Parallel souls or divergent destinies? Creative translation and narrative transformation in Laura Pausini's songs

Abstract

This article examines the creative translation strategies employed by Laura Pausini in the Italian (“Anime Parallele”) and Spanish (“Almas Paralelas”) versions of the title track of her album of the same name (2023). Through an integral contrastive analysis based on translation theories (Bassnett, 2014; Venuti, 1995; Vinay & Darbelnet, 1958), it is shown how the same titular concept can sustain radically different narratives through operations of cultural adaptation and semantic modulation. The study reveals three axes of transformation: (1) reconfiguration of existential temporality (complementary dialectic IT → disjunctive alternation ES); (2) reconstruction of the social ethos (collectivity IT → individualism ES); (3) inversion of the emotional perspective (passive resistance IT → active rebellion ES). The conclusion is that Laura Pausini’s translation practice, especially in this song, operates as authorial re-creation, where conceptual fidelity coexists with radical creative freedom, redefining the boundaries between translation and authorship.