This thesis is an autobiographical study of a classical singing student who wished to investigate the connection between understanding the meaning of the text in an art song and her musical/dramatic interpretation of it. Classical singing students study songs and arias in French, German, Italian and other European languages on a regular basis, but they do not necessarily speak or understand all of them. How can a singer relate to the text of the songs they are performing if they do not know the language of them? In this study I learned two art songs, one in French and one in English, divided the textual studies into three 'levels of understanding', made recordings for each level, compared the results and reflected upon my interpretations of each song. The purpose was partly to develop my own general understanding between text and interpretation as an artist, and partly as a showcase for other singing students how important it is to translate and by extension relate to the texts of all the songs we are singing, not only the ones in our mother tongue or fluent languages.