When I'm writing, I'm thinking about how the songs are going to play live. Fifty bars of rap don't translate onstage. No matter how potent the music, you lose the crowd. They want a hook; they want to sing your stuff back to you.
For the version of this CD released in Japan, a translation of the English lyrics is included, but there are lots of places where meanings are lost in the process of translation.
A conductor has to know how to translate music into a communicative force that makes the listener want to hear what he has to say.
'Que Sera Sera' had a very unusual rhythm. It was a challenge for me to pick up Rahman's beats and translate them into dance steps.
This is no condemnation of Chuck Berry, who I greatly admire. But Chuck Berry's music will not translate as well to orchestration because of its very three-chord rock 'n' roll nature. It is the music of the artists that are more pretentious, pompous or closer to the kind of big dramatic stylings that orchestras are good with.
Writing in English was a major challenge. I didn't want other songwriters to write for me. I wanted to preserve the spirit of my songs in Spanish. I am the same Shakira in English as I am in Spanish.
We feel it's really interesting to see how our music translates to such a broad audience.
I try to convey the musical notes through dance, take on the music.
No matter where you come from, if you sing in English, you can cross over to the world.
It is impossible to translate poetry. Can you translate music?
It is as impossible to translate poetry as it is to translate music.
Classical music's ability to translate emotional themes is fantastic.
I translated Beatles songs for my English class.
My goal is to connect with people emotionally. I take life’s experiences and translate them into music — music that hopefully creates an impact on the listener.
We have debuted in Japan and Korea, but we also really want to make songs in other languages for global fans if there is an opportunity.
The musician - if he be a good one - finds his own perception prompted by the poet's perception, and he translates the expression of that perception from the terms of poetry into the terms of music.
To know music is to transfer it to life.
I've done songs in other languages. I know how hard it is.
During 'Idol,' I wasn't expecting anything. I just wanted to survive the competition, but my album and my music are a big part of who I am. Hopefully it translates well and I keep growing as an artist.
A lot of the demos I write are all in English, so releasing music in English isn't translating to English, it's just keeping them in English.
Sometimes I think elements of 'Open Eye Signal' are better live. I do this really crazy stuff at the end, but I don't know if it'd translate well into recording. It would probably sound a bit too extreme.
I want to take it really far in Spanish; even non-Spanish speakers listen to my music across the world. Even though they don't know what I'm saying, they really feel it. We want to take it to another level and keep building our name. We want to take it really far just in Spanish.
To me, a big crossover was what happened to me years ago, like bringing my music in Spanish to Europe, or Asia. To me, that's a crossover because Spanish is not a language that everybody talks.
