Music videos have been published on YouTube since the site’s creation in 2005. However, on-demand subtitles for music videos are a relatively recent phenomenon. As fans can now understand lyrics in a language that is not their own, by using translated subtitles, artists have the possibility of reaching a wider international audience than ever. This qualitative study aims to fill a gap in translation studies by examining the translation of French song lyrics into English in the subtitles of music videos on YouTube. The study poses the following questions: how are specific linguistic features that are characteristic of song lyrics translated in the subtitles of music videos? What is the overall effect of these translations – is there a loss of meaning or of style once the lyrics have been translated? What are the particularities of this medium of translation? 

The corpus consists of 14 music videos published on YouTube within the last decade. All 14 pop/hip-hop songs examined are performed in French and subtitled in English. The study gives an overview of the translation techniques used in the English subtitles on French music videos, by examining both the methods used to translate songs as well as the strategies used by subtitlers to translate specific linguistic features. The linguistic features examined through comparative text analysis are phonetic (assonance, alliteration, rhyme, and language play), socio-cultural (linguistic register, cultural references, and idiomatic expressions including slang), and grammatical. 

This thesis begins with an interrogation of previous research on audiovisual and song translation, including an examination of taxonomies of subtitling strategies. These taxonomies are applied to the under-examined context of YouTube music videos, following the paradigm of Descriptive Translation Studies. 

Through a descriptive analysis of the pairs of source-language and target-language linguistic features, the study found that translation strategies were varied, and could result in a tension between the prioritisation of stylistic elements over the original meaning of the lyrics. The results confirmed a lack of standardised conventions for subtitled translations on YouTube, and certain markers of this digital, community-oriented medium were present, where they might not be found in more conventional arenas of audiovisual translation.