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April 2009

Translation of Héros cherche aventures by La Ruda Salska

April 28, 2009

Apologies for the length of time since the last post – I’ve been away in France for a while.

As we’ve previously mentioned, La Ruda started life as a ska band before changing their style into a heavier, rock sound. This song – Héros cherche aventures – “Hero seeks adventure” is from the album Passager du réel and is one of the first songs where they are moving towards their new style.

This has been quite a tricky translation – as always – comments, corrections, critisicms welcome.

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Translation of On Savait (Devenir Grand) by La Grande Sophie

April 20, 2009

I caught an interview with La Grande Sophie on TV5 Monde last night (Sky Channel 799 in the UK) on a show called Acoustic where she was talking about her latest release La grande Sophie en acoustique toute seule comme une grande. This song, On savait (devenir grand) “We knew (to grow up)” is from the 2003 album Et si c’était moi “And if it were me”.

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Translation of La chauve-souris by Thomas Fersen

April 20, 2009

Fersen is an accomplished poet who regularly plays with language, using puns, rich rhymes, symbols and images taken from the realms of plants (vegetables, fruits) and animals (birds and various beasts) to tell stories or original fables, to recreate moments from daily life, impressions and sentiments, and also the dreams of ordinary people and their failings and faults. His deep and gravelly smoker’s voice gives a particular tone to his songs, which belong to different musical styles depending on the album (rock, folk-rock or jazz and blues). [wikipedia]

This song, La Chauve-Souris “The bat” is from the album Qu4tre released in 1999. As always with poetic songs, we’re not looking here to recreate the poetry in the translation as we don’t intend to perform the song – the poetry will be left for the original version – the English translation will attempt to give the meaning, hopefully to facilitate the enjoyment of the French lyrics.

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Translation of Sèche Tes Pleurs by Daniel Bélanger

April 15, 2009

This translation was all going very well until the final line of the second verse Que l’sud d’la fille lui fasse du nord – which I think is simply too poetic to translate – I suspect only the writer knows what this really means, but I have made a clumsy translation here of “That the girl’s south becomes his north” which perhaps tries to create the image of someone’s world being upended by a girl. There is an interesting discussion on this very line on the Word Reference Forums.

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Translation of Pendant que les champs brulent by Niagara

April 14, 2009

Niagara were quite a poppy band in the 80s but their last two albums Religion and La Vérité had something of a harder edge. This track J’ai vu “I saw” is from the 1990 album, Religion.

I’ve been listening to both albums for free on Spotify – go and get it if you haven’t already.

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Translation of A la volonté du peuple from Les Misérables

April 14, 2009

The first London production of Les Misérables was approximately one third a translation of the original French score, one third a reworking, and one third new material. The original French version was composed in 1980 and the English version opened in 1985 in London. The London version was then used as the basis for a new French version of the show, and this song is from that version, the 1991 cast recording from the Thèâtre Mogador, Paris.

The track A la volonté du peuple existed in the 1980 version, and was reworked to become “Can you hear the people sing?” in the 1985 English version. The 1991 French version of the track has quite different lyrics from the original, although there are some lyrics that remain the same.

The translation I give here clearly is not the same as the English version of the song. The versions performed in the two languages are not direct translations of each other even though the song is intented to convey the same meaning within the show.

The second YouTube video below is a performance of the song from various Jean Valgeans from around the world, in a number of different languages.

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Translation of Saskatschewan by Les Trois Accords

April 13, 2009

I really love the Gros Mammouth Album by Les Trois Accords. This song isn’t really in the style of the album, but has simple lyrics, sung slowly which would put this song very much in the “easy” category except for a few Québécois expressions which may not be immediately recognisable.

And there’s a couple of chuckles to be had.

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Translation of Le Père Noel Noir by Renaud

April 11, 2009

This is a song by Renaud (Renaud Séchan), a very popular, often controversial French singer. This song Le Père Noel Noir (The Black Father Christmas) gives a description of Father Christmas as seen through the detached eyes of someone who sees him going about his business.

This translation has been the most interesting so far – a bucket load of slang expressions, colloquialisms and interesting verbs. There’s a lot of good stuff we can learn here.

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Translation of Je t’emmène au vent by Louise Attaque

April 8, 2009

I became familar with this song from the Feet Peals version from the album Adieu Tristesse which was released about ten years after Louise Attaque’s version.

There are a few interesting things to note in the translation, particularly the interpretation of “Se ramener devant” but for the most part these are quite a straightfoward lyrics.

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Translation of Paris en bouteille by La Ruda

April 6, 2009

This is the second song I have posted from the album 24 Images / Second by La Ruda. The title of this song comes from the expression Avec des si, on mettrait Paris en Bouteille “With ‘ifs’ you can put Paris in a bottle” – meaning that anything is possible if you create enough conditions (Ifs). “If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.”

The whole song is, by design, packed with little French expressions and this makes it interesting (I should really say here “impossible”) to translate.

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