May 1, 2009
This is one of the most famous French songs for people in the UK. Renaud sings the praises of all women except Margaret Thatcher of whom he thinks rather less. Renaud did record an English version of the song which is included here as a YouTube video beneath the original – it will take you a while to adjust to his accent to understand it! Naturally, his English version it’s not a direct translation because things need to be changed in order to get it to fit and rhyme where necessary.
The translation here is a more direct translation of the French – we are not slaves to poetry or cadence.
As in the previous Renaud translation, there is plenty of French slang (argot) here.
Read the full article →
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.
Read the full article →
