The singer accomplishes all this through the poetic line, vocal coloring, subtle inflections, and nuanced phrasing. This applies, of course, to both singer and pianist.
The best tradition of the art song achieves a perfect marriage between the vocal line and the piano part. The pianist is a collaborative artist, not just an oom-pa-pa accompanist. The singer must achieve another marriage, however, within the vocal line itself, between the melody and the words.
In a perfect marriage, each partner gives the other a fair chance. Neither partner consistently asserts his or her needs at the expense of the other. A purely vocal approach to singing does exactly the opposite. The text becomes a marginal phenomenon. Two aberrations of the purely vocal approach come to mind. The first is chronic, unrelenting loudness.
Here the voice is so full of itself, so peacocky, that it stirs up a vocal dust storm that smothers the words. Loud, expressive passages have a rightful place in art songs and can be very powerful—but they are meant to enhance, rather than overpower the text. Chronic loudness distracts from the work being done by the words, and I, as a listener, must have a chance to know and feel what the poetry is doing.
In any case, having a big voice, or even a beautiful voice, is, in a way, like being tall, or having broad shoulders: They may be an asset, but they are not a virtue. A cousin of chronic loudness is habitual, intense and athletic resonance, whether loud or not. The extreme form of this problem is so untamed that the voice goes beyond pitch, and turns into a sound that is sort of on pitch but with no specific pitch. It also tends to drown, to fail to reflect, the subtleties needed in the unfolding of the poetry.
Believe me, I am not erecting a straw man here. I have heard a number of famous singers, opera singers I am afraid to say, who do this in recitals. Both chronic loudness and unbridled intense resonance do more than unduly outshine the text in art singing, they also make it physically difficult, if not impossible, to do what you must be doing with the words, much the way sobbing becomes an impediment to speaking.
In art songs, the voice must be of such measured quantity, and of such transparent quality, that it can accommodate and be mindful of the poetry that is clamoring to have its proper place in the sun.
This is essential if you are going to create on that barren stage the scene, the mood, the emotion, and the drama embedded in the text. Now of course, you can sing softly and still ignore the role that words must play.
In art song, as I have said, the text is as important as the musical line. We seek to entertain at our peril! Like the performer, though, the interpreter must have certain qualities in order to be good at his craft.
The most basic is talent. Not all bilingual people can become interpreters. There must be a certain relationship with language, an innate ability to move from one language to another, producing equivalent meanings like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Like a good interpreter, a good performer must have talent. Check out the first few shows of any American Idol season! Almost of equal importance is a deep and extensive knowledge of the two languages in which one interprets.
This is not just a matter of acquiring vocabulary. No two languages share the same syntax, grammar or idiomatic expressions. These are our basic building blocks—the tools of our profession that we acquire during many years of study and dedication. We must be prepared. As a singer, I learn the words and notes of a piece of music, and then I work on the expression, the dynamics and the general feel of the piece to get it into my head and body so completely that there is no possibility that I will make a mistake.
As an interpreter, I have no such luxury. In order to minimize the potential for mistakes, I must learn as much as I can about a given case, prepare glossaries, familiarize myself with the events in question and try to anticipate any curve balls. Interpreters work on projects involving live translation: Conferences and meetings, medical appointments, legal proceedings, live TV coverage, sign language.
Perhaps the biggest difference between interpreters and translators, then, is that most professional translators use computer-aided tools in their work. This involves converting the source content into a file type that's easy to work with typically RTF , applying a translation memory TM to the text to automatically translate anything the tool has translated before, and filling in the gaps from scratch.
As the translator goes through each section of text, they may refer to glossaries and translation style guide templates to ensure quality. Finally, they'll pass the translation to another linguist to proofread, then convert the final written document back into its original format ensuring the closest possible match.
Translators work on any information in written form: Websites, print, video subtitles , software, multimedia. So the differences between interpreting and translating are vast. To sum up, here are the five main distinctions to consider when determining which service is best suited to a project.
Interpretation takes place on the spot. The process can occur in person, over the phone, or via video. Translation, on the other hand, can happen long after the source text is created. This gives translators ample time to utilize technologies and reference materials to generate accurate, high-quality translations.
Interpretation requires a somewhat lower level of accuracy to translation. Interpreters aim for perfection, but it's challenging to achieve in a live setting--some of the original speech may be left out of the target language, for example.
Again, time is on translators' side when reviewing and editing written text for accuracy. Interpreters must be fluent in both the source and target language, as they're required to translate in both directions instantaneously without the aid of reference materials. Professional translators typically work in one direction: into their own mother tongue. Making metaphors, analogies, and idioms resonate with the target audience is a challenge that both interpreters and translators face.
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