P6-14: A Computational Evaluation Framework for Singable Lyric Translation
Haven Kim (KAIST)*, Kento Watanabe (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST)), Masataka Goto (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST)), Juhan Nam (KAIST)
Subjects (starting with primary): Evaluation, datasets, and reproducibility ; MIR fundamentals and methodology -> lyrics and other textual data ; MIR fundamentals and methodology -> web mining, and natural language processing ; Evaluation, datasets, and reproducibility -> evaluation methodology ; Computational musicology ; Evaluation, datasets, and reproducibility -> evaluation metrics
Presented In Person: 4-minute short-format presentation
Lyric translation plays a pivotal role in amplifying the global resonance of music, bridging cultural divides, and fostering universal connections. Translating lyrics, unlike conventional translation tasks, requires a delicate balance between singability and semantics. In this paper, we present a computational framework for the quantitative evaluation of singable lyric translation, which seamlessly integrates musical, linguistic, and cultural dimensions of lyrics. Our comprehensive framework consists of four metrics that measure syllable count distance, phoneme repetition similarity, musical structure distance, and semantic similarity. To substantiate the efficacy of our framework, we collected a singable lyrics dataset, which precisely aligns English, Japanese, and Korean lyrics on a line-by-line and section-by-section basis, and conducted a comparative analysis between singable and non-singable lyrics. Our multidisciplinary approach provides insights into the key components that underlie the art of lyric translation and establishes a solid groundwork for the future of computational lyric translation assessment.
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