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Jacques Brel: lost in translation — 15 Comments

  1. The clarity engendered by childhood innocence.

    War is not the issue per se. Self-defense is a legitimate and moral cause.

    If people want to save a few million human lives annually… Well, it’s a choice.

    Half of the moral equation follows from the recognition of intrinsic or exceptional value. Without it, there is hypocrisy and corruption. Principles matter.

  2. It’s a noteworthy bit of business concerning translation: we’re always apt to lose something. All the more reason not to make of ourselves slaves to translators, or at the least to notice enslavement is a probability and therefore to be wary. Thompson’s carelessness is proof enough.

    I wonder at the waltz meter, myself. Selling much, Mr. Brel?

  3. Holding forth on the lyrics of Fils de (non literal) liberally, though not slavishly so, the song could be about:

    Abortion — vanishing children
    Mongering in fetal body parts — walls of flesh
    Wind power – dying birds trembling with death
    Generational gap — scions ran from your arms
    Birth control — sons of regret
    Wasp ethic — built roads, wrote poems
    Indoctrination, inculcation – Children we lost in lullabies

  4. Interesting that we should both think of Jacques Brel now. I’ve often thought that we are very similar in our tastes. (Except for ballet!)

  5. One of Brel’s song is iconic in the Anglo Saxon sphere:
    “Le Moribond”
    here it became: Rod McKuen’ translation
    ‘Seasons In The Sun’
    Not a translation really. His own poem put to Brel’s music.
    Brel’s words are darker and while there is some sentimentality it conveys an absurdist existential angst …. something like that.

  6. I wonder at the waltz meter, myself.
    Sing along:
    ‘La Valse a Mille Temps’
    Brel’s words are dark and while there is some sentimentality it conveys an absurdist existential angst …. something like that.

    He’s a part of the Chanson Frané§aise, high literature put to music.
    It is country music really.

    Thanks for bringing it up although, I had happily forgotten the angst it brings up.
    A ‘How Can I Miss You If You Won’t Go Away?’ kind of feeeeling.

  7. Forget it, Neo; it’s the Grauniad. Can’t change them; can’t fix them; just don’t give them any money.

  8. I don’t remember who said that the translator of prose is the author’s slave, but the translator of poetry is the author’s rival.

    As poetry, the “inspired by” text is clearly anti-war. I don’t see how you’d read it otherwise.

  9. Who cares how the guardian portrays Brel? There are many other French musicians, actors, and authors over the last 40+ years

  10. oops… last 40+ years who far out shine Brel. IMO Brel was a rather mediocre vovalist, muscian, writer, and actor. Pourtant, le gout est subjectif.

  11. Brel’s translator was Mort Shuman, a New Yorker, who wrote hits for Elvis Presley and others before becoming a Good American and decamping to Paris. He wrote French language hits, so he knew what he was about, but he translatwed Brel with a free hand.
    One of his more interesting liberties, I’ve always thought is with Amsterdam.
    Where Brel simply has the sailors of Amsterdam “drink to the health of the whores of Amsterdam, Hamburg and beyond who have given their lovely bodies and their virtue for a bit of gold.”
    Pomus has the emotional “They drink to the health of the whores of Amsterdam who’ve given their bodies to a thousand other men. They’ve bargained their virtue, their goodness all gone for a few dirty coins when they just can’t go on…”
    Wow, where did those thousand men come from?
    Brel gives us a funny pun “a votre sante” is a common French toast, like the English “cheers” but when a man wishes good health to a prostitute he is not a disinterested party.
    Shuman gives us a whole morality play without any moral. Oh those poor girls, but it’s not really their fault.
    There’s an interesting cultural difference there.

  12. It’s all rubbish (in my obvious) opinion. The words and the music and who’s singing do not matter. It is all a very poor, populist, substitute for reading and thinking. The translated lyrics given by Neo above could have been written by a high-schooler…I wrote crap like that at the time and thought it was *(drumroll) poetry*. Which is why all this really took off in the 1960s. If you like the music or the singer’s voice you are more inclined to heed the words, and listen to it over and over.
    Like “Give peace a chance.” Or Joni Mitchell. Or whoever. So today we have Rap; nice evolution.

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