Song Translations

Veo arboles verdes, rosas rojas tambien

Las veo florecer para ti y para mi

Y pienso para mi mismo, que mundo tan maravilloso.

Sound familiar? I came across a site last week called Song Translator that while entertaining, shows just how difficult it is to produce a top-notch song translation. Like poetry, music lyrics have a rhythm, a feeling, a sound that are notoriously difficult to replicate. The rhyme scheme goes            out the window, the subtle innuendos and word play are often lost and the translated lyrics typically come out stilted and clumsy.

That being said, the site is great if you want to have some fun, maybe laugh at how silly some songs would sound in another language.  Guns N’ Roses in Spanish? Luis Miguel in English? The site is however well put together, showing the lyrics in Spanish and English, sometimes along with a Youtube video of the original.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 1:53 pm and is filed under English Language Translation, For the Spanish Translator, Spanish Language Translation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.