WRITING
Trevor Murphy is an award-winning musician , industry professional , and radio host based in Halifax , NS . He fronts the award-winning fog-rock band Quiet Parade and has recently unveiled his new Francophone power pop project , Sluice .
Learn more and find the music at : www . acadianembassy . com .
By Trevor Murphy
The Universal Language ?
Writing & Translating Lyrics as a Bilingual Artist
I
’ m bilingual . I grew up on the South Shore of Nova Scotia in a small Acadian community where I went to a French school , spoke the language with my family and my friends , and – like any assimilated kid – failed to understand how knowing a second language could be useful in my future . I fell in love with music from an early age and by the time I was 16 , I was writing my own songs . I moved away , joined bands , and toured the country . Music was my life , and it all happened in English .
In 2010 , my best friend and I launched a record label called Acadian Embassy . Taking the nickname we gave to our house ( three quarters of the roommates were Acadians ), the label quickly became much more than a record of the art that was happening under that roof . For me , it became a whole new way to explore my Acadian identity , allowing me to re-connect with the French language and to find renewed pride in my accent and dialect .
Five years later , in an effort to get my French feet wet , my band Quiet Parade was tasked with covering a traditional Acadian song for a compilation . Soon after , I undertook the process of translating four songs from our self-titled album from English to French .
Translating Is Hard On the best of days , translation is a difficult task . Economy of words is not the French language ’ s strong suit . A three-word English phrase can turn into an eight-word diatribe in la belle langue . When you ’ ve already got an established rhyme scheme and cadence , adding a few extra words to a line can be trying . ( Luckily , in Acadian dialects , we often default to smashing words together anyway .)
French is also a gendered language , assigning male and female attributes to every single noun . This has always been the most difficult part of the language for me – how am I “ just supposed to know ” that it ’ s “ la porte ” as opposed to “ le porte ”? That meant I had my dictionary close by during the whole process .
Oh , and did I mention that nobody else in my band speaks French ? I had to teach them the backup vocals syllabically .
Code Switching Your Headspace For me , writing songs is a cerebral endeavour . I rarely come to the table with fully-formed lyrics or a complete musical composition . I write them in tandem , and both are usually informed by my headspace . Despite being bilingual , I predominately think in English , so when it came time for me to take the jump and write songs completely in French , I found myself locked in an exercise of code switching my headspace .
And while my universe is quite vast when I write in English , I quickly noticed that all my French songs were honing in on a very particular geography . I was anchored in these small Acadian villages where I grew up and this geography , those characters , that time , and those hyper-regional touchstones informed every word .
Embrace Your Identity & Its Nuances It took me a long time to get comfortable singing and writing in French . As is common with many Acadians , I was instilled with a feeling that the way I spoke wasn ’ t “ good enough ” or “ proper French .” In the face of this , I have used music as a way to embrace my version of the language . Yes , the way I speak is a bit weird , but that ’ s what makes me – and the music I ’ m now writing in French – unique .
Harnessing this has allowed me to develop a particular voice to tell stories I don ’ t think I ever could in English .
58 CANADIAN MUSICIAN