Can a Song Have a Second Edition?

A book gets a second edition. What about a song?

That question occupied me not while I was translating “Spontane” into English, but afterwards.

When I finished the song I noticed it sat close to Brit Pop, and I wanted an English version. It was something I had never attempted, and I had no idea how to go about it. Translating the lines correctly wasn’t enough; the same number of syllables had to land in the same place, with the same stress. Some of the metaphors couldn’t be carried across in the form the original gave them either. Trying to satisfy all of that at once made losses unavoidable. Even so, I think I split every hair there was and arrived at the best translation the song allowed.

Up to there, no real problem. What came after was where it got complicated.

Feedback from foreign curators on the original Turkish version called for some changes to the arrangement. At first I planned those changes for the English version only. Then I decided they would have to be carried over to the Turkish one as well — and if I couldn’t do both, what I would end up with was two versions of the same song that no longer matched. That worry ended with me pulling the Turkish version too, and the worse part is that over all the time since I haven’t moved an inch on any of it.

And then? A full eighteen months later I put the Turkish version back out — the same original recording, unchanged. I still haven’t made the changes the English version needs, and at this point I decided the Turkish one shouldn’t wait any longer. Not because the work is finished; because I needed something of mine turning over on the platforms, something I could click on that would push me towards better work. And because, as a writer, I felt the urge to put what I feel into words. Could a song that isn’t out there have given me the chance to express myself, or to write these lines?

If I do release the English version now and update the original Turkish one on top of it, I think I’d want to keep the version currently out there indefinitely, as a nostalgic one. Because by now this is less a question of whether a song can have a second edition than a matter of where I stand.