text should be maintained, in order to make the audience understand the original lyrics while they are being sung. A live audience, in this sense, allows to some extent generalization, 1 The International Phonetic Alphabet IPA is an academic standard created by the International Phonetic Association. It provides a set of symbol of every sound existing in human spoken language.

In lyric-song translation it would be very useful when facing a source language with a different alphabetic system e. The first printed translations of music were the ones in opera libretti. They were literal, made for a very basic understanding of the meaning, even criticized for addressing a not-elitist public, because a real passionate should have known operas by heart, making translation unnecessary Mateo, It is common to find at least all the lyrics of a CD in a booklet, better if accompanied by their translations.

The translation required in these circumstances is less free, due to the parallel arrangement of source and target texts. It is not flexible, and takes into account few aesthetic features of the original. During live performances, especially operas, it is quite common to see surtitles projected simultaneously on screens placed above the stage Low, The difference between surtitles and subtitles is that surtitles have their own separate screen, while subtitles are placed on the same screen, especially in TV shows or DVDs.

Space and time are the greatest constraints of surtitles. Hence, they must follow the speed of the sung lyrics, and be brief enough to make at least a self-contained statement fitting in a single screenshot. In timing, songs are easier to subtitle than films, being sung words slowly than normal talking. On the contrary, in matter of space songs are trickiest, making necessary losses in terms of syntax and complexity.

The better strategy in this case is a communicative translation, together with specific tricks such as economical writing, use of suspension points, omission of repetitions especially in chorus , avoidance of full stops and ambiguity Low, , However, surtitles have changed the way of watching opera, arousing a more active participation of the public Mateo, The Skopos theory will surely be useful for singable translation too, as we will see below.

Song is surely more constrictive than a text, especially when the translation required is a singable one. Nevertheless, it is not only a matter of ease in singing: The singable translation is commissioned more rarely than the other types, but it can fulfill many purposes. There are two key theories concerning singable translations: As we will see below, these approaches will open the doors of music translation, giving to many other scholars the opportunity to develop their own theoretical studies and widen this unique field.

These constraints are the starting point for Low, who structured his functional model on five criteria arranged in the metaphor of a pentathlon: The pentathlon principles are: It is the ease of vocalization gained in breath, articulation, dynamics and resonance in the physical act of singing. The perfect translation should give to the singer the same mouth-feel of the source text, matching the long and short vowels and being physically easy to sing. Hence, these consonants stop the air- flow from the mouth, causing problem especially at the end of syllables.

It is very difficult to sing more than two consonant per syllable, thus open-ended syllables, consisting of a consonant-vowel structure, are the best choice in songs. Another important aspect in singability is the one linked to vowels. Trained singers are taught to use the long Italian vowels [i: There is also a great difference between open or back and closed or front vowels.

On the contrary [a: Closed vowels are very difficult to sing on high pitches and open vowels are hard to sing on low notes. The wrong match in vowel-note correspondence would compromise the right pronunciation of words and undermine the very principle of singability. Another important advice is to avoid hard- to-sing words on the high notes of a song. However, lexical fidelity is not essential, especially when it could compromise the criterion of naturalness.

A full correspondence can be sacrificed using a synonym, or a superordinate of the word, for the sake of a rhyme. It is an issue of style, concerning the use of natural words that can be spoke, and thus sung, with sincerity in the target culture. Every song comes with a pre-existing melody, which in turn comes with its note-lengths, downbeats and stressed syllables.

The musical rhythm is what most characterizes the very essence of the song, thus, it must be respected as much as possible in all its features, even at the risk of compromising lexical fidelity. The length of vowels turns out to be quite important. Long vowels cannot be detected in the written text, but should be spotted and taken into account by the translator. Downbeats matter more than syllable-count when translating Low, Sometimes there are even stressed words, that is to say, words highlighted by the rhythm and the melody- line. This means that the same word should preferably be translated at the same location.

Great pop lyricists, such as John Lennon or Stevie Wonder, match their words to both the rhythm and the harmony Bradley, Rap music introduces another aspect linked to rhythm, e. Except for the hymns, a little flexibility in increasing the number of notes or syllables can be accepted Low, The last criterion Low analyzes is rhyme.

It may be considered less important, especially compared to the other four headings. Although one of the greatest principles in translation is to arise the same feelings produced by the original text, rhyme is quite expendable, at least for Low. Therefore, he sets three questions to ask before starting rhyming: The adaptation paradigm, instead, mixes a genuine transfer from the ST with omissions, modifications, additions, as a sort of domestication for the target culture.

Finally, a replacement text is a completely different text, with no semantic transfer, created to be sung on a pre-existing melody. However, it is quite important not to mistake the three approaches, as a form of respect to the original song. This assumption leads to five possible choices in song translation: However, leaving the song untranslated is a choice based on the supposed futility of translation in that given case, for the song lyrics are not particularly relevant.

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It can also be a way to retain the authenticity of the song. On the contrary, the second option better accomplishes the purposes of a written translation, where the sense of the lyrics is what really matters. Writing new lyrics to an original music is classified as a translation action, even though it is not a proper linguistic translation. The fourth option gives much more emphasis to the lyrics, allowing the translator to split, merge or add notes to adjust the music.

Nevertheless, it cannot always be a solution, especially when the translator has no power to do it. Therefore, the fifth strategy concerns a translation that adapts to music. This means producing a functionally equivalent translation, the most common option chosen by translators. Some deviations in sense are allowed, in order to adapt the lyrics to both music and performance.

The last three strategies generate singable target lyrics Franzon, , However, if the goal is to produce a singable translation, there are features of the music textual fit that should be taken into account, that is to say, prosodic, poetic and semantic-reflexive match, as shown in Table 2. Functional consequences of match between Lyrics and Music J. Jerome Publishing, , p. Starting from the beginning, the prosodic match is the basic requirement for singability, involving rhythm, stress and intonation.

Without prosodic elements, the lyrics would be impossible to sing. The poetic match, instead, concerns the harmonic structure of the piece of music, and the subsequent verbal structures such as climax, repeated sounds, stylistic figures Franzon, , Finally, the semantic-reflexive match combines the sense of the lyrics with the music structure itself. Thus, music can exalt the joy, the pain or the rage described by the text with ascending or descending passages, stronger rhythm and such like.

However, a translator can chose to pursue only one of the three layers, depending on his translation purpose. Every song is a strange and unique creature, which deserves to be analyzed carefully in order to make the better decision in translation. They combined the pentathlon principle with the layers of singability, obtaining seven components: On the contrary, the greatest deviations were made in the content, in order to adapt the text to the target audience. Therefore, with a meaningful song, the translator may sacrifice rhymes or rhythm with non-rhythmic strategies.

On the contrary, a song only inserted for aesthetic reasons could be translated with a total shift of meaning to preserve rhythm and rhyme. This study underlines how volatile the translation can be, especially when songs are involved. Finally, Schjoldager offers a great model of analysis, which comprises twelve micro and macro strategies covering every possible technique used in translation of songs. The macrostrategies concern the source or target oriented nature of translation, while the microstrategies deal with the proper translation at sense and word level.

The Microstrategies of Schjoldager A. Low offers a very useful how-to-do guide to solve these issues. First, non-standard language can present many problems, especially in rap and hip-hop songs, where grammar mistakes and deviations are intentional. It would be a great loss to completely dismiss the slang of a song. Another main feature of rap and hip-hop songs is vulgar language.

Cultural issues are also very common, especially in parody songs. A line from a film, a politician speech, references to famous poets, are very difficult to transpose into another culture. A translator should provide explanatory notes, if the context permits it. Otherwise, it is fine to reduce an historical or cultural contentwhere another solution is impossible. Fixed expressions are quite difficult to transpose, since it is common to manipulate them in songs. The best choice is to activate a lateral thinking and be as creative as possible. On the same line of fixed expressions, humor, jokes and puns are difficult to both identify and translate, especially when culture-specific and language-specific.

In the first case, domestication is necessary, for translator needs a pun that communicates with his or her audience. With language-specific puns, he or she needs to step back and create a new pun, producing the same humorous intention with a different device. Fortunately, they are often intelligible in songs, so that it is easy to recognize them.

How to handle them in translation depends on what they are: However, the most important thing is to preserve their richness not using literal language when translating them. A translator may find neologism in song-lyrics, motivated by meaning, rhythm or sound purpose. Newmark , points out the importance of creating a neologism where needed in an expressive text translation. Creativity is, again, the main skill of a good translator. Repetitions and rhymes follow the same rule: It is essential to detect if these features are being used to express a real meaning or only for aesthetic reasons, in order to motivate a possible change.

L'AUSTRALIANO (Italian Edition)

It is a translation based on the phonetic features of the text, not taking into account the semantic properties. It is a constant presence in our everyday life, regularly reproduced in restaurants, supermarkets, on TV and radios. From an intercultural perspective, every culture has its own genres, creating several sociological roots within the musical field Kaindl, , The pop song is a mass-media product that articulates social discourses and interpret the mental dimension of culture.

That is why for a long while pop song has not been object of translation studies: Nevertheless, when new cultural aspects came into play, pop song started to be considered part of the social framework, playing an important role in the dialogue between different social identities. The three essential elements of pop songs are music, voice and lyrics. Music enters into a dialogue with text, giving emphasis to certain words and creating social and emotional associations Kaindl, The second pattern is voice. The vocal performance is essential for language and music to be combined in a plurisemiotic matter.

Finally, lyrics, always vocally and musically embedded, determinate form and content of the pop song. Modern technologies and media define the processes of production, distribution and reception of the contemporary pop songs, making even clearer the strong connection with its social framework. From the very beginning, media are the crucial element for this economic success, determining even the length of the tracks. Even today, the hit songs are preferably minutes long, in order to accommodate the radiophonic timing. Starting with tracks from operettas, the hit song developed through history, associating with alternative musical styles like jazz, rumba and swing Kaindl, During the word wars, it became a form of entertainment and distraction from the cruelties of war.

The lyrics encouraged perseverance and grit. The social context is important, but very vague, a sort of general abstract depiction of a situations. However, the social, cultural and economic context is always hidden there, behind a sad love story or a fancy melody. Music scholars provided very fair descriptions of hit songs. However, there is not a perfect recipe to create the success of a song, especially not today. Technology has nowadays an extensive presence in our lives, providing millions of songs everyday through digital platforms like Spotify, Youtube here again the importance of the visual aspect of music , Deezer, the recent Amazon Music and such like.

Thus, millions of songs are spread through media, but just few of them become national or even global hits. Sincerity today seems to be the most essential feature of real hits. Obviously, a dose of good luck is always needed. Nevertheless, music remains a special kind of art that carries its social and cultural background to the ears of many listeners. Even the most commercial and catchy songs are, in these terms, means to communicate something of a culture. That is why today so many musicians, especially in pop music, try to release their albums in foreign markets too.

Nevertheless, exporting music in a foreign country, just like translation, becomes a transmutation of cultural material. The choice of musical constructions, the style, the textual tendencies, even the way of using voice can trace back to a given cultural background. Not to even mention lyrics, which create a real controversy in music exportation. If music, especially pop song, is a cultural product, exported to be appreciated as a part of its original culture, is it really necessary to translate the lyrics?

Does a musician need to move its authentic work closer to the target audience modifying the lyrics? Should the translated songs be still considered an authentic work belonging to its culture? Do the foreign lyrics change the real nature of the song, creating a sort of uncultured hybrid? These questions open wide perspectives on translation of pop songs, becoming even more urgent when a tradition-bound song like the Italian one is involved.

Roberto Vecchioni describes it as a narrative unit embellished by poetic rhetoric figures metaphors, analogies, synesthesia with an unquestionable emotional power increased by the elimination of spatial and temporal components. The first Italian pop song tries to depict universal feelings in which anybody can project himself. The lyrics become, in this perspective, the essential feature of a good piece of music. Therefore, during the first decades of the twentieth century, the melody is set free from the strict strophe-refrain layout, adapting to more complex and committed texts.

The Italian musicians stop seeking high-sounding melodic structures and harmonic variations, concentrating on a higher textual commitment. The s bring a wave of innovation in musical forms: Carosone, Buscaglione and Pietrangeli are just few of the innovative songwriters of these years. Nevertheless, the real change comes with a major singer-songwriter, whose most famous song remains the milestone of Italian music: The contents are inspired by surrealism; the forms reject the musical stereotypes of the Italian pop song.

Music gets closer to theatre with Jannacci and Gaber, who committed their songs to social commentary. On the other hand, the epic duo Battisti and Mogol shook the Italian music imaginary with a combination of classic melodies and American style. Young people started to be involved in political affairs, making pop music the center of their disillusion and hungry for social redeeming.

The lonely rage of the s becomes the emotional mean for an inter-generational communication of freedom, imagination, dreams and hopes. The pop song provides something in which people can identify themselves, becoming pop in its most modern sense Vecchioni, This new generational communication involves live concerts and free radios: Social themes here give way to poetical inspirations and introspective songs. A new social disengagement characterizes the early s, with the discovery of new rhythmic dimensions of melodies inspired by rock sounds.

Morandi, Mina, Venditti and Baglioni are the major interpreters of a chaotic age of experimental sounds, in which the authorial dignity never disappears. Vasco Rossi, on the contrary, represents the height of innovation. With an autobiographical style, he embodies a total counter-trend that inspires thousands of young people with a primordial writing style Vecchioni, For instance, Zucchero and Pino Daniele follow the foreign trend of Afro-American rhythm and blues, combined with a strong Mediterranean tradition.

In the middle of the s, the minimalistic topics, combined with the new visual features of music, confine politics and social issues to marginal musical landscapes. The temporary depletion in content is compensated by a musical enrichment Vecchioni, The means of communication multiply, giving emphasis to transgressive images and provocative texts. Articolo 31, Lunapop, Almanegretta are the avant-gardists of the modern pop song, in which disobedience in contents and strange looks are essential.

Discography becomes an industry, making difficult for singers to emerge. Styles and personalities overlap, creating a heterogeneous but crowded musical landscape. Foreign influence becomes stronger in production and creation of albums. In the early s Ligabue and Jovanotti emerge in two very distant musical worlds. On the other, Jovanotti is the perfect representation of the millennial revolution: This is the period of boom for record companies, who start searching musicians, interpreters and singers to promote by their own.

Cecchetto discovered singers and showmen the caliber of Jovanotti, Fiorello and Pezzali. That is now that a major turning point happens in Italian music development: Born as an American TV format, their real origins date back to the s. It is no longer the Talent Scout who chooses and launches artists, it is the public itself who chooses within a competition which singer to make successful. This TV format allows record companies to invest in fully developed singers, with the insurance of a paying audience.

Unfortunately, a fresh out talent is not fully developed, neither musically nor artistically; the Talent Show can only be a starting point for musicians. The fame deriving from this mechanism soon disappears with the next season and many talents, even winners, fall into oblivion.

Foreign music influence becomes the starting point for the exportation of Italian music. The role of Italy in the global music landscape today is very ambivalent. On one hand, Italian traditional music is the third most loved and listened music in the world Ciava, , especially Modugno, Cotugno, and Celentano Marchetti, On the other, contemporary musicians are very distant from that genre; therefore, they are trying to export worldwide not only their music, but also a new conception of the Italian music scene.

What characterizes most the effort of exporting modern Italian music is preserving its cultural essence, that is to say its style, deeper meaning and textual strength. Nevertheless, bringing the song closer to the foreign market means sometimes to modify certain elements, for instance translating the text, doing a duet with foreign singers, releasing special editions with new arrangements. Obviously, it is a complicated intersemiotical transfer, but many Italian singers have chosen to go down that road, obtaining great achievements.

Thanks to scholars such as Franzon, Low and Schjoldager, it is currently possible to create and analyze singable and non-singable translations, recognizing stylistic and cultural issues and the consequent solver strategies. Tiziano Ferro is an icon of Italian pop music, a sort of modern heir of the singer-songwriter tradition. With his first album, he already released Spanish, English and Portuguese versions of his most famous single, Xdono, reaching the number one of the European music chart.

He was even nominated at Latin Grammys, proof of an immediate appreciation of the international audience. A lot of international releases followed that first album, especially in Latino-America, where the singer obtained important achievements. Tiziano decided to apply to the Mexican University of translation and interpretation, working on his Spanish skills to improve his translating and speaking abilities. From that moment on, any Italian album of him has been translated in Spanish, always reaching a great success.

The countries share a sort of melodic-romantic style in music that makes the linguistic and even cultural transposition easier to be done. In this particular case, the lyrics have been translated in both Spanish and English, enabling a double analysis. It is very interesting to see how the English and Spanish translations deal differently with this rhythmical predominance. In this case, ease of vocalization singability has been sacrificed for the sake of sense and rhythm.

The two translations diverge a lot in the rest of the song. Spanish lyrics remain semantically accurate, modifying tiny details for reasons of linguistic and cultural coherence. It is in the third strophe of the song that both the translations depart from the original. Maybe the particular rhythmic structure, in which melody almost disappears, has made necessary a combination of paraphrase and permutation. As regarding the rhymes, the rap structures makes them fundamental in the song.

Thus, both the translations reproduce complete and partial rhymes in the entire texts following the original rhyme scheme. On the other hand, this song has an intrinsic rap structure that forces the translator to recreate typical sounds of the American Hip Hop world, making the changes, especially in English language, unavoidable. Furthermore, since the English version has been released in Italy, Brazil and Eastern Europe, we can see a strong stylistic choice in changing most of the text following a more general topic.

It was the age of an overwhelming influence of American pop rock in Italy. The band started a long tour in the summer of , during which they performed on very important stages: That is why their albums often include the English versions of songs, most of which are the original versions later translated into Italian. O almeno portami con te Arms again Your eyes turn towards the sky Quasi blu metallici You say: I could have been more concrete Tu, dal cielo un angelo Forcing you to stay, Ascolta il mio respiro It's not my way… E scegli me Why don't you belong to me?

Therefore, if, on one hand, the song was not exactly translated to be exported, on the other it is the further demonstration of the strong international influence that led the band to compose most of its songs in English first. However, the song was included in their first album with eight other English versions, as proof of their appeal to an international audience. It is interesting to see how an Italian band has structured an English text, and then has translated it into Italian, in a sort of triple translating process. Nevertheless, the Italian song clearly questions the real existence of the lover, as if it was just a dream.

Paraphrase, deletion and permutation are the principal microstrategies used in this translation. The sense is reproduced, but the semantic accuracy is almost non-existent, in a mid-way between adaptation and replacement text. In particular, we can find many units of meaning left out in the third and final strophes of the Italian text, which is in general more repetitive than the original. The Italian text reproduces very well the emphasis of this strophe with a beautiful rhetoric figure: Furthermore, the Italian version leaves the English second voice of the special, creating a sort of multilingual reference to the original song.

The simplicity of the Italian text makes it sounding very natural in the target language, achieving naturalness to the disadvantage of semantic correspondence. Finally, the rhymes are not dominant in this song. However, the Italian lyrics maintain the general scheme of rhyme in the first two verses of each strophe: The first lines describe a gloomy atmosphere, as a prologue of thenarration of the break up.

The English translation manage to reproduce the sad story-telling, but adds and modifies many details. First, the Italian song is a sort of self-pity dialogue in which the narrator seems to address himself: This is a good expedient to make the listener feeling closer to the song, as if the singer was directly talking to whom is listening. The English translation does not reproduce this expedient, choosing instead to address the lover who has gone away. This stylistic and linguistic strategy allows the text not to mention the gender of the lover female in the original song , making it more universally adjustable.

Furthermore, the translation mentions a letter left by the lover, with even a quote in the text: This is the point where the texts diverge: Finally, the key phrase of the song has been drastically changed in translation. Nevertheless, this key phrase perfectly manages to evoke the sorrow and disillusionment of the original one, keeping the three-words structure. The melody of the song is very essential in the first three strophes, with the bare sound of an acoustic guitar accompanying the voice. The Italian text follows this essentiality with brief verses from three to five words at most and open-ended syllables.

The English translation is wordier, and fails to reproduce that mouth-feel of straight open vowels. The final refrain explodes with a strong instrumental arrangement in which drum is the protagonist. The text follows this melodic explosion, producing a sensation of rage in words and performance. Therefore, the original text changes, adding an idiomatic off-color expression followed by self-encouraging words. Since most of the song is played without a drum, the voice keeps the rhythm. In this case, the syllable-count is important, since the rhythm is kept through a strong articulation of syllables.

Hence, although shorter words compromise singability, they better fulfil the rhythmic needs of the song. It is a good technique to avoid rhythmical problems and syllabic mismatches, adapting a new text with several references of sense to the existing music. The artists autonomously wrote the songs, following the singer-songwriter Italian tradition, and then translated them.

His international releases include two albums for the Spanish market Pronto a correre and Liberando palabras , one album for the German market Parole in circolo Special Edition and a digital EP called Onde remix released worldwide. His career shows the modern trends of discography dealing with the international exportation of Italian artists. Nevertheless, this slowdown in exportation has been outweighed by an increasingly stronger overseas influence in production. He is working now with the best of the best of Italian pop music, producing one success after another.

He is an Italian producer with an American stylistic imprint. Even the artists, going to Los Angeles to work on their albums, experience this constant influence, by working hand in hand with foreign musicians and songwriters. The Italian version gave name to the album Pronto a correre and went platinum in Another important aspect has to be taken into account here: The lyrics can be written by more than a writer, or written by someone and then modified by someone else.

This is what happened with this song, co- written in English and then co-translated into Italian. However, as Franzon highlighted, even a replacement text can be a translating act. Therefore, the original refrain has monosyllabic words sang one by one within the drumbeats. The solution adopted in the Italian version involves longer words sang almost syllable per syllable. Vocalic elongation enables the entire phrase to sound natural and not excessively divided.

Pauses between words are also important. The original text seems to serve as a model for the Italian lyrics, which, even without semantic accuracy, manage to reproduce the main melodic structure of the English song. However, this gradual exportation has remarkable advantages in building solid relations with professionals and listeners of foreign markets. This is the first song written exclusively by songwriters the singer is not the author and translated by a new figure: Therefore, a foreign musician has creative and poetic skills, fundamental for a good song translation, but also fluency in target language.

Porque eres como eres. Tutte quante le parole Fueron tantas las palabras Che formano il silenzio Y tantos los silencios, Le ho imparate molto presto Que he aprendido sobre el tiempo So a chi dire grazie Que no hay pronto ni tarde. Guardando lo que duele. Nos marcan y nos duelen. Cosa ti fa bene, cosa ti fa male Si eres como eres, si consigues lo que quieres Dimmi cosa ci conviene provare a salvare Dime desiguales, distintos e iguales.

The Spanish translation leaves aside the semantic correspondence even though there are some textual references for the sake of singability, intended here as giving the same mouth-feel and producing the same sensation in listening. As regarding ease in vocalization, of course a tongue-twister structure is not easy to sing, especially in Spanish, whose text has been made even trickier than the original one. Repetition is another important strategy used for matters of style and sound. In both the texts there is the constant repetition of very similar phrases: Many others just serve as a model, providing the main words to create a different concept: On the contrary, the steady rhythm combined with the wordier Spanish text makes the prosodic match weak, as the principle of naturalness has been sacrificed for rhetoric issues.

Another marketing strategy used by Italian artists to get by foreign markets is duet, e. Mengoni, Ferro, Pausini, Ramazzotti and many others have done duets with important foreign singers, especially with English or Spanish versions of Italian songs. Thus, although the singer is German, she performs this song in English and Italian.

Therefore, he sets three questions to ask before starting rhyming: The adaptation paradigm, instead, mixes a genuine transfer from the ST with omissions, modifications, additions, as a sort of domestication for the target culture. Finally, a replacement text is a completely different text, with no semantic transfer, created to be sung on a pre-existing melody. However, it is quite important not to mistake the three approaches, as a form of respect to the original song.

This assumption leads to five possible choices in song translation: However, leaving the song untranslated is a choice based on the supposed futility of translation in that given case, for the song lyrics are not particularly relevant. It can also be a way to retain the authenticity of the song. On the contrary, the second option better accomplishes the purposes of a written translation, where the sense of the lyrics is what really matters. Writing new lyrics to an original music is classified as a translation action, even though it is not a proper linguistic translation.

The fourth option gives much more emphasis to the lyrics, allowing the translator to split, merge or add notes to adjust the music. Nevertheless, it cannot always be a solution, especially when the translator has no power to do it. Therefore, the fifth strategy concerns a translation that adapts to music. This means producing a functionally equivalent translation, the most common option chosen by translators. Some deviations in sense are allowed, in order to adapt the lyrics to both music and performance. The last three strategies generate singable target lyrics Franzon, , However, if the goal is to produce a singable translation, there are features of the music textual fit that should be taken into account, that is to say, prosodic, poetic and semantic-reflexive match, as shown in Table 2.

Functional consequences of match between Lyrics and Music J. Jerome Publishing, , p. Starting from the beginning, the prosodic match is the basic requirement for singability, involving rhythm, stress and intonation. Without prosodic elements, the lyrics would be impossible to sing. The poetic match, instead, concerns the harmonic structure of the piece of music, and the subsequent verbal structures such as climax, repeated sounds, stylistic figures Franzon, , Finally, the semantic-reflexive match combines the sense of the lyrics with the music structure itself.

Thus, music can exalt the joy, the pain or the rage described by the text with ascending or descending passages, stronger rhythm and such like. However, a translator can chose to pursue only one of the three layers, depending on his translation purpose. Every song is a strange and unique creature, which deserves to be analyzed carefully in order to make the better decision in translation. They combined the pentathlon principle with the layers of singability, obtaining seven components: On the contrary, the greatest deviations were made in the content, in order to adapt the text to the target audience.

Therefore, with a meaningful song, the translator may sacrifice rhymes or rhythm with non-rhythmic strategies. On the contrary, a song only inserted for aesthetic reasons could be translated with a total shift of meaning to preserve rhythm and rhyme. This study underlines how volatile the translation can be, especially when songs are involved.

Finally, Schjoldager offers a great model of analysis, which comprises twelve micro and macro strategies covering every possible technique used in translation of songs. The macrostrategies concern the source or target oriented nature of translation, while the microstrategies deal with the proper translation at sense and word level.

The Microstrategies of Schjoldager A. Low offers a very useful how-to-do guide to solve these issues. First, non-standard language can present many problems, especially in rap and hip-hop songs, where grammar mistakes and deviations are intentional. It would be a great loss to completely dismiss the slang of a song. Another main feature of rap and hip-hop songs is vulgar language.

Cultural issues are also very common, especially in parody songs. A line from a film, a politician speech, references to famous poets, are very difficult to transpose into another culture. A translator should provide explanatory notes, if the context permits it.

Otherwise, it is fine to reduce an historical or cultural contentwhere another solution is impossible. Fixed expressions are quite difficult to transpose, since it is common to manipulate them in songs. The best choice is to activate a lateral thinking and be as creative as possible. On the same line of fixed expressions, humor, jokes and puns are difficult to both identify and translate, especially when culture-specific and language-specific. In the first case, domestication is necessary, for translator needs a pun that communicates with his or her audience.

With language-specific puns, he or she needs to step back and create a new pun, producing the same humorous intention with a different device. Fortunately, they are often intelligible in songs, so that it is easy to recognize them. How to handle them in translation depends on what they are: However, the most important thing is to preserve their richness not using literal language when translating them. A translator may find neologism in song-lyrics, motivated by meaning, rhythm or sound purpose. Newmark , points out the importance of creating a neologism where needed in an expressive text translation.

Creativity is, again, the main skill of a good translator. Repetitions and rhymes follow the same rule: It is essential to detect if these features are being used to express a real meaning or only for aesthetic reasons, in order to motivate a possible change. It is a translation based on the phonetic features of the text, not taking into account the semantic properties. It is a constant presence in our everyday life, regularly reproduced in restaurants, supermarkets, on TV and radios. From an intercultural perspective, every culture has its own genres, creating several sociological roots within the musical field Kaindl, , The pop song is a mass-media product that articulates social discourses and interpret the mental dimension of culture.

That is why for a long while pop song has not been object of translation studies: Nevertheless, when new cultural aspects came into play, pop song started to be considered part of the social framework, playing an important role in the dialogue between different social identities. The three essential elements of pop songs are music, voice and lyrics.

Music enters into a dialogue with text, giving emphasis to certain words and creating social and emotional associations Kaindl, The second pattern is voice. The vocal performance is essential for language and music to be combined in a plurisemiotic matter. Finally, lyrics, always vocally and musically embedded, determinate form and content of the pop song. Modern technologies and media define the processes of production, distribution and reception of the contemporary pop songs, making even clearer the strong connection with its social framework. From the very beginning, media are the crucial element for this economic success, determining even the length of the tracks.

Even today, the hit songs are preferably minutes long, in order to accommodate the radiophonic timing. Starting with tracks from operettas, the hit song developed through history, associating with alternative musical styles like jazz, rumba and swing Kaindl, During the word wars, it became a form of entertainment and distraction from the cruelties of war.

The lyrics encouraged perseverance and grit. The social context is important, but very vague, a sort of general abstract depiction of a situations. However, the social, cultural and economic context is always hidden there, behind a sad love story or a fancy melody. Music scholars provided very fair descriptions of hit songs. However, there is not a perfect recipe to create the success of a song, especially not today.

Technology has nowadays an extensive presence in our lives, providing millions of songs everyday through digital platforms like Spotify, Youtube here again the importance of the visual aspect of music , Deezer, the recent Amazon Music and such like. Thus, millions of songs are spread through media, but just few of them become national or even global hits. Sincerity today seems to be the most essential feature of real hits.

Obviously, a dose of good luck is always needed. Nevertheless, music remains a special kind of art that carries its social and cultural background to the ears of many listeners. Even the most commercial and catchy songs are, in these terms, means to communicate something of a culture. That is why today so many musicians, especially in pop music, try to release their albums in foreign markets too. Nevertheless, exporting music in a foreign country, just like translation, becomes a transmutation of cultural material.

The choice of musical constructions, the style, the textual tendencies, even the way of using voice can trace back to a given cultural background. Not to even mention lyrics, which create a real controversy in music exportation. If music, especially pop song, is a cultural product, exported to be appreciated as a part of its original culture, is it really necessary to translate the lyrics?

Does a musician need to move its authentic work closer to the target audience modifying the lyrics? Should the translated songs be still considered an authentic work belonging to its culture? Do the foreign lyrics change the real nature of the song, creating a sort of uncultured hybrid?

These questions open wide perspectives on translation of pop songs, becoming even more urgent when a tradition-bound song like the Italian one is involved. Roberto Vecchioni describes it as a narrative unit embellished by poetic rhetoric figures metaphors, analogies, synesthesia with an unquestionable emotional power increased by the elimination of spatial and temporal components.

The first Italian pop song tries to depict universal feelings in which anybody can project himself. The lyrics become, in this perspective, the essential feature of a good piece of music. Therefore, during the first decades of the twentieth century, the melody is set free from the strict strophe-refrain layout, adapting to more complex and committed texts. The Italian musicians stop seeking high-sounding melodic structures and harmonic variations, concentrating on a higher textual commitment. The s bring a wave of innovation in musical forms: Carosone, Buscaglione and Pietrangeli are just few of the innovative songwriters of these years.

Nevertheless, the real change comes with a major singer-songwriter, whose most famous song remains the milestone of Italian music: The contents are inspired by surrealism; the forms reject the musical stereotypes of the Italian pop song. Music gets closer to theatre with Jannacci and Gaber, who committed their songs to social commentary.

On the other hand, the epic duo Battisti and Mogol shook the Italian music imaginary with a combination of classic melodies and American style. Young people started to be involved in political affairs, making pop music the center of their disillusion and hungry for social redeeming. The lonely rage of the s becomes the emotional mean for an inter-generational communication of freedom, imagination, dreams and hopes.

The pop song provides something in which people can identify themselves, becoming pop in its most modern sense Vecchioni, This new generational communication involves live concerts and free radios: Social themes here give way to poetical inspirations and introspective songs. A new social disengagement characterizes the early s, with the discovery of new rhythmic dimensions of melodies inspired by rock sounds. Morandi, Mina, Venditti and Baglioni are the major interpreters of a chaotic age of experimental sounds, in which the authorial dignity never disappears.

Vasco Rossi, on the contrary, represents the height of innovation. With an autobiographical style, he embodies a total counter-trend that inspires thousands of young people with a primordial writing style Vecchioni, For instance, Zucchero and Pino Daniele follow the foreign trend of Afro-American rhythm and blues, combined with a strong Mediterranean tradition. In the middle of the s, the minimalistic topics, combined with the new visual features of music, confine politics and social issues to marginal musical landscapes.

The temporary depletion in content is compensated by a musical enrichment Vecchioni, The means of communication multiply, giving emphasis to transgressive images and provocative texts. Articolo 31, Lunapop, Almanegretta are the avant-gardists of the modern pop song, in which disobedience in contents and strange looks are essential. Discography becomes an industry, making difficult for singers to emerge. Styles and personalities overlap, creating a heterogeneous but crowded musical landscape. Foreign influence becomes stronger in production and creation of albums. In the early s Ligabue and Jovanotti emerge in two very distant musical worlds.

On the other, Jovanotti is the perfect representation of the millennial revolution: This is the period of boom for record companies, who start searching musicians, interpreters and singers to promote by their own. Cecchetto discovered singers and showmen the caliber of Jovanotti, Fiorello and Pezzali. That is now that a major turning point happens in Italian music development: Born as an American TV format, their real origins date back to the s. It is no longer the Talent Scout who chooses and launches artists, it is the public itself who chooses within a competition which singer to make successful.

This TV format allows record companies to invest in fully developed singers, with the insurance of a paying audience. Unfortunately, a fresh out talent is not fully developed, neither musically nor artistically; the Talent Show can only be a starting point for musicians. The fame deriving from this mechanism soon disappears with the next season and many talents, even winners, fall into oblivion.

Foreign music influence becomes the starting point for the exportation of Italian music. The role of Italy in the global music landscape today is very ambivalent. On one hand, Italian traditional music is the third most loved and listened music in the world Ciava, , especially Modugno, Cotugno, and Celentano Marchetti, On the other, contemporary musicians are very distant from that genre; therefore, they are trying to export worldwide not only their music, but also a new conception of the Italian music scene.

What characterizes most the effort of exporting modern Italian music is preserving its cultural essence, that is to say its style, deeper meaning and textual strength. Nevertheless, bringing the song closer to the foreign market means sometimes to modify certain elements, for instance translating the text, doing a duet with foreign singers, releasing special editions with new arrangements. Obviously, it is a complicated intersemiotical transfer, but many Italian singers have chosen to go down that road, obtaining great achievements.

Thanks to scholars such as Franzon, Low and Schjoldager, it is currently possible to create and analyze singable and non-singable translations, recognizing stylistic and cultural issues and the consequent solver strategies. Tiziano Ferro is an icon of Italian pop music, a sort of modern heir of the singer-songwriter tradition.

With his first album, he already released Spanish, English and Portuguese versions of his most famous single, Xdono, reaching the number one of the European music chart. He was even nominated at Latin Grammys, proof of an immediate appreciation of the international audience. A lot of international releases followed that first album, especially in Latino-America, where the singer obtained important achievements.

The Therapist (Italian Edition)

Tiziano decided to apply to the Mexican University of translation and interpretation, working on his Spanish skills to improve his translating and speaking abilities. From that moment on, any Italian album of him has been translated in Spanish, always reaching a great success. The countries share a sort of melodic-romantic style in music that makes the linguistic and even cultural transposition easier to be done.

In this particular case, the lyrics have been translated in both Spanish and English, enabling a double analysis. It is very interesting to see how the English and Spanish translations deal differently with this rhythmical predominance. In this case, ease of vocalization singability has been sacrificed for the sake of sense and rhythm. The two translations diverge a lot in the rest of the song. Spanish lyrics remain semantically accurate, modifying tiny details for reasons of linguistic and cultural coherence. It is in the third strophe of the song that both the translations depart from the original.

Maybe the particular rhythmic structure, in which melody almost disappears, has made necessary a combination of paraphrase and permutation. As regarding the rhymes, the rap structures makes them fundamental in the song. Thus, both the translations reproduce complete and partial rhymes in the entire texts following the original rhyme scheme. On the other hand, this song has an intrinsic rap structure that forces the translator to recreate typical sounds of the American Hip Hop world, making the changes, especially in English language, unavoidable.

Furthermore, since the English version has been released in Italy, Brazil and Eastern Europe, we can see a strong stylistic choice in changing most of the text following a more general topic. It was the age of an overwhelming influence of American pop rock in Italy. The band started a long tour in the summer of , during which they performed on very important stages: That is why their albums often include the English versions of songs, most of which are the original versions later translated into Italian. O almeno portami con te Arms again Your eyes turn towards the sky Quasi blu metallici You say: I could have been more concrete Tu, dal cielo un angelo Forcing you to stay, Ascolta il mio respiro It's not my way… E scegli me Why don't you belong to me?

Therefore, if, on one hand, the song was not exactly translated to be exported, on the other it is the further demonstration of the strong international influence that led the band to compose most of its songs in English first. However, the song was included in their first album with eight other English versions, as proof of their appeal to an international audience. It is interesting to see how an Italian band has structured an English text, and then has translated it into Italian, in a sort of triple translating process.

Nevertheless, the Italian song clearly questions the real existence of the lover, as if it was just a dream. Paraphrase, deletion and permutation are the principal microstrategies used in this translation. The sense is reproduced, but the semantic accuracy is almost non-existent, in a mid-way between adaptation and replacement text. In particular, we can find many units of meaning left out in the third and final strophes of the Italian text, which is in general more repetitive than the original. The Italian text reproduces very well the emphasis of this strophe with a beautiful rhetoric figure: Furthermore, the Italian version leaves the English second voice of the special, creating a sort of multilingual reference to the original song.

The simplicity of the Italian text makes it sounding very natural in the target language, achieving naturalness to the disadvantage of semantic correspondence. Finally, the rhymes are not dominant in this song. However, the Italian lyrics maintain the general scheme of rhyme in the first two verses of each strophe: The first lines describe a gloomy atmosphere, as a prologue of thenarration of the break up.

The English translation manage to reproduce the sad story-telling, but adds and modifies many details. First, the Italian song is a sort of self-pity dialogue in which the narrator seems to address himself: This is a good expedient to make the listener feeling closer to the song, as if the singer was directly talking to whom is listening.

The English translation does not reproduce this expedient, choosing instead to address the lover who has gone away. This stylistic and linguistic strategy allows the text not to mention the gender of the lover female in the original song , making it more universally adjustable. Furthermore, the translation mentions a letter left by the lover, with even a quote in the text: This is the point where the texts diverge: Finally, the key phrase of the song has been drastically changed in translation. Nevertheless, this key phrase perfectly manages to evoke the sorrow and disillusionment of the original one, keeping the three-words structure.

The melody of the song is very essential in the first three strophes, with the bare sound of an acoustic guitar accompanying the voice. The Italian text follows this essentiality with brief verses from three to five words at most and open-ended syllables. The English translation is wordier, and fails to reproduce that mouth-feel of straight open vowels. The final refrain explodes with a strong instrumental arrangement in which drum is the protagonist. The text follows this melodic explosion, producing a sensation of rage in words and performance.

Therefore, the original text changes, adding an idiomatic off-color expression followed by self-encouraging words. Since most of the song is played without a drum, the voice keeps the rhythm. In this case, the syllable-count is important, since the rhythm is kept through a strong articulation of syllables. Hence, although shorter words compromise singability, they better fulfil the rhythmic needs of the song. It is a good technique to avoid rhythmical problems and syllabic mismatches, adapting a new text with several references of sense to the existing music.

The artists autonomously wrote the songs, following the singer-songwriter Italian tradition, and then translated them. His international releases include two albums for the Spanish market Pronto a correre and Liberando palabras , one album for the German market Parole in circolo Special Edition and a digital EP called Onde remix released worldwide. His career shows the modern trends of discography dealing with the international exportation of Italian artists. Nevertheless, this slowdown in exportation has been outweighed by an increasingly stronger overseas influence in production.

He is working now with the best of the best of Italian pop music, producing one success after another. He is an Italian producer with an American stylistic imprint. Even the artists, going to Los Angeles to work on their albums, experience this constant influence, by working hand in hand with foreign musicians and songwriters. The Italian version gave name to the album Pronto a correre and went platinum in Another important aspect has to be taken into account here: The lyrics can be written by more than a writer, or written by someone and then modified by someone else.

This is what happened with this song, co- written in English and then co-translated into Italian. However, as Franzon highlighted, even a replacement text can be a translating act. Therefore, the original refrain has monosyllabic words sang one by one within the drumbeats. The solution adopted in the Italian version involves longer words sang almost syllable per syllable. Vocalic elongation enables the entire phrase to sound natural and not excessively divided.

Pauses between words are also important. The original text seems to serve as a model for the Italian lyrics, which, even without semantic accuracy, manage to reproduce the main melodic structure of the English song. However, this gradual exportation has remarkable advantages in building solid relations with professionals and listeners of foreign markets.

This is the first song written exclusively by songwriters the singer is not the author and translated by a new figure: Therefore, a foreign musician has creative and poetic skills, fundamental for a good song translation, but also fluency in target language. Porque eres como eres. Tutte quante le parole Fueron tantas las palabras Che formano il silenzio Y tantos los silencios, Le ho imparate molto presto Que he aprendido sobre el tiempo So a chi dire grazie Que no hay pronto ni tarde.

Guardando lo que duele. Nos marcan y nos duelen. Cosa ti fa bene, cosa ti fa male Si eres como eres, si consigues lo que quieres Dimmi cosa ci conviene provare a salvare Dime desiguales, distintos e iguales. The Spanish translation leaves aside the semantic correspondence even though there are some textual references for the sake of singability, intended here as giving the same mouth-feel and producing the same sensation in listening. As regarding ease in vocalization, of course a tongue-twister structure is not easy to sing, especially in Spanish, whose text has been made even trickier than the original one.

Repetition is another important strategy used for matters of style and sound. In both the texts there is the constant repetition of very similar phrases: Many others just serve as a model, providing the main words to create a different concept: On the contrary, the steady rhythm combined with the wordier Spanish text makes the prosodic match weak, as the principle of naturalness has been sacrificed for rhetoric issues.

Another marketing strategy used by Italian artists to get by foreign markets is duet, e. Mengoni, Ferro, Pausini, Ramazzotti and many others have done duets with important foreign singers, especially with English or Spanish versions of Italian songs. Thus, although the singer is German, she performs this song in English and Italian.

Un'altra notizia degli sbagli del mondo. The world turns up and the color is gone. Che come te anche lui ci spera I thought our problems would heal in time Come te anche lui rimane ferito I'm still bleeding and I'm still crying With every song, the radio puts on, no. There is also addition of units of meaning that causes a change in melodic structure.

Therefore, where the original song has a long pause, the English version adds an entire line, changing the stresses in the rhythm of this strophe. Thus, the poetic match is achieved at the expense of prosodic match. This commercial and cultural strategy is the right answer to the difficult cultural and linguistic shift between Italy and German.

In this way, the Italian authenticity that will be better analyzed in the following paragraph is retained, and problems in switch languages mispronunciations, unfamiliarity with the German language are avoided. This source- oriented strategy moves the listener closer to the source culture.

When the cultures are so different, there is no other way of dealing with music exportation. Furthermore, English language makes this version more appealing to a wider audience, as we will see soon. Cultural and linguistic distance makes marketing choices more difficult when exporting Italian music in countries such as Northern Europe, Britain or USA. At the very beginning, any country had to compete with a song in their national language. For many years, the major controversy in Italy has been about bringing to the contest songs with Italian or English lyrics.

On the one side, there is the will to create an international hit with an understandable text, on the other the belief in an authenticity un- reproducible in other languages. The marriage of language and music makes song the perfect mean of representation of social and cultural changes. That is why I was so interested in analyzing singable translations of Italian pop music. Italy has a singer-songwriter tradition that makes any text a little piece of Italian history. They are deep and emotionally complex, sometimes even more important than melody itself.

There are many issues arising out of such an intersemiotic medium, especially when we try to translate it. Therefore, any song has a delicate mechanism of stresses, rhymes, rhythm, words and emphatic passages. Songs create worlds, attached to the cultural and emotional experience of many people, from compositors to listeners. Such an intricate medium is gold for translation scholars, who deal with new constraints and formulate innovative theories.

The most important field of application in this case is the exportation of music to a foreign market. Exporting music means to break the walls between cultures. The analysis in the third chapter has allowed me to make considerations on this topic. First, the lack of a professional figure committed exclusively to song translations.

Translating songs means having a deep knowledge in several fields: In my opinion, the lack of a specialized figure has a negative impact on music exportation, sometimes generating bad copies with only limited success. Another important issue is whether translating or not songs for their international release. The current trends in Italy opt for translation in the case of culturally close countries, especially Spain.

There is no right or wrong choice in the controversy between authentic and translated song. Any case should be evaluated on its own to select the best way to export an original work to a foreign market. Finally, Italian pop song can be very complicated to translate.

Its overwhelming textual strength, its melodic structure, the sound of its language, make translation a complex transmutation requiring thought out strategies. Most of the texts analyzed have adopted a mid-strategy between adaptation and replacement text, achieving very good results in prosodic, poetic or semantic-reflexive matches, depending on the particular textual or music requirements.

Of course, not any translation can work as well as the original, but the attempt is always worth it. University of California Press. Watson Ed , London: Welch, Oxford Handbook of Music Education. State University of New York Press. University of Cambridge Press. Bloomsbury Advances in Translation.

Morady, Gohareh and Reza, Mohammad Nida, Eugene and Taber, Charles R. Pronto a correre http: Queste prime definizioni aprono una controversia che ha determinato, sin dai primi studi, le diverse teorie e confutazioni sul reale significato di traduzione. Sin dalla nascita degli studi sulla traduzione, sono state due le principali tendenze traduttive: Orazio e Cicerone citati in Steiner, furono i primi oratori ad esprimere una netta preferenza per una traduzione che trasmettesse il senso del testo originale piuttosto che le esatte parole.

Molti studiosi, durante i secoli, hanno espresso una diversa concezione degli approcci traduttivi. Molti altri, durante il ventesimo secolo, hanno espresso il loro pensiero: Lo studioso distinse tre tipi di traduzione: Egli riconobbe due possibili tecniche traduttive: Questo rende la traduzione un processo soggettivo, ma non per questo poco valido. Le teorie traduttive contemporanee riconoscono due tipologie di equivalenza: Il processo traduttivo implica la conoscenza di elementi linguistici ed extralinguistici fondamentali per un traduttore.

Il contesto culturale Malinowski, fa riferimento agli aspetti sociali della vita umana: Di questi fattori, il dialetto e il registro sono fondamentali. Il registro comprende i diversi tipi di linguaggio che vengono usati in base al contesto e alla situazione sociale Halliday, Il processo di traduzione viene messo in atto attraverso diverse strategie. Malone ne riconobbe nove, usate a livello strutturale e lessicale: La strategie di diffusion e condensation vengono utilizzate per amplificare o contrarre un concetto senza aggiungere o eliminarne strati di significato. Le traduzioni da italiano a inglese e viceversa possono nascondere molte insidie, nate da conformazioni sintattico-grammaticali molto diverse.

I problemi specifici includono, ad esempio, la formazione delle parole. Un altro problema traduttivo potrebbe essere creato dalla relazione lessicale delle collocation, ovvero la co-occorrenza abituale di lessemi individuali. In particolar modo, le collocation strettamente legate alla cultura per esempio children are welcome in Gran Bretagna possono richiedere una parafrasi, la completa omissione o la spiegazione del riferimento culturale della collocation.

Capita spesso, infatti, che le relazioni non siano le stesse da una lingua ad un'altra, costringendo il traduttore ad usare una serie di strategie alternative: Le strategie adottate in questo caso sono: Secondo alcuni studi sul comportamento, tutti gli esseri umani sono biologicamente predisposti a comunicare attraverso la musica Trevarthen, Il ruolo della musica, in questo senso, rimane molto dinamico. Quando un testo entra in gioco, la traduzione risulta fondamentale Low, La traduzione diventa un processo complesso con tante variabili in gioco.

La traduzione in musica richiede una conoscenza multidisciplinare di musica, semiotica, letteratura, cultura generale e molto altro Susam-Sarajeva, Al contrario, una canzone musicocentrica concentra la sua forza nella melodia del brano. Alcune altre, invece, utilizzano le parole quasi come uno strumento di esercizio per la voce, o come accompagnamento per la musica Low, Il testo della canzone ha una struttura e un potere evocativo molto simile a quello della poesia.

La natura orale, inoltre, porta il testo ad utilizzare un registro informale, persino volgare, con parole semplici ma dalla forte carica emotiva. I versi sono solitamente brevi, per adattarsi meglio alla musica, e possono contenere parole o modi di dire modificati, per ottenere una maggiore forza simbolica Low, , Nel caso delle traduzioni in musica, la scelta della strategia deve essere determinata dalla sua destinazione finale: I programmi di concerti di musica classica, invece, richiedono una strategia comunicativa.

La strategia rimane comunque quella comunicativa Low, Low riconosce tre possibili approcci alla traduzione della canzone: La prima fa riferimento ai requisiti fondamentali della singability, ossia ritmo, accenti ed intonazione. Queste due teorie principali hanno dato il via a molti altri studi, tra cui quello molto interessante di Schjoldager, che nel formula una serie di macro e microstrategie utilizzate nella traduzione delle canzoni.

Importanti sono anche i consigli dati da Low in merito a problemi specifici nella traduzione di canzoni: Lo slang deve essere possibilmente riprodotto utilizzando, almeno in parte, degli slang della lingua di arrivo. Il linguaggio volgare, invece, deve essere riprodotto valutando il grado di sgradevolezza del termine volgare nel contesto di destinazione.

I riferimenti culturali possono essere spiegati attraverso delle note o altrimenti omessi. Gli idiomi, soprattutto quando modificati in un gioco di parole, devono essere riprodotti o sostituiti in maniera creativa, mentre le metafore non devono essere normalizzate, ma riprodotte nella loro ricchezza simbolica. Tuttavia, non sempre una canzone, anche se virale sui social, diventa una hit nel vero senso della parola. Molti cantanti pop, infatti, lanciano i propri prodotti musicali nei mercati stranieri, ricorrendo a diverse strategie. Alcuni li lanciano nella propria lingua, altri li traducono, creando dei prodotti ad hoc per il mercato estero, altri ancora interpretano dei duetti con cantanti stranieri.

Queste strategie sollevano molte controversie, sia dal punto di vista culturale e traduttivo che commerciale, specialmente quando si tratta di una musica fortemente legata alle proprie tradizioni come quella italiana. La prima canzone cantautorale aveva una linea melodica molto classica, accompagnata da un testo sentimentale abbastanza complesso Vecchioni, Questa nuova comunicazione intergenerazionale si diffuse anche attraverso concerti e radio libere, a cui il vinile gradualmente cedette il passo. Si affiancano nel panorama musicale tradizionalisti come Baglioni, Morandi e Mina, a rivoluzionari come Vasco Rossi.

Il cantante acquisisce una nuova immagine misteriosa, tormentata e visionaria, mentre gruppi come Lunapop, Almanegretta e Articolo 31 fanno della disobbedienza e dei look alternativi il loro punto di forza Vecchioni, Questi sono gli anni del boom discografico, in cui le case discografiche si servono della figura del Talent Scout per ricercare artisti emergenti da promuovere. Per questo molte canzoni vengono tradotte, modificate, eseguite con cantanti stranieri.

Il lancio internazionale costituisce una trasposizione di materiale culturale complessa a livello semiotico e commerciale, ma decisamente positiva per la musica italiana. Fu scoperto nei primi anni duemila da due produttori della Emi, che lo presero sotto la loro ala e lo lanciarono subito nel panorama nazionale ed internazionale. Mentre la traduzione spagnola le traduce con delle perfette equivalenze, la versione inglese ne mantiene due in italiano: Questa scelta sacrifica la coerenza linguistica in favore di un espediente stilistico e ritmico: La seconda analisi viene condotta su due canzoni di una band nata nel e dalla fortissima influenza americana, i Finley.

Lo special finale mantiene i cori in inglese come nel brano originale, creando un effetto molto enfatico. Le due versioni sin da subito divergono sul destinatario: Il testo risulta piuttosto essenziale in italiano, con delle sillabe aperte non riprodotte nel testo inglese. Il ritmo serrato nel ritornello, infatti, costituisce un problema nella resa in italiano, una lingua tendenzialmente polisillabica. Il testo originale diventa un modello per la versione italiana, in cui viene rispettato anche lo schema metrico delle rime. David Santisteban, produttore, compositore ed autore spagnolo http: La canzone ha una caratteristica molto peculiare: To my sister, who traced before me the difficult path of university life and helped me to make it through it.

I want to thank my cousins and my friends, who stand by my side every day of my life. To my boyfriend, Giovanni, who makes me happier than ever. I want to thank every friend I have met during these three years, especially the "Fraccacreta" girls, who are a second family to me. I want to thank the professor who allowed me to follow my passion for music and helped me writing this thesis: To every professor who inspired me during my life, teaching me how important is to learn in order to be a better human being: To my favorite singer and band, who taught me with their music to follow my dreams and never give up.

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