Singing within constraints: Strategies of translating songs on early Polish National Television

The relationship between the word and sound seems best exemplified in song. The indefinite and semantically broad meaning of music becomes more specific and precise thanks to words, which are believed to belong to a more conventionalised semiotic system. However, in the process of singable translation this intrinsic connection between the word and sound may become distorted because of various reasons, including the question of the target context or the profile of target audiences and their expectations. This paper presents a descriptive analysis of strategies used in translating foreign songs presented in four early episodes of the entertainment show Muzyka lekka, łatwa i przyjemna, aired on Polish National Television since the 1960s. Apart from global observations drawn from the overview of translation strategies across the analysed episodes, the paper presents also a more explanatory and multimodal analysis of singable translations of English-language songs and highlights the problem of context-driven constraints.