Besar

By Jeune Ecrivain

Rating: K+

Summary: Former one-shot extended due to good reviews. On the cusp of a relationship, Troy and Gabriela find something unexpected that they have in common and use it to further their fledgling singing careers.

A/N: Foreign languages and linguistics are my passion. I have at least a decent command of Spanish, French, Italian, and Latin. I hope I didn't get too carried away in this chapter, but I think you'll be able to see where I'm going with this…and you'll probably like it. Song translation is a hobby of mine (I am such a geek), and the translation you see here was done by yours truly : )

Si crees en la magia dentro del corazón,
Siempre puede librarte alguna canción.
Es la magia, si la música hace
Que te sientas muy feliz y te satisface.

The next day, Troy listened along with the rest of his Spanish IV class to the song his mother/teacher had brought in on a CD. It was the familiar tune of "Do You Believe in Magic," but the singer complemented the lively melody with new words. Reading over the Spanish lyrics his mom had passed out, he was reminded of the previous night's dinner with the Montezes. A fond smile formed on his lips, and he chuckled quietly to himself as the song continued.

When the song ended, Mrs. Bolton turned off the stereo and faced the class. "Ahora,clase, I want you to look at the lyrics I handed out and compare them to the translation I gave you to do on Monday," she said, referring to the assignment she had given the class two days ago: to translate the English lyrics to Do You Believe in Magic. After giving her students (at least the ones who'd remembered to do the assignment) a moment to look back and forth between the two sheets of paper they had in front of them, she proceeded. "Big difference, isn't there?" Mrs. Bolton was quickly greeted with murmurs of agreement. "Can anyone give me a literal translation of the Spanish lyrics I gave you?"

After a few moments of uncertainty, Troy raised his hand along with a few other members of the class. "Taylor," his mother prompted after having scanned the class. Troy put his hand down. His mother had undoubtedly seen his hand, and she knew his grasp of the Spanish language was better than most. Yet he understood why she hadn't called on him. Mrs. Bolton had made it clear long ago that she would always try to avoid the appearance of special treatment towards the one student that she saw at home as well as one the job. Troy actually appreciated this, and was quite accustomed to being called on with little more than random probability.

Taylor looked at the text before her and translated slowly:

If you believe in magic inside the heart,
Any song can always free you.
It's magic if the music makes
You feel very happy and satisfies you.

"Muchas gracias, Telora. Muy bien," replied Mrs. Bolton, using the synthetic Hispanicized form of Taylor's name. "That is what the Spanish lyrics say, but that's not how the original lyrics go. Not to mention it sounds kind of awkward if you translate the Spanish back into English," she stated, pausing tactfully to make her students think. "Why?" she then asked plainly. She paused again to give her students a moment to ponder, and then this time, her eyes fell directly on her son. "Troy,…why don't you use that until-recently-hidden talent of yours to show us what your translation would sound like if you were to sing it."

Troy looked around, not having expected this, but a few moderate cheers from his classmates brought him to his feet, and he sang his own translation of the well-known lyrics.

¿Crees en la magia en el corazón de una niña,
Como la música la puede libertar cuando comienza?
Y es la magia, si la música es estupenda.
Hace que te sientas alegre como una película anticuada.

Troy did his best, but even with his voice, the song sounded awkward, imbalanced, and really off-beat. The lines were too long, and the syllables didn't match up with the beat of the music. He had to compress and slur a few blocks of words in order to make it work, and even then it was all too obvious what he had done.

Mrs. Bolton smiled and gestured for him to sit down, which he did. "What just happened there?" she inquired, challenging the class. "Most of you have heard Troy sing, so we know it's not him." At this, Troy blushed slightly. "But the song just didn't sound right," she observed. "Yet Troy's translation was quite faithful to the original lyrics."

"The lines are too long," Troy realized aloud.

Mrs. Bolton's head turned quickly back to her son, and Troy could tell he had hit on something that she was aiming for. "Why is that, Troy?" she asked, making full use of the Socratic method.

"Well,…" Troy said, looking over his translation and running through the original lyrics in his head. "The word 'heart,' for example, is only one syllable. But 'corazón' is three. So when you translate it, the syllables get all out of place because some of the words are longer or shorter than they are in English."

"Exactamente. Muy bien, Troyo," Mrs. Bolton said. "Not only that, but something else about the words changes. Take a good look at the last two lines," she instructed. "'And it's magic, if the music is groovy / It makes you feel happy like an old-time movie,'" she recited slowly. What happens with the last word in each line?"

A hand shot up. "Ryan," Mrs. Bolton identified the male Evans twin.

"They rhyme," said Ryan as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "'Groovy.' 'Movie.'"

"¡Excelente!" exclaimed the teacher. "But estupenda and anticuada don't really rhyme quite as much, do they?"

She was then greeted with murmurs of negation from the students.

"That's the problem!" Troy's mother diagnosed. "If you translate a song word for word into another language, it's not singable. It doesn't rhyme. It doesn't fit the music. That's why you have the other translation, the one I passed out, where the words are not really a direct translation, but they're compatible with the song's melody and rhythm."

"There's still a lot of similarity here," observed Taylor, looking at the translation that was sung on the CD. "Both versions talk about magic inside a heart. They both mention music making you feel happy."

"That's my point," said Mrs. Bolton. "There are two types of song and poetry translations," she began to lecture. "There are literal translations, which are good for telling foreigners exactly what the song says. Those ones can rarely if ever be put to music like the original. Then there are 'singable' translations, or for those of you who are more vocabulary-minded, pro canendo translations." By now, she was weaving in between desks, as was her habit whenever she launched into a lecture. "The first kind is easy. Anyone with a couple of years of college Spanish and a good dictionary can do it. But pro canendo translations are what make song translation something of an art in and of itself. You have two often conflicting forces, meaning and music, that you have to make cooperate with each other somehow. A song translator has to stay as faithful to the original lyrics as he can while coming up with new lyrics that rhyme and fall in step with the beat of the music. It's a balancing act. It involves a lot of paraphrasing and figuring out the essentials of the song's meaning so you can find a way to express it in words that fit the melody and also rhyme wherever they're s'posed to. Different translators may sacrifice a little more on one side in favor of the other, but their goal is usually to come up with a singable translation that at least bears a decent resemblance to the meaning of the original."

At this moment, the bell rang, and the class was promptly abuzz as students shoved textbooks and notebooks into bookbags and slung them over their shoulders. Troy gathered his things and stood up to leave, pondering what his mother had said more than usual. It never would've occurred to him that song translation could be more complicated than simple prose transliteration, and yet everything his mom had said made perfect sense now that she'd mentioned it and got him thinking about it. He was mildly amused that the day's Spanish class held some special relevance to his blossoming talent as a singer. The thought occurred to him that Gabriela might find it interesting as well, and he quickened his gait in anticipation of seeing her again and sharing the days events with her. That train of thought in turn reminded him abruptly that, unless he was severely misreading Gabriela's signals, especially the night before, she was now something more than a friend to him. A grin spreading across his face, he hurried off to find his new girlfriend.