Functional approach to songs in film translation: Challenges and compromises

Abstract

Translation of songs used in films comprises a unique phenomenon since it supposes to take into account an interdependence of two multimodal systems and their components. The challenges associated with the translation of songs in films manifest themselves both on the level of an internal system of a song (interconnection of lyrics and music on prosodic, poetic and semantic levels) and external relations of a song and a film it is immersed into (visual, audial and semantic levels of interaction). The article attempts to consider translation of songs in films within the frameworks of the functional approach and states that the pragmatic function and communicative purpose of a song in a film are translation dominants. The paper suggests and discusses five levels of correspondence between the source song and target song in film translation, i.e., pragmatic, semantic, stylistic, cinematic, and aesthetic. It determines a correlation between translation technique used in the recreation of lyrics (zero translation, interlinear translation and adaptation) and potentially achievable levels of correspondence.