Corps de l’article

This book represents a milestone development in the combined interdisciplinary fields of Music and Translation Studies. Lucile Desblache presents a text which is engaging and rich in its reach across and through the fields of translation studies, music studies and musicology, multimodal studies and audio-visual translation. Her reach is unique as she is herself both a translation scholar and a musician. She has published much before about music and translation, and she led the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Network Grant, Translating Music.[1] As such, Desblache is uniquely placed to meet her aims to take ‘a broad understanding of translation’ (p. 5) to explore how music can ‘convey meaning across boundaries’ (p. 4). As such, this book has many aims, which build on encouraging a wider scholarship to engage with the methods and concerns of translation studies to reflect on their own fields. The core aims are to ‘expand the existing framework’ (p. 9) for bringing music and translation into dialogue, to ‘review’ the ‘intersections’ between the field (p. 9), and to ‘investigate the creative influence of translation on music’ (p. 9).

There has been a flourish of activity in this area in recent years. Ever since Şebnem SusamSarajeva edited a special edition of The Translator (2008) exploring the connections between music and translation, the field has opened up to question translation in song and opera further (Low 2016, Apter and Herman 2016). But, it has also sparked a wider appeal outside of translation studies. As the translational turn expanded the scope of translation studies more broadly to the humanities and social sciences, as explored by Doris Bachmann-Medick (2009), the meaning of translation has extended to reach all forms of communication and multimodal studies (Kress and Van Leeuwen 2001). As the field of intercultural studies expanded into the performing arts, questions concerning how scholars might, can and do form interpretations across media, across cultures and across eras raise significant issues about how such interpretations are formed. In so doing, it has raised critical questions about the choices made by interpreters, and some, including myself, have made a claim that all forms of interpretation might be understood as acts of translation (Minors 2013). Since then though the translational turn has progressed to a medial turn in that our many forms of communication are becoming increasing digital, mediated via technology, and disseminated globally. As globalisation continues to expand, translation has clearly grown as a field, its methods and approaches providing ways for scholars to consider their place in the process of interpretation. As Venuti, who once claimed the translator to be invisible, now states that we need to look at ‘equivalence, retranslation, and reader reception,’ recognising the need to assess the ‘impact of translation’ not only on those reading it but on those producing it (2013: 1).

As I note elsewhere, when ‘analogies are created to language’ as we see in the performing arts (2019: 158) and when we recognise there is a broader ‘meaning potential’ of texts (Kress and Leeuwen 2001: 10) it is indeed necessary, as Desblache does, to reassess and interrogate the field anew. To do this, she sets out the ‘Global Context’ in the first part of the book, establishing how music is used in different cultures, identifying traits, tropes and approaches which clarify what she refers to as ‘centres’ (p. 15) and ‘peripheries’ (p. 41). Desblache explores how musical texts are effected and influenced by translation in Chapter 3, notably acknowledging the problem and opportunities where the ‘(un)translatability’ (pp. 71-73) of the content is significant to interpretation methods. She refers to a range of institutions in order to consider the ethics and morals of translation, including UNESCO’s conventions regarding interculturality (p. 28). Desblache is careful to refine the terms she uses, recognising that the notion of translation would become useless if it expands too far. She refines this by explaining that ‘[t]he fluidity of translation as a notion is particularly necessary in relation to music, and relates to two notions which differ but do not conflict with each other: transfer […] and transformation’ (p. 71).

The second part of the book looks at how we might translate music: she asks ‘what is translated?’ and ‘how is music translated?’ These questions title her chapters which is significant as it shows the critical mind of Desblache in assessing all the evidence as she weaves her narrative spanning such a range of musics. Interesting here is her approach to recognising the ‘collective experiences’ (p. 108) we have of music in society, and she draws on music-sociological literature as well as music and translation studies to iterate how music communicates. There is much attention to the fact that the majority of newly shared music now is vocal, notably in popular music (p. 113). Though she takes care to include examples from instrumental music as well, to ensure the notion of translation is not limited to lingual contexts but also to a broader audio and visual context.

The third part of the book reframes the focus by looking at music in effect as a translator, as the agent capable of expressing between, through and across cultures. This part is of particular interest to a wider readership in music, performing arts, translation studies and cultural studies. But, why does Desblache recognise music as a translator? She answers this clearly: ‘it is always anchored in the familiar, in known references, but it moves away from these references through the many variations offered by musical language’ (p. 266). Ultimately, Desblache proves that within her case studies the impact of music on human life is four-fold, each of which require some form of interpretative translation: ‘physiological,’ ‘psychological,’ ‘cognitive,’ and ‘behavioural’ (p. 266-267). Of particular significance is the last chapter (Chapter 9). Desblache has written before about translation and animals. It is clear she has a particular unique approach to understanding communication and transfer. She urges the reader to reassess beyond their usual frames of reference. By moving from the human to the natural world, Desblache reasserts her main aims and illustrates just how far translation can go to informing how we understand the world around us.

This book is rich with diverse examples which each draw from different cultures and locations, encouraging the reader to reach beyond a single frame of reference and to expand their perspective, so to challenge presumptions and long held interpretations. The ‘transcultural approach’ (p. 1) she establishes is to be commended. She navigates K-pop to opera, rap to folk music, and a wide range of other styles and genres. Desblache achieves her aims well and recognises throughout where the field has limitations, raising questions and suggestions for more research and work. As she says in closing: ‘Both translation studies and music can and need to trace paths leading to this new era of communication, however unknown the way to success is’ (p. 374).