Interlingual cover versions: how popular songs travel round the world

ABSTRACT

The article focuses on interlingual cover versions of popular songs – covers sung in a language other than the ‘original’. Through a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including translation studies, adaptation studies and literary criticism, it examines an iconic song from a ‘peripheral’ country, which circulated the globe in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Tarkan and Sezen Aksu’s Turkish hit Şımarık (‘Spoilt’) represents a noteworthy case of a cultural product in circulation across linguistic and cultural borders, with at least thirty four cover versions in twenty four languages. These covers were put into a wide range of contexts and to different uses in their new destinations, attesting to the fecundity afforded by this song. The article discusses concepts such as adaptation, palimpsest, parody, exoticism, iterability, globalisation and cosmopolitanism in relation to popular music covers. Its main objectives are to attract attention to the multiple factors underlying the production and reception of interlingual covers, to their prevalence and spread outside the Western European popular music scenes, where the current research concentrates, and to the diversity of approaches that can be taken in studying this phenomenon.

KEYWORDS:

• Interlingual cover songs
• popular music
• translation
• adaptation
• Turkish popular music

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my sincere thanks to colleagues who gave their time generously by locating, transcribing and translating the lyrics in instances where I was unable to access the information online, and by patiently answering my questions on singers/groups, lyricists, sales figures, etc. I am indebted to Silvia Capra (Italian), Silvia Cobelo (Portuguese), Lourens de Vries (Indonesian), James Hadley (Cantonese and Japanese), Aziz Haghighi (Persian), Roman Ivashkiv (Ukranian), Olivera Kusovac (Montenegrin and Serbian), Iraklis Pantopoulos (Greek), Ildikó Pusztai-Varga (Hungarian), Lauren Richardson (Korean), Elena Sanz Ortega (Spanish), Vadim Saraev (Russian), Danielle Drori and Zvi Septimus (Hebrew) and Nariman Youssef (Arabic) for their invaluable contributions. Several colleagues and students also kindly contributed their comments, particularly the participants of Popular Music Research Seminar series at the University of Edinburgh; the Europe House London, University College London; universities of Newcastle and Portsmouth, in the U.K.; Glendon College, York University, Canada; and, Hong Kong Baptist University. I also owe thanks to the anonymous referees who enhanced the paper through their constructive comments. Sezen Aksu’s agency kindly granted permission for the lyrics of Şımarık to be reproduced.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/abstract/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000006361?rskey=6kyjNk&result=1 (accessed 3.11.2018).

2. Video of the song is accessible at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0HuEvYNJNk (accessed 18.2.2016).

3. Albanian, Arabic (2 versions), Brazilian Portuguese (2), Bulgarian (2), Cantonese, Dari, English (2), German (2), Greek, Hebrew (2), Hungarian (2), Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Montenegrin, Persian (2), Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish (3), Telugu, Ukrainian. Amongst these versions, I could not access any information on the Albanian, Dari and Slovenian ones.

4. In a 2006 interview, Tarkan admitted that this had been done without Aksu’s consent, who was the true copyright owner. As Tarkan was one of Aksu’s protégés, this situation did not seem to have caused any copyrights dispute. http://dictionary.sensagent.com/%C5%9E%C4%B1mar%C4%B1k/en-en/(accessed 23.4.2015).

5. http://musicid.academicrightspress.com.ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/search/result?singles[]=356370, http://musicid.academicrightspress.com.ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/search/result?albums[]=410915 and http://dictionary.sensagent.com/%C5%9E%C4%B1mar%C4%B1k/en-en/(accessed 23.4.2015).

6. http://dictionary.sensagent.com/%C5%9E%C4%B1mar%C4%B1k/en-en/(accessed 9.2.2016).

7. See http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzcxMzkxODA4.html?from=s1.8-1-1.2 for a sample (accessed 18.2.2016). A video of a group of girls in National Taiwan University doing belly dancing to this song can be watched at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yRIBV3nLL0 (accessed 18.2.2016). My thanks to Lingli Xie for alerting me to these videos.

8. The musical style(s) brought to Israel by Jews from the ‘East’ (Mizrahi means Eastern in Hebrew).

9. On iterability and song lyrics, see also Eckstein (2010, 34).

10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarkan_%28singer%29 (accessed 16.2.2016).

11. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bkHDx6GDWs (accessed 3.6.2015).

12. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shim_Mina (accessed 3.6.2015).

13. This mishmash of foreignness did not do well in the Korean context; the album sold a mere 10,000 – a failure for Korean standards (ibid.).

14. Other regions which were similarly under Ottoman rule, however, have a different attitude. Serbia, for instance, differentiates itself from other former Yugoslavian countries, such as Croatia, through an emphasis on its Balkan heritage, which owes substantially to an Ottoman/Turkish past. Therefore, Turkish-origin music succeeds in Serbia. I would like to thank Francis Jones for this observation.

15. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-34663096 (accessed 16.2.2016) I would like to thank Arzu Eker-Roditakis for drawing my attention to this programme.

16. This can be attested by the Turkish flag t-shirt worn by Kirkorov, in his music video shot at a tourist resort in Turkey. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXeWT3UDm7k (accessed 16.6.2016).

17. My thanks to Sylvain Caschelin for this observation.

18. I would like to thank Joanne Smith Finley for this observation.

19. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/153100#.VXBArc9VjDU (accessed 4.6.15).

20. E.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N2x7hVzklE, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFAIV8JwN7M, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wc9kjdZ8ov8, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JPWA4Qt8eU, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sZyoXOPdwk (accessed 16.6.2016).

21. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGOLNnxq2HKWrNMhWRXtXi1XdYZ-MUZx9 (accessed 16.6.2016).

22. As of August 2018, the various Şımarık videos on Youtube have a total of more than 12 milllion views, compared to the more than 273 million views of Tarkan’s newest hit Yolla released in 2017.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Şebnem Susam-Saraeva

Şebnem Susam-Saraeva is a Senior Lecturer in Translation Studies at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, U.K. Her research interests have included gender and translation, retranslations, translation of literary and cultural theories, research methodology in translation studies, internationalization of the discipline, translation and popular music, and translation and social movements. She is the author of Translation and Popular Music. Transcultural Intimacy in Turkish-Greek Relations (2015) and Theories on the Move. Translation’s Role in the Travels of Literary Theories (2006), and guest-editor of Translation and Music (2008) and Non-Professionals Translating and Interpreting. Participatory and Engaged Perspectives (2012, with Luis Pérez-González). Beyond the University of Edinburgh, she is the Chair of the ARTIS Steering Committee (Advancing Research in Translation and Interpreting Studies, https://artisinitiative.org/).