Music has always been a very difficult subject to translate. This may be mostly because, no matter which language you speak natively, or in which language you studied music formally (my case, I speak Spanish but formally studied in English), some terms will be in French, some in Italian, some in German and some even in Latin.

Those terms and conventions of music will be everywhere and what people don't know sometimes, is that the different names mostly reflect the political tensions of the time between kingdoms and countries. Hence, some indications mean the same, but they are written in a different language. Here are some examples.

Accélérer le mouvement (French) and accelerando(Italian), which indicates raising up the speed of the music.

Vivace (Italian) and Fröhlich (German), which mean "to make the music more lively"

Gemässigt (German) and Moderé (italian) which mean moderate

Expressiv (French) and Expressivo (Italian) for pronounced expressiveness in the performance

Gedämpft(German) and Con sordino(Italian) which indicates the player to put a specific device to the instrument called "mute"

sempre (Italian) and immer (German) is the indication of "always".

Some composers even go further into the combination of languages and add that expressive touch they need. In Heitor Villa-Lobos' Prelude no. 3 you find in the second section, a Forte expressivo that is molto andante "DOLORIDO", which is a very unusual terminology. Remember that music has to do with notation of elements to decribe feelings and emotions, so if you notate a standard indication like "doloroso" (which is the closest standard notation to this term) it already implies that you have to be "standard" at the time of playing more mournfully, but if you notate it in another language, like Villa Lobos did notating it in Spanish, the composer automatically sends the indication to be looked under the scope of a different culture that sees life in a very different way. In that case, the professionally trained player, already knows that that is not a standard notation, is a notation to understand and use the performer's "poetic licence" to interpret the notation in a practical and effective way.

Plain translation of these terms is not recommendable. As translators, we will probably never have to translate a sheet of music, as those terms are understandable for the performers as conventions even though we might not speak German, we know what a german term looks like and roughly what it means. It's also common for the editors to add a glossary of terms if required, so scores and musical charts is something we may never work on as translatos.

But translating a musical technical text may prove a difficulty to the translator, as you may not know that those terms are actual musical conventions that have been around probably for centuries, and they are better of left the way they are.

If you are translating a technical document, like a harmony position paper, an assigment or a chapter of a book, it is recomendable to follow standard translation procedures and NOT TO TRANSLATE those terms, but to indicate what they mean the first time you translate it and then leave them maybe typed on a different font or something that you can distinguish them for.

Example "ma non troppo" (not too much) and keep going. Next time you find the term, you can just type it the way its written originally with the font or style you have chosen to distinguish it.

Another form of distinguish the terms (and this is a more "musical convention" way to do it) is to add a glossary to your translation and only put a small indication at the end of the word that leads to it (like a small number indicating the number of entry in the glossary corresponding to that term) If you do this, just make sure you write the name with initial capital letter, as, same as it would be in a contract, that term would become a DEFINED TERM.

I hope this entry is useful. Please comment and share.
dm