Translating for Singing discusses the art and craft of translating singable lyrics, a topic of interest in a wide range of fields, including translation, music, creative writing, cultural studies, performance studies, and semiotics. Previously, such translation has most often been discussed by music critics, many of whom had neither training nor experience in this area. Written by two internationally-known translators, the book focusses mainly on practical techniques for creating translations meant to be sung to pre-existing music, with suggested solutions to such linguistic problems as those associated with rhythm, syllable count, vocal burden, rhyme, repetition and sound. Translation theory and translations of lyrics for other purposes, such as surtitles, are also covered. The book can serve as a primary text in courses on translating lyrics and as a reference and supplementary text for other courses and for professionals in the fields mentioned. Beyond academia, the book is of interest to professional translators and to librettists, singers, conductors, stage directors, and audience members.

Vocal translation is an old art, but the interpretive feeling, skill and craft have expanded into a relatively new area in translation studies. Vocal translation is the translation of the poetic discourse in the hybrid art of the musicopoetic (or poeticomusical) forms, shapes and skills. This symbiotic construct harmonizes together the conflicting roles of music and language in face-to-face singing performances. ...] In opera, folksong, hymn and art song, as well as in operetta, musical song and popular song, we have musical genres allied to a libretto with lyrical text. A libretto is a linguistic textwhich is a pre-existing work of art, but is subordinated to the musical text. The essays in this volume provide interpretive models for the juxtaposition of different orders of the singing sign-events in different languages, extending the meaning and range of the musical and literary concepts, and putting the mixed signs to a true-and-false test.

The first textbook guide available to show students how to translate song lyrics Includes a glossary and annotated bibliography to reinforce and aid learning Music videos and audio clips accessible via the translation studies portal provide examples for practice

Song Translation: Lyrics in Contexts grew out of a project dedicated to the translation of song lyrics. The book aligns itself with the tradition of descriptive translation studies. Its authors, scholars from Finland, Great Britain, Greece, Italy, Norway and Sweden, all deal with the translation of song lyrics in a great variety of different contexts, including music and performance settings, (inter)cultural perspectives, and historical backgrounds. On the one hand, the analyses demonstrate the breadth and diversity of the concept of translation itself, on the other they show how different contexts set up conditions that shape translational practices and products in different ways. The book is intended for translation studies scholars as well as for musicologists, students of language and/or music and practicing translators; in short, anybody interested in this creative and fascinating field of translational practice.

This fable of an indigenous Arctic people “offers profound considerations about stewardship of and people’s relationships to the natural world” (Publishers Weekly). Nau cannot remember a time when she was not one with the world around her: with the fast breeze, the green grass, the high clouds, and the endless blue sky above the Shingled Spit. But her greatest joy is to visit the sea, where whales gather every morning to gaily spout rainbows. Then one day, she finds a man in the mist where a whale should be: Reu, who has taken human form out of his Great Love for her. Together these first humans become parents to two whales, and then to mankind. Even after Reu dies, Nau continues on, sharing her story of brotherhood between the two species. But as these origins grow distant, the old woman’s tales are subsumed into myth—and her descendants are increasingly bent on parading their dominance over the natural world. Buoyantly translated into English for the first time by Ilona Yazhbin Chavasse, this new entry in the Seedbank series is at once a vibrant retelling of the origin story of the Chukchi, a timely parable about the destructive power of human ego—and another unforgettable work of fiction from Yuri Rytkheu, “arguably the foremost writer to emerge from the minority peoples of Russia’s far north” (New York Review of Books). “We have so little intimate information about these Arctic people, and the writer’s deep emotional attachment to this landscape of ice (today melting away under global warming forces) makes every sentence seem a poetic revelation.” —Annie Proulx

An English translation with commentary of an important first treatise on singing by Agricola.