Traduire une chanson de comédie musicale ou la nécessité d’être fidèlement flexible et flexiblement fidèle

The translation of singable texts remains a field that has received little scientific attention despite an increase in the number of papers published on the subject of song translation since the beginning of the 21st century. The translation of songs for musical theatre is hardly an exception to the rule, as it is often overlooked by scholars, unlike the translation of operatic or pop songs. This has led us to create what we call the ‘New Pentathlon Tool’—a translation tool as well as a quality assessment tool—based on Peter Low’s Pentathlon Principle and centred on fidelity and flexibility, two closely related concepts which are by no means mutually exclusive in the field of song translation.