Music, lyrics and performance in pop song translation

This paper focuses on song translation and on the task that the translator must accomplish when the verbal meaning is influenced and constrained by the simultaneous presence of multi-semiotic codes. I will outline a framework concerning the analysis of pop music translation based on various levels of equivalence between original songs and translated songs taking into account three main aspects: the music, the lyrics and the performance. The discussion will be based on a variety of German versions of evergreens of Italian pop music, thus providing a series of samples for a language pair not yet considered by researchers.