Placed somewhat arbitrarily at number two in my recent list of my favourite francophone albums, I was suprised that I had not yet posted a translation of a song from Kaïn’s Les Saisons S’tassent.

Pépère translates as easy, tranquill, stress-free and is also used to refer to a grandad, or an old man. The phrase “Bon Pépère” is often also used to describe an old pet of good character – just do a search on Google Images for “Bon Pépère” and you’ll see what I mean.

I have struggled so much with a decent English translation and I pretty much gave up but settled on “Good when I’m old.” even though I know it doesn’t do the job very well.

I’m not sure if the star du pop in the lyrics is a pun on being a “pop”, albeit that it would be an anglicism, but luckily it loses nothing in the translation if that was indeed the intention of the writer.

Speaking of which, I was lucky enough to find here and here the thoughts of Steve Veilleux, the songwriter on this particular song:

Bon pépère, une chanson sur quelqu’un qui veut vieillir sans avoir de remords ou de regrets, qui veut mener une vie correcte, peut-être pas glamour, mais honnête

Une chanson sur quelqu’un qui veut vieillir sans avoir de remords ou de regrets, qui veut mener une vie correcte, peut-être pas glamour, mais honnête

A song about someone who wants to grow old without remorse or regrets, who wants to lead a good life, maybe not glamorous, but honest.

I recently heard a song by Isabelle Boulay on a French radio station. I was suprised how grabbed I was by her voice given that her music is not generally of the genre that immediately catches my attention.

As I do in these circumstances, I went in search of the samples that accompany MP3 downloads these days and found the album Nos Lendemains (Our tomorrows) in the UK iTunes store.

I was not suprised to find that her previous album De retour à la source was nominated for the Canadian Juno Award for francophone album of the year in 2008 which was eventually won by Daniel Bélanger who was one of the earliest singers I translated on this site.

I suspect that I will soon return to the world of distorted guitars, male vocals and ska, but first here is a translation of a song from Nos Lendemains called Ton Histoire (Your story).

I’ve done something with this translation that I’ve not attempted before.

Whenever I translate on this blog I concentrate first and foremost on conveying the meaning of the original lyrics trying to keep as much as possible the feeling of a song. However, this is the first translation where I have consciously attempted to make the translation poetic, so that it could indeed by sung over the same tune.

For example, here is the first verse…

…here is how I translated it originally…

…and here is my attempt at adding a little flavour…

As you can see I am clearly in no danger of becoming the next Poet Laureate.

When a professional translates a song for the very purpose of being recorded in a new language, he or she will more often than not have to restructure, rewrite, or juggle large chunks of the song in order to create a good song in the new language. As you can see I’ve not done that here.

Once upon a time I translated a tremendously famous song by Charles Aznavour called Hier Encore. I gave the original French, my translation and provided the YouTube video of the actual English recording of the song. You can clearly see the art of the professional translator in that post.

With this translation of Ton Histoire I have, as always, provided certain vocabulary and expressions prior to the lyrics. You can therefore check out for yourself where I may have taken a few liberties with the flavour of words.

I’m not sure how well it worked but it’s an experiment that I enjoyed and may try again in the future. Suggestions welcome!

I started, and indeed finished this translation back in April. I can’t remember why I choose not to publish it, perhaps I was not entirely happy with the translation, but reading it back I think it’s pretty good. Perhaps my standards are dropping.

Pep’s is another band that easily makes my top ten French language bands and for a period several months ago I was all over their album Utopies Dans Le Décor – I think the production quality (if you’ll allow me to use such as boring phrase) is superb – the mixture of the clean guitar sound and the rich bass really gets me.

I haven’t played the album for at least six months – it’s one of those that I loved but that I overplayed – like drinking a few too many glasses of whiskey – sometimes you don’t realise you’ve overdone it until it’s too late. Sometimes this can be terminal (I still can’t listen to Californication by the Red Hot Chili Peppers due to playing it into the ground on its release) – but I am happy to report that Pep’s are playing in the background as I write this and I’m loving it.

I have no little MP3 widget to include in this post, and embedding is disabled for the official video on YouTube, but I can give you this link to the YouTube video.

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.

The album Utopies Dans Le Décor is one of my very favourite albums – the production quality is superb and the clean guitar / folk nature of the album mixed with rich bass lines sounds great.

Although  Libertà appears on this album, it first appeared five years earlier on Au Sourire De L’âme where it featured Djazia. The chorus is sung in English and Italian, with all the verses in French.

Notes

• Vivere per libertà (Italian) – Living for freedom
• Vivere nella libertà (Italian) – Living in freedom
• Mais rien que les odeurs – But even just the smells – literally here “rien que” should mean “nothing but”, or “only” but this leads to a slightly different shade of meaning in English