Translation Companies

Hitting the Right Note

Many international singers often translate their works into English or another language to broaden their fan base or break into a different musical market. Performers often cross-over into English language or Spanish language realms to convey their sentiments to a wider range of listeners around the world, but does the message always get across successfully?

Bollywood stars such as Shaan and Usha Uthup often sing in English and make a point of relishing in their confidence in the language, and Usha Uthup has remarkably also rendered countless songs in other languages. Somewhat of an exceptional figure in Indian pop music of the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, Uthup sings in over thirteen Indian languages and several foreign languages. She has recorded tracks in Hindi, Punjabi, Bangla, Assamese, Oriya, Khasi, Gujurati, Marathi, Konkani, Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, and also in English, French, Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish, Sinhalese, Swahili, Russian, Nepalese, Arabic, Creole and Zulu.

However, there are times when an inadequacy in a certain language can detract from the ultimate message of the performance. Take Tanzanian rumba poet Remmy Ongala, for instance, who really hits the mark in Swahili, but doesn't quite have the same appeal in English, as is the case with Youssou N'Dour's English renditions of Senegalese mbalax. A recent international success story is Manu Chao who epitomises the global music scene with his mixed jive of French, Spanish, Portuguese and English. It was a simple formula that didn't need any assistance from a French translation company or a Spanish translation company, it was just a repetition of words, phrases and even sounds, and the result wowed European audiences.

A prime example of untranslatable musical sentiments is found in the art of performing ghazals. With their origins in 6th century pre-Islamic verse, and steeped in the concepts of Sufism, it's difficult to comprehend their expressions of divine love, beauty, loss, and pain from a removed context. Indeed, the English-language attempts at ghazal poetry have been generally deemed unviable, either in the form of translations and adaptations of classic Persian and Urdu ghazals by poets and translation companies, or as original poetic creations. Even in terms of music, ghazals have a greater reception amongst the educated classes due to the complexity of the words and expressions, however there have been recent singers who have done a huge amount to promoting the popularity of the genre, like Hariharan, who learned Urdu as a teenager to be able to emulate his idols, Mehdi Hassan and Jagjit Singh.

See Also:

• Indian Music -- Miscellaneous topics on Indian music explore musical instruments, styles, musicians, and other Indian musical trivia
• Hindustani Music