Brazilian

Nougaro's French is simple enough, but his choice of words serves many interests -- too many for this translator.

Word meaning is almost the last thing worry about. The rhythm, a very strict rhyme scheme, directness and economy of language, striking visual metaphors, and the French word associations… none of those survive literal translation. I did the best I could without re-writing the poetry, which never works anyway.

My advice is, once you have understood what is actually said, appreciate the song in French.

Notes on things you can't look up so easily:

"Coeur battant" -- beating heart. Here, it could as well be "fighting heart" .

"Cry with your teeth" I understand as smiling through tears.

"Chanteurs de charm" (charm singers) refers to a suave, sentimental, corny style of singing. But since a charm is originally a magic spell, there is also the enchantment aspect. I went with the literal wording instead of "lounge singers" or "crooners" because it would insult the Brazilian to just leave it at that.

"Emperlant" has no contemporary equivalent. It means to endow with pearls or a pearly quality. "Impearl" is legitimate English, but it is archaic and weird to us now. Too bad!

"Grass makes away with the grain" -- if this is a proverb, I've never heard it before. The idea is, things that have value are wiped out by things that have little to none.

"Caress its navel" -- what?!! The musician's acoustic guitar (feminine noun in French) is being compared to a torso, with the big round sound hole as the navel. Strumming softly = caressing. The poet is French, after all.

"Whose pistil only sparkles" -- right, your interpretation is as good as mine. Some of the French is significantly concerned with sounds of words. But it is as if the night sky is studded not with stars, but with glittering tropical flowers.

"For my oral happiness" -- carrying on the flower theme, the singer impersonates a happy butterfly or hummingbird. One that flies at night. Or a moth, I guess.

"Comme un fils à son grésil" -- Like a son to his sleet? Like a son to sleet sound? Problem! For one thing, there seems to be confusion as to what the line is. Nougaro, who should know what he meant, really sings "ton grésil," meaning your sleet, your hail, your downpour of tiny pellets. The singer views himself as an heir to the Brazilian, whose singing and playing impact us like a hailstorm. Or something like that.

Check out the original vinyl release: Barclay, 1975, Femmes et Famines (Women and Famine); or the 2000 French Mercury re-issue, Nougaro, on iTunes and elsewhere. I think this is the same clip of Brésilien that comes up first on a YouTube search. YouTube also has a fun little conversion to samba by the French quartet Nouga d'oc.