With the recent release of his song “Back It Up,” New York City born singer-songwriter Prince Royce has gained popularity with English-only speaking audiences, as the artist, who is known for his Spanish-only tracks, released the hit in both languages.

When translating originally Spanish lyrics to their English version, the quality usually becomes lost in translation and are simply not as good as the original. While the rhythm and vocals are essentially the same, somehow, the character of the song isn’t.

Shakira has done it in the past with songs like “Suerte” and “Loca,” and Enrique Iglesias has been known to do so as well. Two of his more recent hits, “Bailando”, and “El Perdón” (cornily known in the English version as “The Forgiveness”) have been released first as the original Spanish version and later as an English version.

When artists do this, not only do they lose the original charismatic flavor of the song, but the meanings of the lyrics often don’t match up in the same way rhythmically, requiring for an entirely different meaning to be written in English.

In “Back It Up,” which features Pitbull and Jennifer Lopez, both the English and Spanish versions are fun — not something that always happens. This is possibly because the chorus of both versions is nearly the same, involving Prince Royce saying “baby, back, back, back, it up,” followed by J Lo stating, “damelo, Papi Chulo”, which, if you want, you can look up the meaning of on your own.

Prince Royce’s two versions are one of the few times where both have the same effect- they want to make you dance and just have a general good time. This is quite unlike Enrique’s English version of “Bailando,” where Sean Paul’s heavy infringements on the song punctuate most of it and take away from the otherwise smooth mix of vocals, instrumentals and percussion found in both versions.

The Spanish version’s lack of representation on the part of Sean Paul allows for further appreciation of the music in itself, which possibly may be too slow for an American audience. That may be why Sean Paul is on the English track in the first place, but in an increasingly diverse United States, where an enormous percentage of the country speaks and appreciates Spanish, perhaps it is time for the American music industry to promote opening itself up to Spanish music rather than adapting it for its own satisfaction.

Isha Damle is a junior television, radio, film major. She rarely knows the actual lyricsto songs, but is good at faking it until she makes it. Plus, her version is probably better. She can be reached at idamle@syr.edu or on Twitter @ishadamle.

Published on September 16, 2015 at 11:07 pm