Page 16 - Feb InDesign

Lyrics from other languages - a fabulous new challenge

Greg Barnett, an occasional Write Away
contributor is a singer/songwriter from Australia
who has just released ‘The Flat White Album’
Listen for free on Spotify or go to the official
website for free listening, stories, and

songsheets with all chords/lyrics.

With the pressure of the album behind me, a post on The direct translation (the middle column) also does
an International singer-songwriter Facebbok group nothing song worthy in regards to rhymes, syllabilic
led me to hear a lovely acoustic song on YouTube. I rhythm, colloquial language, use of metaphor, easy
commented to the submitter “Your song has a lovely intelligability, etc. I soon discovered it was impossible
feel and emotional voice but, to my |English ears, the to work line by line. Instead I focused on larger word
vocal often feels cramped because of the long, hard and groupings, retaining only the sentiment and a few
multi-syllabic G|erman words. If you’d care to post the key words while striving for word flow, rhythm and
German lyrics I’d love to have a crack at the English rhymes.
translation that fits the music in a more relaxed way
... and do so for free as I’ve never done a translation In the end I found that simple words worked best as
before.” they can be easily moved around and even replaced
completely! Another couple of drafts would help fix up
To my surprise, he agreed! The table on the next page bits which still don’t feel are yet quite right (but that
shows a) the original German lyrics by the composer last 5% is always the most effort in any creative task).
|Stefan Kaesler, b) the direct ‘Google Translate’ to Eng-
lish, and c) my final lyrics. Stefan liked the words and then also asked me to sing
a demo as a vocal guide for recording the lyrics in
A change of language is not as simple as you might English. We both think a German-accented English
think as I have no knowledge of German. The direct song would sound GREAT and really stand out from
translation from Google is often obscure, and certainly the crowd! Hopefully something will happen in the not
not lyrical, but it does assist in pinpointing key words too distant future?
and phrases.

Stefan Kaesler lives in Warendorf, a small city in the West of Germany. Aged 51 and married
with two adult children, he’s an account manager for a German garden-products company.

As an enthusiastic beginner on guitar, Stephan started writing songs in his late 40’s. He
used Logic Pro and Garageband to record/mix, and vocals are done by either himself or his
daughter. He says, “I write in German but sometimes in English. English words in music
sound much smoother, but I always worry ... is this good enough English? It is so easy to
make bad mistakes in another language.”

Writing in German, his mother language, is therefore much easier and asafer but where
accent and meaning are easily understood by his fellow countrymen. However even Germans like the sound and
the feeling of English-language songs!

“But, hey, I’m a beginner. Greg’s translation to English shows there’s a great potential for International lyric
collaborations that allows singer-songwriters to more easily cross the boundaries of language.”

16 www.writeawaymagazine.co.uk