Lost in Translation
John Nicol talks us through one of the trickier elements of putting on an opera – language. John is an opera stage manager, language graduate and has been BYO's senior stage manager since 2018.
Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray in 2003’s Lost in Translation
It’s now been ten years since I graduated from the University of St Andrews with an MA in French and Spanish (with Russian). I’d always known I wanted to work in theatre, but thought it best to go and do something else first, hence the languages. The upshot of that was that I spent four very long years yearning to be working in theatre.
It never even occurred to me that I could combine my love of languages with my love of theatre, but I have now worked on operas in French, Italian, Russian, German and English. I always enjoy working on an opera I haven’t done before, more so if it is in the original language. English translations can be incredibly difficult though. Trying to fit the sense and nuance of the original is hard enough, but adding beat, tempo, and sometimes, rhyme into the mix can be an enormous task for some translators. There are some scores out there which will have the original and English ‘translation’ side-by-side and six or seven times out of ten it doesn’t really match with the original at all.
Welcome to the ins and outs of translation
A simple phrase like I love you [I.luv.u] works in most languages musically: je t’aime [ji.tehm.muh], or Io t’amo [eeoh.ta.mo]. It’s three beats and can be sung quite quickly, or with an elongated love or you. However, in walks German’s ich liebe dich [eekh.leb.buh.deekh] and Russian’s Я ты люблю [ya.te.loob.lyou.]. Both have four beats. Arghh!
“you need that artistic, or theatrical touch, because true translation is just as much an art as a science”
Sometimes a translator has to get creative. Take the phrase ‘senza mama’ (Suor Angelica, Puccini). It sounds much more lyrical than ‘without mother’ which is a direct translation and technically correct. So perhaps instead you could have ‘with no mother’, ‘without your Mummy’ or ‘Motherless’? In my opinion, Motherless gives a lot more of the nuance and heartbreak of the piece, but that is affording me, just a lowly translator, a hell of a lot of artistic freedom. And, of course, it is only three beats, whereas the original is sung over 4. Another translation headache.
It’s a bit easier with plays (there’s no music, just text), yet for some reason many translations there are poor as well. This is because there’s a person doing their job of being a translator and doing just that - translating word for word from one language into another. It can be very academic, stuffy and plain. I’m a huge Checkhov fan, and for me the translations of Michael Frayn are excellent. He is a playwright himself, who just happens to have studied Russian at University. You need that artistic, or theatrical touch, because true translation is just as much an art as a science.
Opera titles
If we start with translating titles of operas, even that can prove difficult. I recently saw a production of Offenbach’s La Belle Hélène. I assumed it would be in French, but it was in English. So why not translate the title? Possibly because that leaves us with ‘The Beautiful Helen’, that’s why. ‘Helen the Fair’, ‘Beautiful Helen of Sparta’, ‘The Beautiful Queen of Sparta’, or even ‘Helen, Queen of Sparta’ would all be more enticing titles, in my opinion, but then you’ve got the problem that you’re now quite far away from the original direct translation.
Leopoldo Metlicovitz artwork for the Suor Angelica premiere, 1918.
Last season BYO presented La Cenerentola, sung in English. Should we also translate the title? If we do, we get Cinderella, of course, which is fine, except there are three French Operas and one Italian all with the same name when translated into English: Rossini, Massenet, Isouard or Viardot. And then we have titles such as La bohème and La Gioconda, with near untranslatable names. You could just put The Boheme or The Gioconda, but that seems silly.
Idioms
Idioms are by far the hardest thing for a translator to make sense of. There are phrases in one language that when translated make absolutely no sense, if given a direct translation.
Take: it’s raining cats and dogs. Six syllables, and can probably be sung in six beats. In French, a direct translation would be: il pleut aux chats et chiens. Six syllables, so it’ll fit the music, but you have a lot of confused French people asking why their pets are falling from the sky. The actual phrase in French is: il pleut aux seaux (it’s raining buckets). Four syllables. Merde. How do I make [eel.ploot.oh.so] last six notes? Where do i put the inflection, what do I stretch out? The first ee, oo, or elongate the oh so? Where does the music go? It makes your brain hurt just thinking about it.
If you really want a challenge, think about Gilbert and Sullivan, the masters of uniquely British phrases, idioms and sayings. It’s almost impossible to translate in any meaningful way, but that doesn’t stop people trying - there have been German, Portuguese, French, Italian and even Swedish, Hebrew and Japanese translations.
Surtitles
Finally, a personal translation bugbear: surtitles. Sometimes surtitles are laid out so that a slide with the punchline or vital information on it is revealed before the singer has had time to sing it out first. It detracts from the action and breaks the tension. If it’s a comedy, the audience are laughing before the singer has finished the gag. Audiences who can’t speak the language are relying on every pixelated dot that the screen to guide them through the show, and if it doesn’t match exactly what’s happening on stage then we’re in trouble.
Surtitles are an art form in themselves. I only realised this when I had to operate surtitles on a production of Don Carlo at Grange Park Opera. Having spent years rolling my eyes, or tutting at surtitles which were either early, late, gave the game away too early, or simply made very little sense, it was an eye opening experience to actually have to operate them myself. I couldn’t change or alter the slides (the translation was a little bit ropey at times), but I did have the power to not press the button until the absolute right moment.
BYO’s La Cenerentola, 2019
If you were to design the ‘perfect’ surtitle programme, I believe it would consist of thousands (rather than the typical 300-400 slides a show) of slides. You’d get smaller doses of information, and at the exact same time as it is being sung by the performer. You’d have to do some very creative translation, and use a lot of artistic licence I’m sure. It would also mean some unlucky person would have to be pressing a button hundreds of times more than usual. So if anyone out there has some spare time, money, and a real thirst for getting all nerdy with translation, get in touch.
So my point, I think, is that translation is hard. Sometimes it’s really hard, and translators have an impossible task in front of them. In fact, ever since I took 3rd year French translation, I have never wanted to be a translator less. But I am happy to continue working in this wonderful industry, getting to experience new operas, revisiting old ones, and bringing this wonderful form of entertainment to life.
