An age-old phenomenon, the process of Translation has been traditionally seen as a language-oriented exercise communicating the meaning of a source language text by means of a target language. Apart from rendering information to readers, literary Translation also has aesthetic and cultural functions to serve and adhere to. The Translation process is a complex phenomenon entailing many rules and regulations.
While translating single words and short phrases, one can opt for a literal translation, i.e. an exact word-for-word equivalent in the target language. But, when it comes to translating literary texts such as poems, songs and proverbs, a translator cannot opt for literal translation, and instead has to take recourse of sense-for-sense approach.
Amidst all the literary works, translating a Poem emerges as the most difficult. Just being a bilingual doesn’t add to the merit of the translator while translating Poetry. Initially, poetry translation accounts for semantic approach as it is typically rich with aesthetic and expressive values. There arise a lot of problems in translation of a Poem, such as- maintenance of linguistic structure, literary and figurative challenges, cross-cultural difficulties, etc. While the linguistic problems include the collocation and obscured syntactic structure, the aesthetic and literary problems are related with poetic structure, metaphorical expressions, and sounds.
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A poetry translation needs to cater to the aesthetic function of the original work, i.e. the style of the poem. Style is conveyed in word order, rhyme scheme, rhythm (sounds), meter and logic and expression. If the translator destroys any of these, he distorts the beauty of the original poem. For example, Gentleness gets ruined if the translator provides crude alliterations into the target language for the original carefully-composed poem.
Space constraint too emerges as a grave difficulty on the translator’s part to elucidate and adapt the exact meaning contained in the source text without compensating the original intent or message.
Further, while translating, many a times, there comes a word which doesn’t have an exact term in the target language. For example, the word “Iman” doesn’t have an English equivalent. Thus, as language is regarded as culture, we see that cross-cultural challenges are also pertinent while translation of a poem.
A translated piece of poetry stands unsuccessful if it fails at capturing and transferring the theme and spirit of the original and the ebb and flow of ideas and feeling created by the poet. A translator must recreate the rhythm with all its delicate vicissitudes and sound values which differ from language to language. To meet out these problems, a Translator takes recourse to techniques such as Approximation, Equivalence and Sense-for-Sense adaptation.
Just like the case of Poetry, translating a Song is a tricky and complex process too. Considered as carrying a universal approach, the fundamental essence of Music, Songs are an interplay resulting from piece of music and lyrics which are adapted to one another. A few basic pointers that a translator needs to keep in mind while translating a Song are- singability (the phonetic suitability of the lyrics after the translation), rhyme, rhythm, naturalness and fidelity. The translated words should rhyme and fit the music. As Song is akin to adapting a new culture, adapting the original lyrics containing sentiments, thoughts and aspirations and sensibly delineating the same for the target language culture that has negligible or no access to the original version, is a serious challenge.
Secondly, it becomes extremely difficult on translator’s part to decide what message to retain or omit from among the original lyrics and adapt in new cultural context of the target language text as translating a Song with semantic closeness is a difficult proposition. A Song translation that strives to be semantically accurate can hardly be sung to the music written for the original lyrics, and a song translation that follows the original music must sacrifice optimal verbal fidelity. Either way, Songs must sacrifice authenticity in meaning in order to be singable in another language, and vice-versa.
Further, in a case, where even though a song is recognized across cultures, a problem can still arise when listeners don’t understand its meaning. Thus, the lyrics are to be translated and localized in an effective manner.
Many a times, the resultant translated song is in the form of a hybrid song. This is caused due to interaction between two or more cultures which either leads to permanence or transformation. That is, it adopts some features of the text in the source culture which is not always desirable because it’s a compromise rather than an accurate translation of the song.
While most literary texts allow translators to take certain liberties such as- making sentences longer, omit others and provide footnotes when necessary. But, in the case of Songs, there is no room for footnotes. Ttranslation must perfectly fit within the predetermined rhythm and melody.
Though the process of translating Poetry as well as Song is closely related, yet they are not quite same. While Translation is vital to Poetry as the nature of all verbal language is woefully non-universal, it isn’t quite necessary in the case of a Song. Some differences concerning translation of a Poem vis-a-vis a Song are:
Translating poems is less complex than translating songs because while “words” are centrally emphasized in a poetic translation, “melody” (music) and “rhythm”, i.e. lyrical and tonal quality lies at the centre in song translation.
A translator can use colloquial words in a song translation, but colloquial vocabulary might mar the effect in a poetic translation. While a poetic translation lays more emphasis on “instruct”, a song translation emphasizes more on “delight”. While the rhythmic structure has to be aptly adhered to in a poetic translation, there is no such pressure in the case of song translation.
