De “Love in Vain” a “Deixado pra Trás”: tradução anotada de uma canção de Robert Johnson

Abstract

This paper is part of the activities developed by the research project “Song lyric translation from Brazilian Popular Music and Anglo-American Popular Music: theoretical and practical aspects” (PIJ15800-2018, PROPESQ-UFRN). The meetings involve reading and discussing theoretical texts about translation (MUNDAY, 2016; BAKER, 2011; BARBOSA, 2007), literary translation (BRITTO, 2016) and, more specifically, song lyric translation, highlighting the writings by Peter Low (especially LOW, 2017). In its 2018-2019 phase, we chose to translate and analyze the works of two paradigmatic songwriters/singers, respectively from Brazilian Popular Music and North-American Popular Music: Noel Rosa (1910-1937), the first composer of urban sambas to have a substantial number of recorded songs; and Robert Johnson (1911-1938), who also left an expressive recorded legacy, considered one of the fathers of the blues. In this paper, we comment on the translation of “Love in Vain”, one of Johnson’s most famous songs. The translation followed the “Pentathlon Principle” as put forward by Low. In brief, he proposes five criteria for song lyric translation: 1) rhythm: the translated lyrics should maintain the same number of poetic syllables, respecting the stressed ones, which will make it possible to sing the new lyrics over the original melody; 2) sense: as much as possible, it should maintain the same meaning of the original lyrics; 3) singability: it should be easy to sing, avoiding syllables, words or groups of words which are difficult to articulate, especially when they occur on very high or very low notes; 4) naturalness: it should sound as natural as if the song was originally written in the target language; 5) rhymes: whenever possible, it should observe the rhymes used in the original text, or compensate this poetic artifice by using other rhymes. On the whole, we believe we succeeded in translating the song, since we produced a singable version of the lyrics in Portuguese, one that can be sung over the original melody, preserving its sense and including rhymes. The quirks of this translation, as well as the challenges faced, will be commented on in the paper