I was thinking about Shakira one day and I was thinking…how does she translate her English songs which might have rhyimg at the ends of a verse or something into spanish where bed and bread might ryhme but comida and pan (woohoo spanish 1!) don’t rhyme? Or the fact that a phrase might be much longer in english than spanish, how does it fit into the beat of a song?
IANA great fan, but as far as I know, she just changes the lyrics completely. Compare, for instance, “Suerte” with the English version, “Whenever, Wherever”. The meaning is similar in some lines and very different in others, especially in the chorus, to preserve the rhyme.
Song translation is a nightmare, since conveying meaing in a different language is tricky. I’ve tried doing a translation of some Jacque Brel songs, and it’s nigh on impossible - the current translations don’t really work, and doing a word for word translation loses so much (“I’ll be the shadow of your dog” is great if French - less so in English).
The versions of Jacque Brel songs that Scott Walker recorded in the sixties just changed all the lyrics completly - it seems to be the way to go with song translations, although if they do that, I can’t see the point of translating it at all.