Being very found of poetry and music and having noticed how badly these are being treated by recurrent attempts of using algorithms to translate lyrics, I’ve decided to give away my home-made translations and make them available to everyone. As bad as they may be they can never get as creepy as those machine—attempts to translate them. The project sprouts as a spare time hobby and the translations reflect nothing but the author’s personal fancy. The format I picked to display them is a blog at wordpress.com platform.
Project’s name “Recto Verso Letras” refers literally to the counterparts of the translating activity “traduttore—tradittore” and metaphorically to the counterparts of an opened book with its two facing pages: recto / verso. This also alludes to the duality of the act of translating for in order to keep the richness of the original the translator is required to pour the spirit of the words into new ones hopefully at least as fresh, rich and meaningful. Following the book metaphor, in each entry the translated text occupies the «recto» side of the web page; while on the “verso” you can find the original lyrics. At the bottom a gray box displays credits on authorship, versioning and, whenever possible, a link to a youtube entry where you can listen to a performance of the song while reading the lyrics.
I wanted readers to focus on lyrics so I’ve decided the blog to have no images but a fainted silhouette of a record player in the background; instead I’ve used a sample set of coloured rectangles from a colour palette thus assuring every entry has an associated colour, acting as a cue to differentiate between different entries. After a number of posts, the colours will eventually repeat remembering that this project is but a collection. May you enjoy it!
The project’s identity comprises a logotype half-generated using processing / half a collage using photoshop.
It changes pseudo-randomly each time a page is loaded, accounting for the different wavelengths physically present in sounds according to differences in duration and pitch and metaphorically remarking the different styles and tastes and flavours present in every form of art and exemplifying the range of the curator’s fancy manifold as it may be.
It changes pseudo-randomly each time a page is loaded, accounting for the different wavelengths physically present in sounds according to differences in duration and pitch and metaphorically remarking the different styles and tastes and flavours present in every form of art and exemplifying the range of the curator’s fancy manifold as it may be.
I’ve also made a 13” video teaser for the project spoken in Portuguese with captions in English. And properly curated project’s online presence crafting graphics as required by the different web2.0 services.
BROADCASTING
MANIFESTO
Portuguese by Vítor de Matos.
