’n Deskriptiewe analise van die Afrikaanse kerklied as intersemiotiese multimediale vertaalproduk
The study aims to provide a descriptive analysis of the translation of the Afrikaans church song as intersemiotic, multimedial translation product. Since the research is mainly descriptive in nature, descriptive translation studies (DTS) is used as theoretical foundation. However, I sometimes work in a prescriptive way when indicating problems with regard to word-tone relationships. The functionalist translation approach (specifically the skopos theory) is also used as theoretical lens. The translation of any song is a complex process (Low, 2005), since more than one medium must be taken into account in the translation. Therefore, Opperman, Van Rooyen and Marais (2018) state that an intersemiotic translation approach (that can involve verbal and nonverbal media), and viewing the song text as a multimedial text (involving more than one medium), is the most fitting approach to regard during translation. Specific focus is placed on the translation strategies employed by church song translators, strategies linking with Low’s (2005) fivefold approach to song translation. Fourteen Protestant church songs that have been translated into Afrikaans a few times are analysed in this study. Therefore, these songs can be analysed as both intralingual (translation in the same language) and interlingual (translation between different languages) translations. As a result of multiple translations into Afrikaans, retranslation and whether the retranslation hypothesis have been applied in these translations are also examined. For the translation of all the Protestant songs the Dutch texts are viewed as source texts. It was generally found that the first versions (1931 and 1944) of the Protestant songs were very faithful translations of the source texts. On top of that, the style is more formal, causing it to be somewhat unnatural sometimes and possibly less understandable to the general church member, even of that era. On the other hand, the later versions (1978 and 2001) were more freely translated, with greater consideration of the target culture. The style in these versions is less formal and leans towards spoken language, therefore probably easier to understand for the general church member. It was also found that with very few exceptions, the Protestant songs (concerning the translation of text and music) disproved the retranslation hypothesis.
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