Song Lyrics, Translated

Happy Friday, dear readers! We recently heard about a cool translation project that's currently underway -- translating English-language lyrics of songs into other languages, which is quite a challenging undertaking. Have a look at this here

The site currently features two very impressive videos (original recordings of the translated lyrics). The idea is to translate one famous American or British song into Spanish, Italian and French every two months. Readers can vote for the song that they would like to get translated. Next up: Bohemian Rhapsody (quite a challenge). Our colleague Pablo Muñoz also recently wrote about this very cool initiative here. Pablo is working on this project with Liam Curley of Smoke & Croak, a British company that specializes in website localization.

Now, we'd like to issue a challenge: Could they translate some of our favorite Luis Miguel songs into English? I bet that would be a lot of fun!




4 comments:

Unknown on June 10, 2014 at 3:04 AM said...

Thanks for the mention Judy and Dagmar! Bohemian Rhapsody is certainly a challenge. I went to see the 'We will rock you' show in Salamanca in Spain a few years ago. They'd translated all songs apart from 'We will rock you' (I guess because it is the title of the show?) and Bohemian Rhapsody. Even the music professionals didn't fancy the challenge. We'll see how we get on.

Would love to know if anyone thinks there is a tougher song to translate? :)

Liam

Judy Jenner and Dagmar Jenner on June 10, 2014 at 5:26 PM said...

@Liam: Oh, too funny! That musical was quite average (it had a short run in Vegas), and wow, I can't believe they translated most of the songs. We are quite sure that's not how Queen intended it. :)

Off the top of our heads, we cannot think of a tougher song to translate; so you do have your work cut out for you. What a lovely project!

kltranslations on June 30, 2014 at 6:04 AM said...

Thanks for the mention Judy and Dagmar! Bohemian Rhapsody is certainly a challenge.

Judy Jenner and Dagmar Jenner on July 1, 2014 at 9:05 AM said...

@kltranslations: You are very welcome! Cannot wait to see/listen to the results. What a great project indeed!

Join the conversation! Commenting is a great way to become part of the translation and interpretation community. Your comments don’t have to be overly academic to get published. We usually publish all comments that aren't spam, self-promotional or offensive to others. Agreeing or not agreeing with the issue at hand and stating why is a good way to start. Social media is all about interaction, so don’t limit yourself to reading and start commenting! We very much look forward to your comments and insight. Let's learn from each other and continue these important conversations.

Subscribe by email:

 

Twitter update


Site Info

The entrepreneurial linguists and translating twins blog about the business of translation from Las Vegas and Vienna.

Translation Times