Pending moderation
Dear Finnish speakers, since we have quite some open translation requests, I thought I'll give them a try. Now I'm stuck with a line from Kotiteollisuus' 'Musta kuu':
'Ei kerkee pitää ees lomiaan'
I'd be grateful if somebody could explain 'kerkee' and 'ees' - I wasn't able to figure it out with all sorts of online dictionaries, so it's perhaps colloquial / slang.
Thank you for your time!
You're right, they are colloquial. "Kerkee" is "keretä/ehtiä" and "ees" is "edes". So "No even time to have/spend holidays".
Thank you, done :)
Here I go again and pester you, sorry...
I have translated Kotiteollisuus 'Kultainen vasikka', which has some references to the bible.
'Viimeiset ajat
On nyt koittaneet
Saatte kyntää
Loputtomat, syvät veet'
This 'veet' - it could perhaps mean V's, since furrows you plow might resemble a V in shape. Also, I found it translated to 'waters', 'waves' or 'flood' in some poems, so I wonder if it's also an archaic or poetic version of 'vedet'?
Veet = vedet = waters. So "loputtomat, syvät veet" = "endless, deep waters".
Thanks, Mari :)
Plowing waters, oh well...
You're welcome :) By the way, the word "kyntää" doesn't necessarily mean the literal plowing, of fields, for example, but it can be used to describe (troublesome) moving on ground or in water, and I think that that song could rather be translated like: " you will have to go through the endless, deep waters"
Really, that fits perfectly with what I just read about biblical wording: that plowing is also symbolical for toiling, and struggling. This song was quite the undertaking!
Thanks, these are things that dictionaries do not necessarily tell :) Then I'll translate it to 'struggle through endless, deep water'.
Although I don't understand Finnish, the idiom means to go many times back and forth because that's how ploughing was done, in english this idiom is: scour the seas
Thanks :) Sounds good... it'll be 'scour the deep seas endlessly' then, and I'll keep a footnote about 'literally plowing'.
To scour the high seas, or to scour the seven seas is more english-like
Hm, I just wanted to stay as close as possible to the Finnish original, and it says 'deep'. But I could just add that to the footnote. 'Scour the seven seas' sounds great. I knew there's a poet in you! :)
EDIT: But don't you think I'm making fun of you, I meant that.
Well the "high" for seas actually means deep, this is how it's expressed in english
Okay, so high seas are deep seas, right, in German 'hohe See'... still the seven seas might sound more biblical perhaps? This song full of references to the bible.
It isn't biblical it's an idiom
I know, I meant that it would just fit better. Well, maybe. I guess I'll have another look at that thing after sleeping a night over it. Sometimes that helps.
Sure does
But thank you for your suggestions, Evan :)
My pleasure