I was considering skipping a translation for today. Then I decided to try to find a quick and easy one so that I could feel as if I had achieved something more today than simply adding a Twitter link.

Who better to turn to in such a circumstance than Les Trois Accords, the bonkers Québécois guaranteed to put a smile on your face in any language. You may remember them from this translation which, although from a different album, is equally daft.

I’m not going to do the full vocabulary and grammar breakdown today that I would normally do. Just the translation.

Well, ok, just one little shout out for the subjunctive…

Notice how the English simply don’t use the construct that triggers the subjunctive – if we did it would be:

“You be scared” is in the subjunctive because without the subjunctive it would be “you are scared”.

Although the more literal English equivalent would be

That “have” is the subjunctive, but you’ll have to take my word for it because it would be the same if I had written it in the indicative. Maybe I did.

Ok, you’ve made it this far so I guess I can trust you with this. I stumbled across this at some point while working on this post and it’s quite disturbing.

You have been warned.

Tu m’as dit by Testard & Frog

I have no idea.

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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