About Me and My Translations

My name is Gregory H. Bontrager, and I’m an American college student at Florida Gulf Coast University.  I’m studying computer science as a major and Spanish as a minor.  Languages and linguistics are my passion.  Besides English, which is my native language, I have at least an intermediate command of Spanish, French, Italian, and Latin.  I’ve been translating songs for three or four years as a hobby and a way of staying in practice in the aforementioned languages.  My translation philosophy is to sacrifice as little meaning as possible while preserving rhythm and compatibility with the original melody.  It’s not an exact science, but the ideology is well developed.  My methods are described further on the Methodology page.

I am aware of the official adaptations of “Breaking Free” (“Sólo Hay Que Intentar” for Latin America and “No Dejes de Soñar” for Spain) and “What I’ve Been Looking For” (Belanova’s “Eres Tú”), and from a purely musical perspective, they’re good.  From an ideological perspective, however, Disney could’ve done a lot better.  Much more meaning is lost in these adaptations than necessary, and there’s too much syllable compression (for example, when the line “Sólo Hay Que Intentar” has to be sung like “solwykintentar”).  Therefore, I present my own translations as alternatives.  I hope you like them.

I would like to thank María Candeira from Spain for her time and effort in serving as my editor and consultant.  Without charging me a cent, she provided me with the necessary feedback to assure that all my translations are idiomatically sound.  Muchísimas gracias, María.