[Martin Rocek]

Noon (Pacific Standard Time) on St. Jerome’s Day—Wednesday, September 30, 2015—will be the deadline for our main event, and also the beginning of the three secondary events (which will kill time while our TSDG Yodeler deliberates for a week).

The main event finalists, with commentary by the judge, will start being posted the morning of Wednesday, October 7. The number of finalists will not exceed twelve.

The deadline for the three secondary events is noon (Pacific Standard Time) Tuesday, October 13. Voting for the popular favorites of both the main event and the secondary events will open at noon (Pacific Standard Time) Wednesday, October 14, and will close at noon (Pacific Standard Time) Sunday, October 18.

The traditional grumbling over time zones, the tardiness of Bake-off staff, etc., will run throughout the festivities.

[Alex Pepple]

Yes, What Martin said, and somewhat revised as below (note the revised deadline dates especially)--


By popular demand, translators will now have until the end of October, rather than until the end of September, to polish up their main event entries for the 2015 Translation Bake-off.


REVISED MAIN EVENT DATES:

The submission deadline for the main event (the translation of a non-English language song of your choice into English set to the same tune)--is now noon (Pacific Daylight Time) Saturday, October 31, 2015. The main event finalists, with commentary by the judge, will start being posted the morning of Saturday, November 7.


UNREVISED SECONDARY EVENT DATES:

The secondary events will proceed as previously scheduled. To recap, three songs in languages other than English will be provided with literal English-language prose cribs on Wednesday, September 30 (the feast day of St. Jerome, the patron of translators). Enter your English-language verse translations of any or all of those three songs, singable to the original tune, by noon (Pacific Daylight Time) Tuesday, October 13. The popular favorites of the three secondary events will be decided during voting which will open at noon PDT Wednesday, October 14, and will close at noon PDT Sunday, October 18.


RULES, PRIZES, ETC.

Please see the original announcement for full details.

Cheers,
...Alex

[Nigel Mace]

I have no information on why the entry is so apparently slow/low but would suggest that it may be because of the very prescriptive format of the Bake-Off. Bolder and more adept spirits may have been delighted to be so challenged. I'm afraid that I recognised immediately that it was not for me.

I don't know what other participants in this board may be motivated by, but a pure pleasure in wrestling with translating is not what energises me. I need to have an interest of my own in the subject/material/author/period and this competition was thus, perhaps solely for me, or perhaps not, too narrowly drawn.

[Marion Shore]

Alex, if there continues to be a low response to this competition, would you consider allowing individuals to submit more than one entry?

[Martin Rocek]

I checked with Alex and my anonymous co-organizer, and we think that Marion's idea is great--anyone with more songs to submit, PLEASE DO!.

[Brian Allgar]

More of them? Aaarghhh! I sweated blood over the first. I don't want to sound crotchety, but by the end I was a quavering wreck.

[Marion Shore]

YAY! I think this is fun!

[Catherine Chandler]

I thought perhaps the slow/low response may have had to do with copyright issues (not only the poet-songwriter but the composer as well). It is also quite a challenge not only to faithfully translate the poem/lyrics but also for the translation to be singable in English to the same tune it had in its original language. This is probably the most challenging and at the same time most interesting bake-off we've had. Best of luck to all !

[Roger Slater]

I agree that it's the most challenging we've had. It's been my observation that most/much of the time, songs that are translated for international release are not hampered by the need for the same sort of fidelity as we generally demand from poems, perhaps because so much of a song's appeal lies in the melody, and the melody doesn't need to be translated. It is 100% faithful to the original, which perhaps means that the words have a bit more wiggle room since the song, when performed, already preserves intact such a large portion of the original experience. I suppose, though, that this varies depending on the song, since the appeal of some songs is more lyric-centric than others.

I had a go at the first challenge, but the other two strike me as totally impossible to pull off and I fear that I would merely waste hours of my time for nothing if I were to make a serious attempt.

[Catherine Chandler]

Yes, Roger, Back in the early 70's I remember my reaction to hearing Joe Dassin's French version (Salut les Amoureux) of City of New Orleans. Whaaaat???? Rien à voir. But apparently the melody has been used for quite a number of foreign versions (Dutch, German, Hebrew, Finnish, Norwegian, Latvian and Icelandic).