Italian lyrics are made for singing: almost every word ends on a vowel, so lines flow into each other and rhymes come easily. English is much more clipped. Italian and English are already set in the translator above, so paste the lyrics for a faithful translation, a singable version and notes on the idioms.
Italian singers join a vowel at the end of one word to the vowel that starts the next, so come un angelo is sung with five syllables, not six. That sung count is what an English line has to match.
Most Italian words are stressed on the second to last syllable (amore, domani), so lines usually end soft. English lines often end on a stressed word, which is why English versions of Italian songs can sound abrupt at the end of each line. The singable version keeps an eye on the stress pattern as well as the syllable count.
In bocca al lupo means good luck, literally into the wolf's mouth. Essere al settimo cielo is to be on cloud nine, literally in the seventh heaven. Some images carry over and some do not, and the notes say which.
Songs from Naples, Rome, Sicily or Milan often slip into dialect, which can be far from standard Italian, and Neapolitan has a long song tradition of its own. The translator reads common dialect words and flags lines it had to interpret.
Lyricists cut words to fit a melody: cuor for cuore, amor for amore, son for sono. They mean exactly the same thing but change the syllable count, which matters for the singable version.
Two original lines, written for this page. With the vowels merged the way they are sung (lasciato il, tavolo a, tornassi a), each line has 14 syllables.
Ho lasciato il caffè sul tavolo a raffreddare,
aspettando che tu tornassi a dirmi buongiorno.
I left the coffee on the table to go cold,
waiting for you to come back and say good morning.
I left the coffee on the table slowly growing cold
still waiting for you to walk in and wish me good morning
The singable version matches the 14 syllables with slowly growing cold and walk in and wish me. The second line ends on morning, a soft ending like buongiorno. The first ends on the stressed word cold, where the Italian ends softly on re, so a singer can simply hold cold through the last note.
It reads common dialect words from Naples, Rome, Sicily, Milan and elsewhere. Lines written fully in a strong dialect are harder, and the notes say when a line was interpreted rather than translated directly.
Yes. The faithful version gives one English line for each Italian line, in the same order, so you can read them side by side. The notes explain idioms and shortened poetic words like cuor and amor that a textbook will not cover.
To fit the melody and keep the rhymes. Italian says a lot in few stresses and rhymes easily, English often needs a different word to land on the same beat. The feeling and the story stay, and the faithful version is there to show what each line really says.
It is written for that, with each line close to the original's syllable count and stress. Sing it through once and smooth anything that feels crowded. If the song is not yours, releasing a cover with new lyrics may need permission from its writers or publisher.