Musical Translation and Its Multiple Challenges

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the analysis of translated musical productions, where cultural, commercial, and theatrical aspects interact with musical and linguistic parameters. These will be studied as challenges, which are flexible and interrelated. The chapter will examine the cultural and commercial aspects of the process that conditions the ways musicals are imported and consumed. The conjunction between music and words is an argument both for and against translation and is a main priority in singable translation, where articulation, rhythm, and rhyme are common but flexible requisites relative to the overall function of songs in stage musicals. The collaborative nature of musical creation applies to translation, a task that is undertaken by musical, theatrical, and translation professionals who often work in conjunction and whose main priorities will be exemplfied by specfic samples from musicals recently translated and presented on the Barcelona stage.