When last we left Thorin’s company in the Lonely Mountain, Bard’s army and that of the Elvenking had shown up to deliver them a Siege-o-gram. Postage due: a share of the treasure of Smaug. Not terribly surprisingly, this didn’t go over well at all. Particularly given how Thorin’s getting crankier what with the lust for the Arkenstone being well and thoroughly on him.
Chapter 16, “A Thief in the Night”, kicks in with that very question. ‘Cause yeah, Thorin, about that Arkenstone? Bilbo might know something about that…
Et maintenant, une p’tite histoire, pour pratiquer mon français. Plusieurs de mes amis peuvent reconnaître cette histoire, parce que j’ai raconté cette histoire avant en anglais. Comme toujours, je vous invite tous à me dire où je fais des erreurs dans ma grammaire!
Mon père a dit toujours à moi que pendant mon enfance, parmi mes premières mots ont été, “Jouez plus d’Elvis, Papa!” C’est plausible, ça. J’ai beaucoup de mémoires d’écoutant des disques de Elvis Presley avec lui, et j’ai vraiment adoré.
D’autre part, ceci était le même père que dit à moi que je fis des sons comme un canard devant j’ai appris à parler.
Duck-Obsessed Little Blonde Kid
Il a dit qu’il et ses frères ont aimé dire à moi, “Les chasseurs de canards viennent!” Ils faisaient semblant de viser fusils sur moi et faire des bruits BANG. Et moi, j’ai ri beaucoup et s’enfuis à travers la chambre.
Entre-temp, ma mère a été là, et elle insistait très fortement, “MA FILLE NE FAIT DES BRUITS DE CANARD.”
Et moi, j’ai dit, “Coin-coin!”
En 2001 mon père a décedé, et j’ai pris l’avion au Kentucky pour les funérailles. Ma famille s’est réunie à la maison de mon frère. J’étais là dans la cuisine de mon frère, et mon oncle Larry, je n’avais pas vu depuis quinze ans, entra.
Le premiere chose qu’il a me dit a été, “Sais-tu que tu ressembles exactement ta mère?”
Et le deuxiemes chose qu’il a me dit? “Sais-tu que tu as fait des bruits de canard quand tu as été un enfant?”
Aux funérailles, mon autre oncle Marion est venu sur moi. Il a dit aussi à moi, “Sais-tu que tu as fait des bruits de canard quand tu as été un enfant?” Et chaque fois que j’ai pleuré durant les funérailles, il se pencha vers moi et a dit, “Coin-coin!”
Ceci, mes amis d’Internet, est ma histoire de canards!
Well, all this fun with dragons strafing Lake-town is all very well and good, but I know what you’re thinking, Internets: what’s going on with Bilbo? Good question, for which I’m sure that Chapter 15, “The Gathering of the Clouds”, will have answers!
And since I’m so far behind on getting these posts done, I’ve actually read the rest of the English edition as I write this. This post, however, will stay focused on Chapter 15.
A couple of people have asked me already if I’ve seen this video of 16-year-old David Thibault in Quebec, covering Elvis’ “Blue Christmas”. So before anybody else does, yep, seen it!
To my ear, the kid sounds like he’s trying just a little too hard to mimic Elvis’ accent and vocal mannerisms, which isn’t exactly his fault–I make that objection about most Elvis impersonators I hear. In his particular case, he’s crossing a language barrier here too. So I cut a lot of slack for that.
And he does have great resonance to his voice, and the overall quality of it is definitely Elvis-like. I’d love to hear him try something backing off just a tad on the accent, then he’d be spot on. Alternately, I’d love to hear him sing something in his natural accent, just to spook me right out and make me wonder when the hell Elvis got resurrected in Quebec. ;)
And if he REALLY wants to combine more of my musical interests, he should play the bouzouki!
+10 as well for the reaction of the lady at the mike. I’m pretty sure I actually understood her crying “t’es incroyable!”–i.e., “you’re incredible”. \0/
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VwWRpIinxs&w=560&h=315]
Fell behind on this again due to being in MASSIVE DEADLINE mode with Vengeance of the Hunter–for the past several months. But now that Vengeance is signed off on text-wise, and with the coming of The Desolation of the Smaug VERY NIGH, I feel a mighty need to return to this project.
So let’s get cracking with Chapter 14, shall we? Esgaroth has a pissed-off dragon to contend with, after all!
So y’all know that fun La Bottine Souriante concert video I posted yesterday? I totally got songvirused by the second song Éric Beaudry sings lead on in that–because the back of my brain kept going “HEY YOU TOTALLY KNOW THIS SONG”.
Except that it doesn’t appear on the later La Bottine albums, the ones M. Beaudry appears on. So it took my audio memory of the melody a bit before it finally went DING and appended “you know this song, but sung by André Marchand“! Turned out I recognized it because it’s “Pinci-pincette”, on the early La Bottine album Y’a ben du changement, and it was in fact on my playlist in iTunes for my favorite La Bottine songs!
‘Cause yeah. As I’ve said before, two of the biggest things I adore about Quebec trad are call-and-response and podorythmie, and this song’s an excellent example. Once I figured out which song it was, I promptly found the words right over here.
Let’s see what happens when I try to read through the lyrics without Google Translate, shall we? Here are bits and pieces of it I can take a guess at without looking them up. Translation attempts behind the fold! Continue reading “Fun with La Bottine Souriante lyrics”
Last night on the way home from work, thanks to current medical developments, I turned like I always do in such times to my comfort music. And if you’ve hung around me for more than five minutes, you know exactly what that is: Great Big Sea. And in particular, “Ordinary Day”.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: this song is pretty much the anthem of my life. And this past week in particular, I’ve been feeling the second verse real strongly, since I keep feeling like my system REALLY wants to push me around in a medical sense. I’ll take the liberty of hoping that trying to maintain a positive outlook has helped me make it not get away with that shit; certainly there’s a strong case to be made for that being an excellent coping technique with stress. (I’m serious on that! Dara pointed me at this TED talk over here on that very topic!)
And it’s certainly helped that my belovedest of B’ys have been here through the last 13 years to give me such musical comfort as they do. Especially when they’re the ones who made me pick up a guitar and learn how to play it in the first place.
Now though I’ve got mes gars du Québec, who are pretty much doing the same thing, only this time with a whole extra bonus language to stuff into my head.
Y’all know where this is going, right? Yep. I just translated “Ordinary Day” into French.
Which has apparently been done before, according to my Facebook and Twitter friend (not to mention fellow raving Great Big Sea fangirl) Krista, who gave me a scan of a GBS newsletter from way back in October of 1997, three years before I discovered the band. Krista showed me that after I posted my take on the first verse and chorus last night, and I was rather pleased to discover that a) I could understand just about everything that translation was saying, and b) I still stood by the translation choices I made in my own attempt.
I’ve finished that attempt up as of this post. Those of you who have any French at all will probably figure out fast that this is not an exact translation of Alan’s lyrics. I did direct translations when I could, but when I had to choose between “exact translation” and “close approximation that actually scanned better to the melody”, I went with the latter option. Particularly in the third verse, where I ran into trouble with the concepts of “double-edged knife” and “your ship will come in”–in those cases in particular, I jumped over to concepts that more or less got the same idea across but which let me use simpler phrasing that’d scan better to the melody.
‘Cause, of course, the overall point here is that I eventually want to be able to sing this. ;)
Anyway, here it is, my take on “Ordinary Day” in French!
J’ai un sourire sur ma face, et quatre murs autour de moi
J’ai le soleil dans le ciel, toute l’eau m’entoure, oh oh oh
Ouias, je gagne, et parfois je perds
J’ai été battue, mais jamais meurtri
Ça va pas si mal
Refrain:
Et je dit, yé hé hé, c’est juste un jour ordinaire, et c’est tout ton état d’esprit
À la fin de la journée, tu dois juste à dire, ça va bien!
Janie chante sur le coin, qu’est-ce qui l’empêche de mourir?
Laisse-les dire ce qu’ils veulent, elle va essayer encore, oh oh oh
Elle pourrait trébucher s’ils la pousser
Elle pourrait tomber mais jamais céder
Ça va pas si mal
Dans cette belle vie, il y a des douleurs
C’est un couteau dans le cœur, mais il y a demain toujours, oh oh oh
C’est ton choix si tu passe ou casse
Fais confiance le matin va venir
Ça va pas si mal
Been a while since my last Trilingual Hobbit Reread post, and with my interest renewed by the coming of the trailer for The Desolation of Smaug, let’s get going on chapter 13, shall we?
When last we left our hobbit and his merry dwarf boy band, they’d just finally found the secret door into the Lonely Mountain! And we know what this means, yes we do, my precious: SMAUG.
Let’s get right down to the dragon-y goodness, shall we?
One of the fun things about Google Analytics is that I can see what people who hit my site might have been searching for. And I’ve seen a couple of people come in now looking for a translation of Great Big Sea’s “Le Bon Vin”, which appears on the new XX album. Presumably they’re keying off of this previous post of mine, wherein I took a shot at transcribing the lyrics as I understood them. My French-speaking friend and fellow Great Big Sea fan Marie-Andrée then gave me her transcription of the lyrics, which told me that yeah, actually, I got most of them correct.
Here now is my take on a translation of the lyrics that Marie-Andrée provided. So if you’re an Anglophone Great Big Sea fan, hope this helps! (Or, for that matter, if you’re a Francophone GBS fan and you have trouble parsing Alan’s accent. Since he does have a heavy Newfoundland accent and that influences his French. And if you look in the liner notes for the album, at least on the boxed set edition, it says that the band had a Francophone from New Brunswick giving them French coaching. So Alan’s take on French may well sound very strange to French-speaking Canadians outside of Newfoundland or New Brunswick!)
A few quick notes going in:
“Bon bon bon” is I believe just getting used here for rhythm and cadence as opposed to being part of the actual lyrics. “Bon” is of course “good”.
“Bis” means “repeat”. I see this a lot in Quebec trad music, as a way to notate when a line is done call and response style. Here, I’ve used it to signify the lines that are first sung by Alan and then sung back by the rest of the band.
“Le Bon Vin” is in fact a Quebecois trad song, from what I was seeing Googling around. I did find longer editions of the lyrics, here and here. (That second link has chords, too!) However, Great Big Sea’s take is much simplified. They’re only sorta kinda doing the usual Quebec song structure of having a repeated first line and a second line, which then rolls over into the next verse to become that verse’s first line. (And I think they’re probably losing a lot of the actual narrative and context of the song, too, simplified as it is. But!)
Not entirely sure of the translation of the last line, but from what I’m getting it’s generally the friend of the viewpoint character snarking on this girl’s mob of lovers, so one could presume the recounting of her lovers makes up the “la canaille”?)
Anyway, here you go!
Chorus:
Le bon vin m’endort, l’amour me réveille (Good wine puts me to sleep, love wakes me up)
Le bon vin m’endort, l’amour me réveille encore! (Good wine puts me to sleep, love wakes me up again)
En passant par Paris, caressant la bouteille (bis) (Passing by Paris, caressing the bottle)
Un de mes amis me dit à l’oreille, bon, bon, bon (One of my friends told me in the ear)
Un de mes amis me dit à l’oreille (bis) (One of my friends told me in the ear)
Prends bien garde à toi, allons poursuivre la belle, bon, bon, bon (Take good care of yourself, (let’s) go pursue the beauty!)
Poursuit qui la veut, moi, je me moque d’elle (bis) (… pursue (the one?) that wants it, I don’t care about her)
J’ai couché trois ans, la nuit avec elle bon, bon, bon (I spent the night three years with her)
Elle a eu trois garçons, tous trois capitaines (bis) (She had three boys, all three captains)
Un à Bordeaux, et l’autre à La Rochelle bon, bon, bon (One in Bordeaux, and another in La Rochelle)
Un à Bordeaux, et l’autre à La Rochelle (bis) (One in Bordeaux, and another in La Rochelle)
L’autre à Versailles, à faire la canaille bon, bon, bon (Another in Versailles, to make the riffraff?)
