Jag är inte rädd för mörkret translations

[stjärnor]

Jocke has posted the lyrics to 999 on the forum, so I've attempted a quick translation. Please post any alterations you have and I'll amend the text.

When the album is released, the other song translations can go in this thread too.


999

In the whole of my life I heard a song
A lullaby you sung once
In the whole of my life I have trusted in myself
but now I need your help
In the whole of my life I heard a song
A song my mother sang once
In the whole of my life I have tried to think for myself
but without your help I'm not getting any further

All my thoughts revolve around sick things

Those dreams we dreamt came from the borderland beyond the barbed wire
where trenches were dug when someone else built the country when we sleep
Now we are awake but we don't recognise us
They have torn our streets burn down the play areas
where we hung out as children
No matter how far one has come
there's always further to go

There is a light which never goes out
in the songs from my growing up
I the whole of my life I have trusted in my luck
but I can't wriggle out of this

All our ideas came from a rosy 1980s

So now we think of travelling, White nights, Ian Curtis
Are you Michael Jackson or Michael Bolton
Are you Pepsi have you coke?
Are you profitable in your nakedness, your bruises and callouses
You have goosebumps for you are cold is this the best life had to give?
No matter how far one has come
there's always further to go

All of my thoughts revolve around expensive things

Oh baby where have you been
we have already lit the grill (barbeque)
we have waited here in the rain for something which didn't happen
It is only a weak feeling
of that something had been lost
that we wasted our best time on envy
Further we haven't came

The 999 things I would never do
They weighed up to 999 worse things I did
The 999 things I would never do
They weighed up to 999 worse thing I have already done.

[Hansen]

"Are you Pepsi have you Kola (caramel?)"

Antar att han menar kokain, som är kallas kola.
I guess he means cocaine, which is called coke.

[stjärnor]

Thanks Hansen, clearly my innocent mind was thinking of sweets instead of drugs!

[namokab]

"Are you Pepsi have you Kola (caramel?)"

Antar att han menar kokain, som är kallas kola.
I guess he means cocaine, which is called coke.

I'm not even sure that it is a reference to drugs.
I interpret is as a reference to the fact that people identify with products. Are you Pepsi or Coca Cola?
(but I may be wrong)

[stjärnor]

Yeah, I remember very clearly the pepsi/coca cola challenge stalls you'd find in shopping centres in the early 90s (at least in Glasgow)- they may have been there in the 80s (as the song has many 80s references), but I don't remember that far back....

[SportfreundeFCkeane]

Cola used to have coke as an ingredient and maybe that's left over from the linguistics of it? The kent awardspace site's translations have this written: "Are you Pepsi, you have Kola"

Either way, those and Michael Jackson are the only words I could understand lol. I wish we had more bands artistic songs like this rather than cheesy love songs or generic radio hits.

[namokab]

Based on the latest feedback in the Swedish thred (Tolkningar... #10), there seem to be compelling evidence that Kola actually refers to cocaine (or even money).

[stjärnor]

Swedish text here

Bonus song from the album.

Ett år utan sommar

You are defeated but are up at five
There is magic in your resistance
A miracle in your stubbornness
You are defeated but you stand up again
A year without summer
A childhood without play...

There are holes in everything
In those walls we raised around us
small holes
it is where a little light slips in
Perfection
smooth surfaces, are not for me
Give me mistakes
Give me something as ragged as you and I

I read After the Flood
Read Oryx & Crake
I read One Hundred Years of Solitude
I gave you all the book I have
it is The Magical Thinking you need to pull through...

There are holes in everything
In those walls we raised around us
small holes
it is where a little light slips in
Perfection
smooth surfaces, are not for me
Give me mistakes
Give me something as ragged as you and I

There are holes in everything
it is where a little light comes in


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_the_Flood
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oryx_and_Crake
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Hun...rs_of_Solitude

[smiile]

I'm sorry to be that guy but did you just translate this with Google Translate?

"In the whole of my life"
"but I am no longer without your help"
"How far th one has come is it always further behind"

[stjärnor]

No, I mostly use the swedish that I have learned and check either my Norstedts Students Edition Swe-Eng dictionary, or if I'm at work I use Norstedts online dictionary at ord.se. Occasionally I'll use google translate if there's a phrase that I can't get right/ understand in Swedish to see if it is any help. I know what bizarre things google translate can do sometimes

Maybe you (as a native Swede) can point out where I'm going wrong (since I have no one here to check with), but I don't really see anything wrong with ..
I hela mitt liv = "In the whole of my life" (yes, it could be reworded as 'In my whole life' but I didn't think that flowed as well)

"but I am no longer without your help" = men jag kommer inte längre utan din hjälp (I could have used the future tense 'but I will no longer be without your help', but, as above, it didn't fit the flow)

"How far th one has come is it always further behind"
I'll admit my lousy typing (and excitement at new kent lyrics) got a couple of errors in this one!

I'm always happy to have my attempt at Swedish corrected, if you'd kindly show me how/ what I have wrong. It's always hard translating lyrics because they don't always 'scan' when you translate them over and there's the occasional word or phase that we just don't have in english. It's hard enough understanding kent's lyrics sometimes in Swedish, without trying to find the meaning in English.

[smiile]

No, I mostly use the swedish that I have learned and check either my Norstedts Students Edition Swe-Eng dictionary, or if I'm at work I use Norstedts online dictionary at ord.se. Occasionally I'll use google translate if there's a phrase that I can't get right/ understand in Swedish to see if it is any help. I know what bizarre things google translate can do sometimes

Maybe you (as a native Swede) can point out where I'm going wrong (since I have no one here to check with), but I don't really see anything wrong with ..
I hela mitt liv = "In the whole of my life" (yes, it could be reworded as 'In my whole life' but I didn't think that flowed as well)

"but I am no longer without your help" = men jag kommer inte längre utan din hjälp (I could have used the future tense 'but I will no longer be without your help', but, as above, it didn't fit the flow)

"How far th one has come is it always further behind"
I'll admit my lousy typing (and excitement at new kent lyrics) got a couple of errors in this one!

I'm always happy to have my attempt at Swedish corrected, if you'd kindly show me how/ what I have wrong. It's always hard translating lyrics because they don't always 'scan' when you translate them over and there's the occasional word or phase that we just don't have in english. It's hard enough understanding kent's lyrics sometimes in Swedish, without trying to find the meaning in English.

To me there were many phrasings that just seemed... "Swenglish", but if you as natively English speaking understand it I guess it doesn't really matter.

But for example what I meant was that something like "during my whole life" sounds more English correct than "in the whole of my life.
Or "But I won't get any further without your help" (not a matter of existing, here I think you just misunderstood it).
Or "How far one may have come, it's always longer left" (as in it's always longer left [to go]).

Or, even "trusted myself", instead of "depended on myself".

Translating Swedish to English is something that interests me as I find both languages intriguing.

[stjärnor]

To me there were many phrasings that just seemed... "Swenglish", but if you as natively English speaking understand it I guess it doesn't really matter.

But for example what I meant was that something like "during my whole life" sounds more English correct than "in the whole of my life.
Or "But I won't get any further without your help" (not a matter of existing, here I think you just misunderstood it).
Or "How far one may have come, it's always longer left" (as in it's always longer left [to go]).

Or, even "trusted myself", instead of "depended on myself".

Translating Swedish to English is something that interests me as I find both languages intriguing.

I can see where you are coming from with the 'during' thing. It would make sense to say it like that, just as much as 'in the whole of' would too (in my opinion)- different ways of saying pretty much the same thing.

The thing with lyrics is, I try to do the most 'direct' translation that I can, because I don't want to re-write Jocke's words. I guess that means some phrases maybe don't quite come out sounding 'perfect' english. If we use your example, 'During my whole life..." try singing that line over Jocke's 'I hela mitt liv' and I find that 'during' is a tricky word to sing, or to be precise the 'du' syllable is a very hard sound to start a sung line with. Yet, it makes perfect sense when spoken or read.

When I was taking my Swedish lessons, a few of us in the class would often ask the teacher for help understanding/ translating lyrics of songs we liked (kent for myself, melodifestivalen songs for someone else!) and we would occasionally listen to Swedish music as part of the class (Christmas, Eurovision, etc) and try and understand the lyrics. My teacher would say to us, 'Don't try and learn Swedish from lyrics, often wrong word order is used, or phrases wouldn't be spoken that way', and she's totally correct.

With the 'depended upon myself' line I went for this because of the next line 'but now I need your help' (men nu behöver jag din hjälp). The person in the song now needs someone else to help them, whereas in the past they managed on their own. Maybe your version is correct, and the person doesn't trust themselves (or their judgement) any longer, but only Jocke will know which is correct.

Songs are very personal both to the writer and the listener. As the listener we might be able to understand 100% what the song is about, or we may put our own experiences into the lyrics and therefor each have our own 'understanding' of what a song or a certain line means.

I really enjoy doing the translations on here, but sometimes it's not always the easiest thing to do. There's sometimes phrases that, as a non-swede I don't know because I don't use or hear in everyday life. An example of this is a translation I did a while back, Jocke used the phrase 'smaken är som baken' in a post. I'd never heard this phrase , it wasn't in Norstedts, and upon consulting google translate, it came up with 'the taste is like ass' which I KNEW could not have been correct in the context. Another member came in and helped me with this one, saying that it means basically everybody has different tastes. Which makes perfect sense when you see it like that, but in the context of the post, I knew it has nothing to do with ass!

Another example is when I did the translations for 'Skisser för sommaren' the line 'Miljoner ord förvinner ner i förrgårs svarta hål' I knew that förrgår was 'the day before yesterday' but there's no way you'd sing that in a song in English (unless you're The Supernaturals!), it's just too long a phrase (and you lucky Swedes have a nice short word for it), so in this case I chose to just write 'yesterday' instead, knowing that this was wrong/ against my theory of translation, but there really is no shorter way of saying 'the day before yesterday' or 'two days ago' in english. And it didn't really change the meaning of that line in the song... the words still disappeared down a hole!
There's even the odd occasion where I know/ understand what is being said in Swedish, but sometimes can't find the correct word or phrase in English.

I do appreciate the help of others when I'm doing translations, because I know I'm not fluent (hell, I'm nowhere near!), and I don't live in Sweden, and I know that not everything I write will be 100% correct. Your post just set me on edge a little because you made it look like all the hard word I do on here was basically 'google translate'. Sometimes when Jocke has posted a lot, it can take me a couple of hours to locate, translate, understand, link to and finally post my translations of his posts. I do it because I enjoy translation, and I remember when I just started learning swedish and this board was just a lot of words about my favourite band and I couldn't understand anything. So I hope that there's at least someone else out there who doesn't understand swedish and loves kent, and gets lo learn a little more about the band from translations posted on here. And I hope they understand if not everything here is perfect.

I've often deliberated starting a translation help/ discussion thread for both swe-eng and eng-swe, (not just for lyrics/ Jocke's post, but translation help in general) but I do wonder if I'd end up talking to myself in there!

/end of essay. sorry this one got so long...

[smiile]

I'm rarely on here and even more rarely in the English section (basically never) so wasn't aware you usually do the translations on here. And sorry if I reacted strongly, not in the greatest of moods today, and as I thought the translation wasn't always accurate it got me annoyed. But after reading your explanation for this I now understand why you do this the way you do. So yeah, sorry.

[stjärnor]

Apology accepted, lets move on and look forward to some hearing new kent songs.

[Reina]

"but I am no longer without your help" = men jag kommer inte längre utan din hjälp (I could have used the future tense 'but I will no longer be without your help', but, as above, it didn't fit the flow)

"att inte komma längre" means something else though. It means not being able to get further, as in advancing, getting on, making progress. Can't find the right words for some reason, but I hope you know what I mean. "Without your help, I'm not 'getting any further'". Which is badly formulated by me as I'm not English nor Swedish, but your translation is not really right there. Hope that helps Think you're doing a great job with all the translations, and don't worry about making mistakes. I'll try to have a look at the whole text more closely if you want, and see if I see any mistakes. Have a serious lack of time lately, which is why I haven't been able to be n here much.