Le blason - превод на английски

Georges Brassens

Le blason

5 превода

Албум (или стихосбирка):

Fernande

Оригинален текст

Превод

Le blason

The blazon

Having always got on well with it,

I would have liked celebrate, without acting inappropriately,

Tender feminine body, your most beautiful feature1

Which everyone who has seen it says is amazing.

It would have been my final song, my swan song,

My last love letter, my farewell message.

But unfortunately the words which designate it

Are claimed by the despicable and the execrable.

It is the great failing of the French language,

it is its Achilles heel and it is its disgrace,

to offer only words characterised by baseness

to this incomparable instrument of happiness.

When so many flowers have poetic names,

Tender feminine body, it is extremely unfortunate

That your sweetest, and most erotic,

And most intoxicating flower should have such dirty2 ones.

But the worst of all is one little word

Of three3 letters, not more, informal, in common use,

It is inexplicable, it is irrevocable,

Shame on him who used it first.

Shame on him who, out of spite, for a guess4

Endowed with the same name, in his poisonous bile,

This great friend of man and the scathing insult,

That man, it's probable, became known for it.

Misogynist for sure, vey probably sexless,

Completely resistant to the charms of Venus

Was this sod who absolutely, totally without shame

Created this moreover incovenient link.

A plague upon this homonymy!

It's injust, Madam, and it's invidious

That this king's portion of your anatomy

Is called the same as a lot of people.

May heaven cause that one day, in a fit of genius

An inspired poet, sustained by Pegasus,

Gives, cancelling in one fell swoop centuries of abuse,

To this real marvel a pretty christian name.

In the meantime, Madam, it would seem a shame,

And your admirers5 would all be upset by it,

To lose sight of [the facts] that for rendering homage to it

There are other means and that I know them,

And that I know them.

1. or characteristic; usually prerogative or privilege but it doesn't mean that here
2. or improper
3. Well, the French word has three letters; but maybe this should be changed to "four" in the English translation, as the English word is one letter longer than the French one
4. or bet, or challenge
5. or worshippers, or adorers

За текста

За превода

Translations in this website are protected by copyright law. Don't claim any of my translations as your own, and please if you publish them anywhere attribute them to me.
Some translations I post will have been provided by someone other than me, and when that is the case it will be made clear on the pages containing those translations; if you want to copy those translations you must first obtain permission from the people who provided them, as I don't have the right to give you such permissions, and please carefully observe the rights of the authors of the original material that has been translated.

michealt

добавено на 1 ноември 2014 - 20:39

Изказвания 2

PaotrLaouen

12 март 2020, 13:03

It should be noted that the title "Blazon" is not used with its usual meaning of Coat od Arms. It is the name of a very conventional style of poetry, particularly in favour in the 16th and 17th centuries, without particular metric rules (some are sonnets, etc.), composed in honour of some part of women's body.

PaotrLaouen

12 март 2020, 13:06

Here, "gageure" is obviously 'challenge'.

Влезте или се регистрирайте, за да добавите коментар.