Translating Songs: The Awakening of Babel in Me

The following is an extract from an article originally published here.

Transcreating songs is quite a challenge, and you never know whether the result will be anything worthy of your own personal satisfaction until you’re done.

This year, what with quarantine and everything covid-19, I decided to use my talents to transcreate a few songs à la carte and share the results on my Instagram account. 

One of such posts, I think, is worth sharing here.

HOPE’S TRUE COLOURS—A TRANSCREATION

On October 18th, 2020, I shared my transcreated version of Color Esperanza, a widely popular song written by Argentinian composer Coti Sorokin and rendered widely popular by Argentinian singer Diego Torres back in the year 2001.

The song remains a global hit, and because of its powerful message of hope and courage, some artist will do a new version here or there, in Spanish, and Diego Torres himself once sang it in front of Pope John Paul II.

Earlier in May 2020, a new version came out, where several Latin American artists joined forces to send a message of relief to the Latin American people in the midst of the crisis due to the outbreak of covid-19.

Now, while you will find the song lyrics translated into English on some websites (some use machine translation :O), as well as a few videos on YouTube with English subtitles, I am proud to say that, as far as my research goes, my transcreation into English is the first every version in English of Color Esperanza which not only translates the lyrics, but also proposes a creative translation that perfectly fits in the instrumental version of the song—meaning, you can sing it in English now!

Here you will find my original post on Instagram with the results, me singing included.

Meanwhile, in case you don’t use Instagram, you can take a listen below and read the lyrics in the short videos below.

As the saying goes, hope springs eternal. 

I honestly hope you enjoy listening and never give up on hope:

Need a copywriter with a strong background in music?

I can write jingles and songs for your brand. DM and let's talk about how you can use storytelling and creativity for a compelling content strategy.

Delfina

Read the full story here.