The pentathlon approach to translating Arabic songs into English.

The study aims to investigate the strategies used to translate three Arabic songs performed by the Lebanese singer Fairuz, an iconic vocalist and one of the most celebrated singers in the history of the Arab world. The analyzed data comprised the translations of three songs provided by five university professors of English and Translation. The translations were assessed using Low's (2005) five criteria: singability, rhyme, rhythm, sense, and naturalness. The findings showed that the translators employed strategies such as literal translation, insertion, omission, adaptation, paraphrasing, transposition, and substitution. The analysis indicated that a successful song translation maintains faithfulness in terms of sense and naturalness while retaining musicality in terms of singability, rhyme, and rhythm. Fairuz's songs also contain many cultural elements, requiring additional skill and awareness in this area. The results further indicated that translators who prioritized faithfulness struggled to achieve musicality, while those who focused on musicality experienced shifts and deviations regarding sense. The study concludes that both content and music are of high relevance, so translators must find a balance between the two. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]