Entre repulsa e harmonia: uma análise da tradução da canção What is This Feeling? do musical Wicked

Abstract

This study analyzes the full translation of the song What is This Feeling? from the musical Wicked, adapted into Brazilian Portuguese as Ódio. The qualitative analysis examines the song as a whole, with emphasis on excerpts that most clearly reveal the translational challenges and solutions related to metrics, rhythm, rhyme, singability, humor, and scenic function. A comparison was carried out between the original English lyrics and their Brazilian version, applying Low’s (2003) Pentathlon Principle—sense, singability, naturalness, rhyme, and rhythm—together with the notions of domestication and foreignization (Venuti, 1995) and intersemiotic translation (Gorlée, 2005). Representative passages were analyzed at semantic, poetic-musical, and performative levels, allowing an understanding of how translational choices reconcile fidelity, cultural adaptation, and stage effectiveness. The results show that the Brazilian version prioritizes singability and performative impact, even if through lexical and semantic simplifications, successfully recreating the humor, expressiveness, and dramatic load of the original for the local audience. It is concluded that musical translation goes beyond linguistic transposition, constituting a creative and intersemiotic practice that demands balance between fidelity, cultural adaptation, and theatrical effectiveness.