Keynote speakers
Panel A
Panel B
Panel C
Panel D
~
Keynote speakers
Thursday 15 May, 17:00–18:00 (RHB 137) – Keynote Lecture 1:
Jeremy Sams, “Operas, musicals and plays – oh my!”
The craft of translating words and fitting them to existing music has been a big part of my life for the last 40 years. Starting with opera. My first was at John Lewis (they used to have an opera company!). I then graduated to Opera North, ENO and Covent Garden, and the Met in New York. More and more, though, I became interested in sung texts that reflect the spirit of the original, as much as its literal meaning (I’ve gone as far as creating a totally new text for existing operas). Translating operetta, and musical theatre has been very liberating in this regard. Most recently I’ve moved onto German Lieder and French mélodies, which has opened a whole new world to me.
Jeremy Sams is a theatre director, lyricist and translator of plays and opera libretti as well as a composer, orchestrator and musical director. Jeremy studied Music, French and German at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and Piano at the Guildhall School of Music. Jeremy’s film composing credits include the BBC adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, for which he won a BAFTA award for ‘Best Music’. Jeremy has worked on a series of films by award-winning director Roger Michell. In 2005 Jeremy wrote the score for the screen adaptation of Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love – winning the 2005 Ivor Novello award for ‘Best Score for a Feature Film’. In the theatre, Jeremy has many directorial credits, including The Wizard of Oz (London Palladium), and The Sound of Music (London Palladium, Princess of Wales Theatre Toronto). He wrote the libretto for This Enchanted Island (Metropolitan Opera, New York). Jeremy’s many translations include Figaro’s Wedding, La Boheme, The Magic Flute and The Ring Cycle (ENO); The Merry Widow (Covent Garden); and Les Parents Terribles, The Miser and Mary Stuart (Royal National Theatre).
~
Friday 16 May, 10:30–11:30 (RHB 137) – Keynote Lecture 2:
Şebnem Susam-Saraeva, Listening to the more-than-human: interspecies communication represented in music
More-than-human communication systems have inspired various human art forms, often quite distanced from the actual context and signification of their origins. The popularity of “whale songs” since the 1970s, for instance, has relied on the aestheticisation and mystification of their languages, initially for raising environmental awareness, later also for commercial purposes. More recent artistic endeavours instead place emphasis on the materiality of cetaceans’ lives and the many threats they encounter, e.g. entanglements, captivity, plastic and noise pollution. The objective of the keynote is to explore a more ethical representation and translation of cetacean communication systems in arts and music.
Şebnem Susam-Saraeva holds a Personal Chair of Translation Studies at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, U.K. Her past research included translation of literary theories, retranslations, research methodology in translation studies, internationalisation of the discipline, non-professionals translating/interpreting, translation and gender, translation and popular music, and ethical & representational issues in translation. Her recent work focuses on translation/interpreting in maternal health and on eco-translation, particularly interspecies communication. She is the author of Translation and Popular Music: Transcultural Intimacy in Turkish-Greek Relations (2015) and Theories on the Move: Translation’s Role in the Travels of Literary Theories (2006), and editor of Translation and Music (2008), Non-Professionals Translating and Interpreting: Participatory and Engaged Perspectives (2012, with Luis Pérez-González) and Routledge Handbook of Translation and Health (2021, with Eva Spišiaková).
~
Panels
09:00–10:30 (RHB 137) – Panel A: Translating Words into Music: Poetry and Novels, Scores and Performances
Chair: Helen Julia Minors
Gergely Loch – The Bleeding Church-Organ
In 1993 Swedish composer and organist Johannes Johansson gave a concert in a medieval church in Southern Sweden, combining 17th-century organ music with his own electroacoustic compositions. Later that year, Swedish poet Eva Ström published her volume Brandenburg, whose third poem, The Bleeding Church-Organ had been inspired by Johansson’s concert. In 1996 the Alice record company commissioned the Stockholm-based Hungarian composer and church organist Ákos Rózmann to create electroacoustic music to a CD featuring five of Ström’s poems read by the author. Rózmann had an active role in the selection of poems, and it was likely his idea to include ‘The Bleeding Church-Organ’, a poem whose background he didn’t know anything about, but whose cryptic text seemed to concern musical activities much like his own. In his movement introducing the poem, Rózmann used organ sounds from his workplace, the Catholic Cathedral of Stockholm.
In my paper I present this instance of music-text-music transduction (Boria and Tomalin 2020: 5). I lay emphasis on Rózmann’s movement, in which the composer selected each and every basic sound material to match specific words in Ström’s poem.
While Rózmann’s music can be heard on the bimedial CD, Johansson’s music — the precondition for both Ström’s and Rózmann’s work — is only present as a “ghost”, being only known by historical research. Finally, I ponder to what extent and in what sense the “ghost” can be considered a member of this family of works of art, and what role does it play in the aesthetics of the whole.
Gergely Loch studied musicology at the Liszt Academy of Music, Budapest, and at the University of Stockholm. He gained his PhD degree in 2022 at the former institution, where he also worked as an assistant researcher and lecturer between 2016 and 2022. Since 2022 he works in Sweden as an independent musicologist, with funding from Längmanska kulturfonden and Åke Wibergs stiftelse. His research concerns liminal situations of acoustic culture, in and beyond the realm of what is usually called ‘music’.
~
Nick Bentley and James Peacock – Stories into Song
This presentation, which includes musical interludes, emerges from an ongoing research project called “Stories into Song,” which began in 2023 with a British-Academy-funded pilot.
Up to now, there has been little academic study into the theory and the creative processes involved in the adaptation (or “translation”) of longer-form literary texts such as novels and short stories into pop and rock songs. This paper, presented by two literary scholars and keen amateur musicians, reflects the different aspects of our project so far. With brief reference to other examples, we take a couple of well-known songs adapted from, or at least inspired by literary texts – Kate Bush’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ and Rush’s ‘Tom Sawyer’ – and analyse the decisions made by each artist with regard to genre, instrumentation, selected aspects of the source text and harmonic structure. Secondly, we discuss the processes involved in our own adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and play extracts from the recording. Thirdly, we discuss the workshops we ran at Keele University (2023-24) with volunteers from the Potteries area, in which we co-created and recorded a song adapted from Daphne Du Maurier’s short story, ‘Don’t Look Now’. Finally, we offer some initial thoughts, based on our work so far, on the development of a theory and methodology for fiction-to-song adaptation/translation, and the possibilities of such co-creative work as an innovative method for literary analysis.
Nick Bentley is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Keele University in the UK. He specialises in postwar and contemporary British fiction, with a particular interest in working-class fiction, subcultural fictions (the subject of his latest monograph project), and marginalized and intersectional voices. He is a keen amateur musician whose work can be found at https://soundcloud.com/quantumofwantum
James Peacock is Reader in English and American Literatures at Keele University in the UK. He specialises in contemporary fiction of urban spaces, and his current research concerns literary representations of gentrification. His new monograph, Gentrification in Contemporary Fiction: Domestic Spaces, Neighborhoods, and Global Real Estate will be published by Bloomsbury in summer 2025. He is also a keen amateur musician and songwriter, whose original music can be heard at https://www.reverbnation.com/jamespeacock
~
Serena Volpi – Blurring Orality and Music in British Hip-Hop Theatre
This paper explores the relationship between poetry, orality, and music in British hip-hop theatre focusing on the works that have made hip-hop popular in the London West End; in particular, the Katie Prince Company’s productions Into the Woods (2008) and Sylvia (2018), and less mainstream works such as 13 Mics (2005) by Benji Reid and The Letter (2012) by Jonzi D. Hip-hop theatre has been defined as “theatre with hip hop in it” (Chang 2005) addressing the hip-hop generation (Hoch 2006) and presenting in its storytelling one or more of the main four elements of hip-hop, namely rapping/MC’ing, DJ’ing, B’boying/breakdancing, graffiti. However, Davis (2004) has argued that, for many working in this genre, it could be more a matter of translating the sensibility and stories of the hip-hop generation for the theatre. Following Davis’ idea of “found in translation”, the presentation addresses the theme of translation and hip-hop theatre from multiple perspectives: first of all, the transposition of the concept of hip-hop theatre from the United States to the United Kingdom; secondly, the blurring of music and spoken word in the genre and, finally, the translation of hip-hop themes and aesthetics from the more political and intimate works by Reid and Jonzi D. to the popularisation of the genre in the London West End.
Serena I. Volpi is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Roma Tre University, Rome, and a Lecturer in Anthropology at Lorenzo de’ Medici, The Italian International Institute, Florence. She holds a PhD in English Studies from Brunel University London. She has specialised on works by African-American artists/anthropologists and authors of the African diaspora. She has published on Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, Katherine Dunham, Sherman Alexie, D. Scot Miller, and Italian postcolonialism. She is a regular reviewer at L’Indice dei libri del mese, one of the most important Italian literary magazines. Her most recent work is Blacknology: Black Literature, Culture, and Technology (2025).
~
12:00–13:30 (RHB 137) – Panel B: Translating Lyrics: Procedures, Copyright, and Polysystems
Chair: Annjo K. Greenall
Adrian Rexgren (PG bursary recipient) – Touring Musicians and Their Perglossic Music
Musicians with international success often record versions of their songs in other languages. Whether it is the artist or not who rewords these songs in another language, decisions are made for translated versions to achieve levels of singability (Low 2016) and appeal to new audiences by keeping diverse interrelation points to the original. Ideally, a translated song is situated along an equivalence spectrum that somehow connects to the original melody, rhythm, as well as source text lyric’s metrics and meaning (Kvam 2018). When referring to the same tune with different words, the term interlingual cover song (Susan-Saraeva 2018) has been recently proposed and used; but would it be applicable to a song re-released by its same composer? Is the term still applicable if both versions are released at the same time? To explore this question, the concept of perglossic music is introduced. In order to exemplifies the differences between notions, the present contribution examines three cases of translated lyrics, for which i) the original song is an instrumental version, ii) the translated version merely keeps ST topic and tone, iii) the translated version keeps prosodical proximity to the ST and its stress sequences, and iv) a cross-genre version that only keeps the original’s melody. Approaching lyrics from a comparative perspective is a useful method that reveals how mutual multidimensional approximation (Franzon 2022) is constructed. The analysis resorts to the six-tier method classification described by Franzon (2021: 117) and the concept of rhythm and rhyme tweaking (Low 2016: 100).
Adrian Rexgren is a PhD student in the Department of Education at Stockholm University, Sweden, where he teaches Education in Multicultural Society for undergraduate students. His research interests focus on multicultural education, lifelong learning, language education and didactics and translation. He has recently participated on an interchange for the cross-cultural study of sacred music at the Kapodistrian University of Athens and the Autonomous University of Madrid, and in Lithuania, at Vytautas Magnus University, for an inter-institutional experience exchange revolving EU Higher Education plurilingual approaches and informal learning. Currently, he is conducting research in the area of translation pedagogy and translanguaging.
~
Annjo K. Greenall – Why I Will Never Again Release a Music Album with Translated Lyrics
In 2012 I released an album with songs made famous by American jazz singer Billie Holiday, translated into Norwegian. In 2017 I did something similar, translating and recording English-language pop songs written by Norwegian-language artists. In both cases the actual recording sessions took somewhere between 3-5 days, while the struggle to obtain permissions to record the songs ‘with new lyrics,’ had taken up to 2 years of bureaucratic maneuvering. In this autoethnographic study, I describe this process in some detail, examining, from a critical perspective, the various practical hurdles that stand in the way of singer-translators who want to use pop song translation as their artistic means of expression. Based on previous work on ‘creative translation’, I discuss the experiential and ethical dimensions of not knowing whether permission to use one’s translations will be granted, and of not being awarded any kind of rights to one’s own work if they are. I discuss rights holders’ potential reasons for wanting to hold back on such rights, and the relative legitimacy of these reasons. Finally, I argue for a deeper understanding of translation as a form of artistic expression and for a softening of rules and regulations that currently apply, among other things because these have led to a disproportionately high level of translational activity around a small handful of original singer-songwriters (notably Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen), who(se representatives), unlike many others, have been liberal in issuing permissions to use translations of their songs. Such a softening is necessary, I argue, for pop song translation to develop into a blossoming, inclusive, diversified artform.
Annjo K. Greenall is professor of English language and translation studies at the Department of Language and Literature at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway. She has published a number of articles on different aspects of song translation and has recently co-edited the anthology Song Translation: Lyrics in Contexts (Frank & Timme), with, among others, Johan Franzon (University of Helsinki, Finland). She has released two music albums with translations of her own songs into Norwegian: Eg vandrar langs kaiane [I wander along the quays] (2012), and Løgn og forbannet gjendiktning [Lies and bloody re-poetizations] (2017).
~
Anna Rędzioch-Korkuz – When the Foreign Travels Back Home: A Tale of the Broadway Staging of the First Polish Musical
The paper will present an interesting case of Metro, a Polish musical directed and choreographed by Janusz Józefowicz with music by Janusz Stokłosa and lyrics by Agata and Maryna Miklaszewskie. Having premiered on January 31, 1991, the musical may be considered the first show of this genre in Poland and the only Polish production to be staged on Broadway (at the Minskoff Theatre in April 1992). The musical continues to be staged on a regular basis at the Studio Buffo Theatre in Warsaw. However, its reception overseas was rather negative and the musical closed within a month after only 13 performances.
The paper will present the story behind the Metro musical, with special reference to the question of the relation between the two polysystems and the potential source texts (or the hypotext) of the musical and its originality (it was assumed at one point that it was based on the American musical A Chorus Line). The analysis of the paratextual elements (mainly available reviews) will help to recreate the agency of patrons and dominant poetics, working as regulatory bodies of the target polysystem. That, along with a comparative analysis of selected singable translations and performances, will hopefully help to address the question regarding the short lifespan of the English version of the musical. What made the Polish musical so different from other texts despite its following target norms: was it because of the lack of creativity of the translator, the poor performance of Polish amateur singers or the power of the American musical theatre polysystem?
The paper will use a descriptive framework of analysis, including the examination of polysystems relations and the role of patronage, and will thus contribute to target-oriented research on song translation.
Anna Rędzioch-Korkuz is Associate Professor in the Institute of English Studies at the University of Warsaw, Poland. Her main research interests lie in theoretical translation studies, with particular reference to the relationship between translation and semiotics, the problem of translation constraints and a general theory of translation. Her research concentrates also on opera surtitling and singable translation.
~
14:30–16:30 (RHB 137) – Panel C: Translating Music Into and Beyond Words
Chair: Arianna Autieri
Helen Julia Minors – Opportunities and Challenges in Interdisciplinary Musical Multimodal Translation: The Case of Christopher Nolan’s Films
Music and Translation has been a growing field in translation studies, multimodal studies, musicology, choreomusicology and multimodal studies, ever since Susam-Saraeva (2008) rightly noted that talking across disciplines opens many cans of worms. Since then, there has been a growing body of work around music and translation, recently surveyed by Rȩdzioch-Korkuz (2024). In this paper, I build on theories of multimodal translation in musical texts (Minors, 2013), opera (2021), film (2023), dance (2023), and choreomusical studies (2025), to tackle the issue of how an understanding and application of a process of music and translation gives voice and enables meaning delivery beyond verbal and textual means.
Further challenging the myths of music and translation (Minors, 2021), I propose a number of opportunities for the field, in advancing multimodal readings, understandings and application sin practice for creative artists. Taking specific examples form the work of director Christipher Nolan, I illustrate how music gives voice to settings, characters, issues and concepts, that otherwise would not be projected to a spectator, and discuss the importance of the extra linguistic modes within translation studies for a digital age.
Helen Julia Minors is Professor and Head of the School of Arts at York St John University. She is also Visiting Professor of Artistic Research at Lulea University of Technology in Sweden. She has published 8 books including: Music, Dance and Translation (Bloomsbury 2023); and Music, Text and Translation (Bloomsbury, 2013); as well as a range of texts exploring music and translation, in Tibon (2021), Routledge Companion to Applied Musicology (2023), and Intersemiotic Perspectives on Emotions: Translating across Signs, Bodies and Values (2023). As a performer, broadcaster, EDI advocate and musicologist her practice, pedagogy and research all centre on translation processes.
~
Karen Bennett – Les Sauvages: A Case Study in Musical Translationality
The term ‘translationality’, borrowed from the medical sciences by Robinson (2017) and developed by Blumczynski (2023), Vidal (2024) and Bennett (forthcoming), refers to an understanding of translation that is primarily vertical (or diachronic) and thus embraces the inevitability of change. Experienced and performed somatically through the body, translation under this paradigm is no longer restricted to linguistic manoeuvres, but includes intersemiotic and multimodal processes, and is applicable to people, objects, ideas – anything, in fact, that transports meaning.
This paper explores translationality in music through a case study that centres around the Baroque piece Les Sauvages by Jean-Phillippe Rameau. Initially composed as a rondeau for harpsichord in 1725 and later incorporated into the opera-ballet Les Indes Galantes in 1736, this was an attempt to translate into the French musical idiom aspects of a ‘calumet dance’ that Rameau had seen performed at the Théâtre Italien in Paris by a group of Mitchegamea Indians from the Mississippi basin. Since then, Rameau’s piece has itself been performed and adapted in many different ways. This paper will focus particularly on the pivotal role it plays in Sabra Louatah’s novel quartet Les Sauvages, Vols. I-IV (2012-16) and the TV mini-series based on it (Rebecca Zlotowski, 2019), which explore problems of integration and identity faced by a Maghrebi immigrant community in contemporary France.
Karen Bennett is Associate Professor in Translation at Nova University of Lisbon and Coordinator of the Translationality strand at the research unit CETAPS (Centre for English, Translation and Anglo-Portuguese Studies). She is general editor of the journal Translation Matters and member of the editorial board of the Brill series Approaches to Translation Studies. Within the field of Translation and Music, she recently organized a short online course entitled Soundscapes: Translating from Music, and reflected on the experience in a book chapter published in M. Campbell & R. Vidal, eds. The Experience of Translation: Materiality and Play in Experiential Translation (Routledge 2024, pp. 159-173). Other relevant publications include an article about Richard Strauss’s Salome as an intersemiotic translation of Wilde’s play of the same name (Translation Matters 2:1, 2019, pp. 43-61) and several articles and chapters about Prokofiev’s ballet score Romeo and Juliet as intersemiotic translation of Shakespeare’s play.
~
Brett Robinson – Opera Translaboration: An Embodied, Materially Mediated Practice of Translation
Translating opera libretti for performance in English is particularly challenging due to their plural nature and multiple purposes. The translator of a singable text works with three elements at any one point: the verbal component of the source text, its transposition into the target language, and the music that carries both. While translators must grasp the meaning, the stylistic choices made by librettists in the source language, and their relationship to musical genres and traditions, they must also make them singable. Singable translations require consideration of the organs involved in producing sound (lungs, diaphragm, larynx), and the vocal technique that allows opera singers to interpret the words. They must also be comfortable for singers to perform on stage and clear to the audience.
In 2025, a co-creative approach to opera translation is uncommon in British opera houses. My research therefore focuses on translating opera libretti from multiple languages into English for professional singing and performance purposes. It responds to the “call for a multidisciplinary approach” (Susam-Saraeva 2008: 189) to translation and “the creation of a new vision which no discipline could generate alone” (Zwischenberger 2020). It investigates opera translaboration as a potential collaborative practice or joint “translationship” (Jansen and Wegener 2013, 5), applying practice theory (Schatzki, Shove et Al and Olohan) to explain its socio-theoretical complexities and highlight aspects of translation that might otherwise be neglected. In opera translaboration, the central phase of negotiation underlines the interplay between bodily actions, materials, and ‘know- how’ which is not theoretical or ‘embrained’ but moreover transpires in practice.
Brett Robinson began his career as a legal translator in Milan after a Law and Languages degree at Cardiff Law School and Pavia University, Northern Italy. He then worked for BBC Radio 3 and BBC Television as a director before leaving to pursue a professional singing career. He sang professionally throughout the UK for 17 years before returning to academia. He is currently completing his interdisciplinary PhD in Translation Studies at Manchester University on Collaborative Translation (Translaboration) for Opera. Brett also holds a BA in French and Spanish and an MA in Music Performance. Since 2013, he has taught Italian to undergraduate and postgraduate students at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.
~
Angela Tiziana Tarantini – Music for the Eyes: Strategies by Sign Language Interpreter-Performers to Facilitate Access to Music for Deaf Signers
In this talk I will present the result of a recently-concluded EU-funded project1 that analyses sign-language-interpreted music as a form of “Performative Rewriting” (term originally coined by Marinetti 2018). One of the aims of the project was to identify strategies implemented by sign language interpreter-performers to embody words and music of a song to facilitate access to deaf signers. Through observation of and interviews with interpreter-performers working in different sign languages (Australian, British, Dutch and Italian Sign Language) I was able to identify what I call “patterns of performativity”, i.e. ways in which verbal and nonverbal elements of a song are translated into signs and movements. Music thus becomes a performing art that is “embodied” (Fisher, 2021), visual, and therefore potentially more accessible to deaf signers. Some of those strategies identified will be presented during my talk. From a theoretical perspective, the combination of the theories of performance philosopher Grant (2013, 2015) and the notion of performativity in/of translation (Baldo, 2019; Bermann, 2014; Marinetti, 2013, among others) enabled me to theorise the practice of interpreting songs into sign language as a “performative event” (term coined by Grant 2013) and to establish performativity as an element and carrier of accessibility (Tarantini, 2023).
Angela Tiziana Tarantini worked as tutor and lecturer of English as additional language for several universities in Italy before moving to Australia for her doctorate. She obtained her PhD in Translation Studies at Monash University in Melbourne (Australia) in 2017. During and after her doctoral studies, she worked as Teaching Associate for Translation and Interpreting Studies, Linguistics, and Italian Studies at Monash University. In 2021 she was awarded a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellowship, which she carried out at Cardiff University (UK). She is currently Assistant Professor of Translation Studies at the Department of Languages, Literature and Communication at Utrecht University (The Netherlands).
~
16:40–18:40 (RHB 137) – Panel D: Reflecting on the Practice
Chair: Alexis Bennett
Mie Othelie Berg – “What Strange People” – Querini, ‘Otherness’ and Libretto Translation as a Narrative Tool
In 2012, the opera Querini premiered on Røst in Lofoten, Norway, telling the true story of a 15th-century Venetian shipwreck on the island. The project had a strong local connection, being based on local history and featuring a cast of locals alongside professional soloists, with lyrics written in a northern-Norwegian dialect.
In 2023, a long-held ambition that the opera should go to Italy came true, with a full-scale production in Venice. This project raised the question of how to handle the libretto, and the decision was made to have it translated, turning the opera trilingual, and to forgo surtitles. Norwegian characters would retain their dialect, while Italian characters would sing in Italian, and the narrator in English. After some difficulty finding a translation that worked musically, I was invited to translate the part of the narrator, as a musician with a close understanding of both English and dialect, and a close connection to the project.
This paper will explore the decision to translate Querini, the process of translating it, and what this decision meant for the opera as a work of art – in particular its narrative impact and its role in emphasising “otherness” between the characters. It will also examine the impact on audiences’ experience of the opera, and how much of the translated version was transmitting the original work to a broader audience, and how much it was a new work of art in its own right.
Mie Othelie Berg is from Bodø, Norway, and is an active performing musician and freelance writer. In 2022, she completed her PhD in music at the University of Birmingham, where her thesis focused on secular English organ history in the 19th century. She has been involved with the Querini opera project since its inception, and reworked part of the libretto into English in 2023, upon the project going to Italy.
~
Marta Kaźmierczak – An Ancient Topic, a Baroque Opera and a Turn-of-the-21st-Century Translation (Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas in Polish).
The aim of the contribution is to discuss the libretto of Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas in the singable Polish translation by Stanisław Barańczak (1946-2014). Barańczak, renowned for his virtuosity, stamina and wit, authored acclaimed translations of poetry, Shakespeare and, indeed, of operas, Lieder and songs from a number of languages.
I intend to illustrate briefly that his Dydona i Eneasz remains eminently performable to the original music while being a lively and natural text in the target language. I will also inspect potentially sensitive issues, like changing an exclamation into a question (which may go against the grain of the music, cf. Wilson-deRoze 2020) or describing the soundscape of the opera in a more specific way than Nahum Tate’s original libretto does (a reference to dogs barking).
Furthermore, I intend to investigate how the translator negotiates modern audiences’ sensibilities and their knowledge of mythology – differing from that of the 17th-century genteel or courtly audience. This entails probing the style adopted in the target text and Barańczak’s attitude towards those erudite elements whose decoding by a modern recipient in immediate perception is not likely.
I will survey the various references to Fate, Destiny, Angry God(s) and the pattern(s) of their Polish equivalents to establish whether the translation shifts responsibility for the eponymous couple’s separation. Due attention will also be paid to the imagery of Dido’s final lament.
I would also like to touch upon the stage presence of this translation. The critical reception of Barańczak operatic translations (Straburzyński 2015) will be referenced. Basic information on the tradition of translating operas to be sung on the Polish stage will be provided for context.
Marta Kaźmierczak is a translation scholar and associate professor at the Institute of Applied Linguistics, University of Warsaw. She holds MA in English and Russian, and a PhD and postdoctoral degree in the Humanities. Her main research interests include poetry translation, intertextuality, intersemioticity and translation of multimodal texts. Author of a monograph on intertextuality in translation (2012) and of over sixty papers, the topics of which include translators in a concert hall, and Polish and English retranslations of a song by Jacques Brel. The multimedial online thematic encyclopedia The Senses in Polish Culture features her comprehensive entry on the subject of translating musical-verbal works.
~
Ileana Marcela Muñoz Rodríguez (PG bursary recipient) – Challenges and Strategies in the Translation of Musical Treatises: The Case of a Spanish Translation of Michel Pignolet de Montéclair’s Principes de Musique (1736)
Since there are no audiovisual records of how music from the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, or the Baroque period was performed, contemporary performers rely primarily on written sources to interpret this music, with treatises being particularly valuable. From the late 1980s, the historically informed performance (HIP) movement emphasized the importance of musicians directly consulting treatises to interpret music as accurately as possible, based on historical sources. But what happens when a musician is unable to read a treatise in its original language and must rely on translation? And what if, in addition to the language barrier, the concepts found in treatises are no longer in use, or their meanings have evolved over the centuries? How are these terms to be translated?
The translation of musical treatises has gained increasing importance in recent years, yet it remains a topic of interest not so much for translators as for musicians and musicologists. This paper aims to highlight, from a translation studies perspective, the challenges translators face when dealing with the specialized language of historical music. Addressing these challenges requires a multidisciplinary approach which has been recently explored by researchers such as
Cristina Diego Pacheco in the field of Renaissance organology. I will be drawing upon a case study: my own translation of the third part of Michel Pignolet de Montéclair’s Principes de Musique (1736) into Spanish, a process informed by both my experience as a professional singer and the approaches to translating terminology that I have studied as a translation student.
Ileana Muñoz Rodríguez, born in Mexico City, graduated in Cultural Studies with a thesis on music and slavery in the Cathedral of Mexico City in the 18th century. She holds a Master’s degree in Vocal Performance from the Haute École de Musique de Genève, and has performed in France, Turkey, Italy, USA, and Switzerland, notably in Baroque and Renaissance repertoire. She worked as a translator for cultural media in Mexico and recently completed a translation internship in the World Federation of Public Health Associations. Ileana is currently pursuing a double Master’s degree in Specialized Translation and Musicology at the University of Geneva.
~
Manuela Francia (PG bursary recipient) – Singing Across Borders: Reimagining the Magic of La donna cannone
This paper explores the artistic and technical challenges of translating La donna cannone, a famous Italian ballad by Francesco De Gregori, into English. La donna cannone, recognised for its poetic imagery and emotional depth, poses particular difficulties for translators seeking to maintain its essence while adapting it to a different linguistic and cultural context. Following Peter Low’s Pentathlon Principle (2017), which delineates strategies for song translation while maintaining rhythm, rhyme, singability, meaning, and naturalness, the analysis emphasises the relationship between fidelity and creativity. Furthermore, the presentation includes Gunther Kress’s theories on multimodality (2009) to examine the song’s performative aspect, highlighting the convergence of linguistic, musical, and visual forms in meaning construction.
The project focuses on preserving the song’s original rhythmic and melodic structure, including syllable count and rhyme systems, to guarantee that the English version maintains its musicality and emotional impact. The presentation examines particular verses and contrasts translation methodologies, highlighting the intricate balance between adherence to the original language and creative interpretation.
Particular emphasis is placed on the interaction of sound, meaning, and cultural significance, underlining the decisions made to convey the song’s essence and its themes of love, freedom, and self-discovery. The paper highlights the translator’s dual position as a craftsman and an artist by merging language proficiency with cultural adaptation.
Manuela Francia is a PhD candidate in Languages, Literatures and Cultures in Contact at the “G. d’Annunzio” University of Chieti-Pescara. She is also a professional singer-songwriter, a certified EMT singing instructor (Estill Master Traine– Estill Voice Training, originally called Estill Voice Craft) and a graduate in Jazz Singing, Popular Music Singing and Contemporary Writing and Arranging from the “L. d’Annunzio” Conservatoire of Pescara. Her research fields include musicals and musical theatre, subtitling, dubbing, cultural studies, discourse analysis, literary and intersemiotic translation, as well as song translation and subtitling for d/Deaf and Hard of Hearing People.
~
Back to the Programme.
Back to the Conference’s home page.
