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Language: en

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Today’s guest video is a little different
from normal,

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so be prepared for music, emoji and being
told you’re hot,

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as Alex from Play the Mind takes on song translations.

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Alex, take it away.

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♫ Give your heart and soul to me

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♫ and life will always be

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♫ La Vie En Rose. ♫

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You just heard a contrafactum.

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That’s when the lyrics of the song are changed,
but the music stays the same.

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Parody songs are a good example of contrafactum
and so are song translations.

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But as opposed to parodies, song translations
give the false impression

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of remaining faithful to the original.

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For instance,

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what I just sang is part of the English version
of the French song

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La Vie En Rose by Edith Piaf.

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The French lyrics of what I sang are,

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"Et dès que je l'aperçois alors je sens
en moi, mon cœur qui bat."

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The meaning of these words has nothing to
do with what I just sang.

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As a matter of fact, the whole English version
ends up becoming short, bilingual,

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gender-neutral and sung directly to the loved
one,

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which are characteristics not present in the
original French version.

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And this song isn’t the only case where
this happens.

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When dealing with any song translation,

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there’s a conflict between the meaning of
the lyrics and the way they sound when spoken.

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If you were to translate a song purely based
on meaning,

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you would end up having lyrics with beats
following on syllables,

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which naturally don't RE-ceive an ac-CENT
when spo-KEN.

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So, somewhere, you need to sacrifice some
meaning in order to preserve good sound.

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And who’s to blame for making song translations
so darn complicated?

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It’s phonology.

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The phonology of a language is like its musical
DNA

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and it has a primordial influence

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on how the melody of a song gets written in
a certain language.

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Even the particular way a baby cries has to
do with how its mother speaks.

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There are two things to consider in phonology.

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The phonemes are the vowels and consonants
that make up speech

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and the prosody of a language is the way the
phonemes are put together

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into syllables, words and sentences and their
intonation

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in order to convey meaning.

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It’s the prosody of English that makes the
difference between saying,

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“Hey, you’re HOT,” and saying,
“Hey. YOU’RE hot.”

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But, back to music.

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It’s the phonological system of a language

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which shapes the melody of a song originally
written in that language.

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And when translating that song into a language

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with a completely different phonological system,

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something ends up sounding bad.

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For instance, some languages, like Hindi or
Italian,

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are more favourable to melismatic singing,

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where you have multiple notes sung over just
a few vowels.

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Here’s an example in English:

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♫ If I...

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♫ should stay... ♫

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That was Whitney Houston.

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And other languages, such as German or Polish,

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are more favourable to syllabic singing,

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where you have one note per syllable.

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♫ Freude schöner Götterfunken

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♫ Tochter aus Elysium! ♫

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That was Ludwig Van.

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Gesundheit!

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Therein lies the crux of the matter.

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Setting the text of a syllabic language to
a melismatic song

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or vice-versa, sounds forced, artificial.

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I’m fully aware that no language is purely
syllabic or purely melismatic,

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but I am emphasising these extremes in order
to drive my point home.

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A song translation can either sound good,
but be inaccurate in meaning,

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or it can be accurate, but sound bad.

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Take your pick.

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But, how important are song translations nowadays?

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Well, think of this.

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Roughly 80 million people speak Korean worldwide,
yet to this day,

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the video on YouTube with most views is the
Korean song ‘Gangnam Style’

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with more than 2.5 billion views.

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This means most of the audience probably didn’t
understand a word that was being sung.

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Go subscribe to Play the Mind for all sorts
of videos about music theory and acoustics,

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including one about the very first mic drop.

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Next time, in the last guest video of the
run,

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we have something in the ever-popular genre
of

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"that thing you’re eating isn’t what you
think it is".

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See you then.