The (Un)translatability of Portuguese Fado

所谓的“世界音乐”在艺术和商业上都变得越来越重要，支撑着全球对“正宗”民间音乐的声音和融合形式的可能性的兴趣复苏。然而，传统的葡萄牙法多风格在葡语世界之外仍然不为人所知，尽管它在葡萄牙人的国家身份概念中占据中心地位，并作为游客身份的商品化。正是因为它被赋予了独特身份的真实标志的地位，法多作为葡萄牙的“国歌”，往往会吸引“不可翻译”的标签。这篇以实践为主导的论文提出，将这种感知到的不可翻译性作为一种标签，以形式和内容的不可分割性为前提，就像高度诗意的形式经常出现的情况一样，以及被认为不可翻译的情感saudade——包括在卡森的《不可翻译词典》（2014）中，作为葡萄牙灵魂本质的明显代表和fado的基础情感。

So-called 'world music' has become increasingly important both artistically and commercially, underpinning a global resurgence of interest in both the voice of 'authentic' folk music and the possibility of fusion forms. And yet, the traditional Portuguese genre of fado remains largely unknown outside the Lusophone world, notwithstanding its centrality in a Portuguese conception of national identity and as a commodification of that identity to tourists. It is precisely because of its accorded status as an authentic marker of a unique identity that fado, as Portugal's "national song", has tended to attract the tag of "untranslatable". This practice-led thesis proposes to interrogate this perceived untranslatability as a label predicated upon a perceived inseparability of form and content, as is frequently the case with highly poetic forms, as well as the supposed untranslatability of the emotion saudade - included in Cassin's The Dictionary of Untranslatables (2014), as an apparent representation of the essence of the Portuguese soul and the underpinning emotion of fado.