Oops! Posted before I had finished typing it!
Ellen D Wolpin wrote:
> All the music has English translations, but they're written to be sung,
> so sometimes, they're not even close. Or are those the translations one
> is supposed to use?
Not if you want to sing in the original language and give your audience
something to understand it by.
A singing translation is something completely different and is an art
form in itself. It can work with song, though IMHO most German, French
and Italian song sounds better in the original - but then, I would
understand enough words from the original anyway, so as not to get
mystified. When it comes to a language I don't know, I'm not at all sure
I wouldn't prefer to hear it in a good, and I stress a GOOD singing
translation: Chopin, for example, wrote a few rather lightweight songs
which I would guess need a certain amount of characterization. Much of
this would be lost on me, particularly if they're performed in a hall
with the house lights dimmed so I can't follow the programme
translation.
With opera I think singing translation is a different matter entirely.
The house lights are right down and very few theatres, as far as I know,
have surtitle facilities. The words should be understood by the
audience. In a place like the Met of the ROH Covent Garden, where there
is likely to be an international audience, the original is certainly
valid, but out in the sticks :) it is a different matter. There is
strong precedent for using the verna
(new readers pick up here)
-cular: Wagner certainly urged it when his works were going to be
performed in Australia, and, though I can't yet verify the source,
Puccini also said he felt opera should always be performed in the
language of the audience. I'll try and find details of this, unless
anyone else knows it already.
It's a big mistake to try to make a translation that is as literal as
possible. The one error people tend to see is that where in the original
there was an important word on an important note, the equivalent word no
longer appears there. Sometimes the reason is that it really won't scan,
or the rest of the phrase won't scan around it; sometimes it's that the
translated word has a bad vowel for that particular note, or possibly
isn't a lyrical word to sing. The translator has to go one step further
back.
I speak from experience, having translated (=produced English singing
versions) of four operas so far, plus assorted arias and ensembles. The
important things to bear in mind is that the _overall_ meaning should be
as close as possible, and that the line should be lyrical. It's quite
possible to sing good English lyrically, but close literal translation
often doesn't come out sounding like good English, and that's what gives
opera translation a bad name. Occasionally I have had to throw out the
very colloquial original and substitute something new, as in Figaro/Non
piu andrai, where the passage beginning "Fra guerrieri, poffar bacco"
became "Great big hairy sweaty majors/have one use for pretty pages/and
the colonels often beat them/and the generals sometimes eat them".
Mostly I haven't strayed from the original quite so far, though. What I
have to do is to think "what is this character trying to say", and then
instead of trying to fit my words to the music, try to find a line to
which the composer would have set the music that he did. In some cases
it is necessary to alter the music slightly - not the melodic shape, but
the rhythm, particularly in recitative-like passages. I don't think this
is arrogant; on the contrary, I have to get inside the composer's head
with the extreme of respect, and only when I feel he could have
justifiably written this phrase of music to that phrase of words should
I be satisfied. Some terrible nonsense has been written in the cause of
keeping secco recitative in the original rhythm, particularly some of
the older Mozart translations. The words came first, and it must still
sound as though the words came first, and this was how a master musician
chose to express them musically.
A typical example of this came up when I was translating O Mio Babbino
Caro. The second line had a feminine ending ("mi piace, e bello,
bel-lo"). In the end, I decided not to sound the final syllable ("Daddy,
you know I love him/please try to understand") and kept to this for
every line - my justification for this was that the final syllable was
in every case set to the same note as the preceding syllable, therefore
it wasn't IMO an important part of the melodic outline, and, to back
this up, almost every time the tune was played in the orchestra, the
feminine ending didn't occur, just the one note. Would you really prefer
to hear "Oh my beloved Daddy, I love him, yes, I love him"? For years I
thought this was about a girl who loved her Papa!
I've been to see three operatic performances in Cambridge over the past
three weeks. All in English. And in only one* was the translator
credited. Grrr.
*Camberwell Pocket Opera, the Barber of Seville: A truly wonderful,
hilarious slick production, with a believable translation (sorry, my
programme's not to hand right now. But it's still on tour)
Sorry about the ramble and the unexpected break in transmission
--
Linda Fox, Cambridge, UK
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