Songs with actual matching lyrics... do they exist?

[ItsThaMonsta]

I was looking at this shakira song with spanish and english lyrics but I dont think they match. Have a look and see what you think... Also, anyone know anywhere to get r&b or pop songs with good translation lyrics?

Here are the lyrics in spanish.
Here are the english.

[pjt33]

Es muy difícil traducir poesía sin perder el ritmo porque en general el español tiene más sílabas que el inglés.

[ItsThaMonsta]

Originally Posted by pjt33

Es muy difícil traducir poesía sin perder el ritmo porque en general el español tiene más sílabas que el inglés.

El problema es que las palabras son incorrectas.

[Rusty]

The lyrics of a song in English never match the lyrics of a song in Spanish, and vice-versa. That is a given. It can be no other way.

There is a difference between the lyrics of a song, whatever the language may be, and a translation of the lyrics of that song. If the original lyrics rhymed, the translation usually will not. A translation will not usually fit the meter of the original song, either.

For example, if you were to hear a beautiful melody while walking the streets of a town in Venezuela, and wanted to sing the song in your native tongue, you would have to invent a different set of lyrics. They would have to rhyme (assuming you think that's important in a song) and they would have to fit the meter of the melody you heard. To be a truly great song, your feelings would also be communicated when your new lyrics are sung.

This explains why a translation of a song's lyrics always fails to impress. Songs, by nature, are highly interpretative. This can be lost in the translation.

I happen to know the lyrics for the English nursery rhyme 'Are you sleeping?' in four languages. The melody of the nursery rhyme doesn't change, even though it is sung in many languages and cultures. But the words will change depending on the language (and culture) of the people.

Are you sleeping,
Are you sleeping,
Brother John?
Brother John?
Morning bells are ringing,
Morning bells are ringing,
Ding, ding, dong.
Ding, ding, dong.

Here is the meter of the song (the count of notes per stanza): 4-4-3-3-7-7-3-3

If you were to just translate the words into Spanish, you'd quickly discover that your translation doesn't fit the prescribed meter. For example, "¿Duermes tú?" (the translation of "Are you sleeping?") only has three syllables, where four are required in English. Since you don't want an orphaned note on the first stanza, you need to come up with different lyrics that fit the four-syllable requirement. For the third stanza, the number of syllables drops to three. Hmmm. Three? That would be a good fit for "¿Duermes tú?" but not for "Hermano Juán" (the translation of "Brother John"). Let's take a look at the Spanish version of the song to see what they did.

Fray Felipe,
Fray Felipe,
¿Duermes tú?
¿Duermes tú?
Toca la campana,
Toca la campana,
Din, don, dan.
Din, don, dan.

The wording varies a bit from place to place, but, as you can see, they did place "¿Duermes tú?" where we thought it would fit. Try to find "Hermano Juán." "Friar (Brother) Phillip" appears instead. This fit the meter (and the culture) better. The fifth stanza doesn't say anything about morning bells. It just says "the bell is ringing."

[pjt33]

Actually, to complicate things, with translations of songs the Spanish can often get away with having a couple of extra syllables and turning two consecutive vowels, one ending one word and one starting the next, into a diphthong.

[ItsThaMonsta]

Sorry but I must not have been clear... Im saying that for what I have come across it seems like the translations are just "wrong" altogether. Not that it doesnt make sense or they dont rhyme in english, it just seems that parts of the translation is just wrong. Maybe the translations are wrong because some doesnt have the spanish characters and when i try to confirm it comes up as different words.

[Rusty]

If you start with a good transcription (everything spelled correctly, accents included), Spanish lyrics can be translated into English. The problem with so many of the lyrics posted on the internet, or even published with the CDs themselves, is that they're not transcribed very well. This makes translation much more difficult. And, if you're relying on a machine to do the translation, that spells disaster.

Songs and poems are very difficult to translate because they are highly interpretive in nature, and the author's thoughts and feelings may be lost in the translation.

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

@Monsta: Shakira's lyrics in English and Spanish are not translations of each other. They just match the rhythm of the songs... only sometimes they kept a few verses.

Same happens with many Spanish versions of foreign songs (or from Spanish to another language). They just keep the rhythm and even though many keep some general meanings, they never translate sentence by sentence.