“Oh! Quante volte” is a lyric aria (piece) from the first act of the Italian opera “I Capuleti e I Montecchi” By Vincenzo Bellini in the 15th century and is performed by the character Juliet (Giulietta in Italian) which was based on the famous playwright “Romeo & Juliet” by William Shakespeare. Juliet was ordered to marry Tebaldo, however, she’s madly in love with Romeo who failed to persuade her to elope. One night before her wedding, she sits alone in her room and sings the aria while longing for Romeo to come and see her, waiting for him with ardor, she’s worried because she does not know where he has gone.
Like many pieces, this aria was written in Italian and translated into English. How can a song that’s written in Italian, one of the most romantic and musical languages, be translated into English, a language known for education and science purposes? That’s where translation meets the melody of the heart.
The composer writes the music in Italian and he must set the text in the assignment of syllables to notes in the melody to which the text is sung or maybe to set the music regarding the ambiance of the lyrics. Matching lyrics to the melody is one of the most challenging tasks to do because the translator of this song has to write it in English, with the same ambiance in order to make the non-Italians understand what the story is about, while choosing the exact words to the convey the message of the song, that’s what we call “Prosody”.
Let’s take for example the sentence in Italian “Oh quante volte, oh quante, ti chiedo al ciel piangendo, con quale ardor t’attendo, e inganno il mio desir” which was translated into “Oh! How many times, Oh! I ask you, crying to heaven with the ardor of waiting for you, my desire is a trick!” The translator could’ve written “crying to the lord with the pain of waiting for you to come, my beloved, my yearning is tricking me”, but that’s too poetic and it doesn’t really convey the message of waiting and suffering.
In conclusion, the choice of words is one of the trickiest tasks a translator can do because it takes one word to intrigue or bore the reader. Deciding to translate is musical text means that one must respect the syllables linked to the music, if the music is slow the translator has the right to write long phrases but if the music is fast and indicates that the singer is in a hurry to find the treasure or maybe is running away from something, the translator must respect this and write short sentences indicating a fast action. Bellini’s aria “Oh quante volte” is one of the endlessly translated pieces such as the famous song “Autumn leaves” or “les feuilles mortes” of Charles Aznavour. So how did the writers convey the message in another language? Did they achieve the objective of this song?