Mixed Signals: How German Lieder, as Multimodal Texts, Present Particular Challenges for Translators

Karen Wilson-deRoze, PhD, translation scholar, submitted one of the first practice based PhD theses to the University of Leicester in December 2017. Its practical component is a singing translation of Die Walküre and Götterdämmerung from Wagner’s opera cycle the Ring of The Nibelungen. Its critical component demonstrates possible ways that a lyric can cooperate with music in creating meaning and examines how Wagner’s musico-poetic intersemiosis is recreated in her translation and those of three others. She contributed a chapter to Key Cultural Texts in Translation (2018), addressing the evidence of Wagner’s anti-Semitism in The Ring and whether translators have censored or adjusted Wagner’s language to suit contemporary tastes. In Opera and Translation. Unity and Diversity (2020) she explores musico-poetic intersemiosis within the context of Wagner’s theory of Versmelodie and the consequences for authentic performance when intermodal relationships are altered through translation.