Tim: I was watching Hercules the other day, because why not, and then I looked up the cracking theme song Go The Distance, recorded Elton John/Demi Lovato style by Michael Bolton, and discovered that there was also a Spanish version by the wonderful Ricky Martin.
Tom: Hey, there was a Spanish version of Livin’ La Vida Loca, and I reckon it’s better than the English one — and notice how close those two videos are. Don’t knock it.
Tim: Hey, not knocking anything, especially when the video has him wandering around the underworld. At first I thought it was a bit weird and novel, but then I thought: of course they record songs in multiple languages, the films are massive in every country. So here’s the Italian version of Let It Go.
Tim: Now, you may be wondering: why this one? What’s so great about Italian that I picked it out over Sweden’s Slå Dig Fri, Russia’s Otpusti i zabud, Poland’s Mam Tę Moc, or even Thailand’s ปล่อยมันไป? Or the mash-up with all 25 translations? Easy: the lyrics. By and large, they stay as close to a straight translation of the English as possible, given the rhythmic restrictions – if you vary too much, you run the risk of changing the story, or giving the song a completely different meaning. And yet, that’s exactly what they did here.
Tom: There’s a wonderful series of articles about this, including Disney’s decision to use Modern Standard Arabic rather than something more colloquial. It’s worth a read.
Tim: Unlike every other version, there’s no simple translation of “Let It Go” as a chorus line, or even any repeated line at all – the title appears just once, right at the end, where it translates to Dawn Will Rise. Rather than a full celebration of being able to finally let it go, as everywhere else, it starts out just plain resentful; the first chorus she’s still wanging on about how she can’t do what she wants, and at the second she’s only just decided to explore her powers. Come to the end, mind, we’re right where we should be – history is history and the dawn rises over her new kingdom.
I don’t know whether that makes it a better song or not, nor who’s responsible for it, but anyway I wanted to bring the world of foreign Disney songs to the table and this one has a slightly interesting story, so there you go. One other thing: in the past hour and a half, I’ve listened to that damn piano tinkling intro more than fifteen times, and I’m now fairly sure I dedicate way too much time to this site.
Tom: Or possibly too much time to Disney. Here, have a remix.
Tim: I don’t know which possibility would be worse: that you spent actual time searching for a fairly awful remix for a quick hyperlink gag, or that you have this on standby to listen to fairly often. Props to the video maker for the pulsating clouds, though.