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Les roses d'un homme pauvre (ou l'or d'un homme riche)

Il me faut décider aujourd'hui
que prendre, que garder
les roses d'un homme pauvre
ou l'or d'un homme riche.
 
L'un est aussi riche qu'un roi dans son palais.
Il est dur et insensible mais
il pourrait pourtant apprendre a donner son cœur par amour
au lieu de l'acheter avec de l'or
 
Et puis les roses du pauvre
et le frisson quand on s'embrasse
seront souvenirs du paradis
qui ne me manqueront jamais.
 
Mais la main qui apportera les roses ce soir
sera la main que je prendrai
parce que la rose de l'amour vaut plus pour moi,
plus que l'or d'un riche quelconque.
 
Et puis les roses du pauvre
et le frisson quand on s'embrasse
seront souvenirs du paradis
qui ne me manqueront jamais.
 
Mais la main qui apportera les roses ce soir
sera la main que je prendrai
parce que la rose de l'amour vaut plus pour moi,
plus que l'or d'un riche quelconque...
 
Original lyrics

A Poor Man's Roses (Or a Rich Man's Gold)

Click to see the original lyrics (English)

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Comments
michealtmichealt
   Sun, 21/10/2018 - 19:59

> Is the hand I will hold -> you mean "prendrai", right?

Yes, and I don't know how I ended up with tendrai, after all tendrai makes very little sense (if any) in context.

Your other comments I generally agree with, and I've mostly done something close to what you suggest; but there are some that I think don't quite hit the mark - see below:

> What to have, what to hold -> the pun on "hold" (his hand) does not really work in French. "tenir qq ch" does not mean "possess" or "accept".
> "que choisir, que prendre" or something?
Or something. "hold" in this context means "keep" or "retain" (but certainly NOT "retenir" here)

> bien qu'íl -> that doesn't work very well here, it would make it sound like rich people are usually kind-hearted Regular smile
> "Mais il est..." sounds better to me
The worst of this was that I selected the wrong punctuation here, with a semi-colon at the end of the line before "bien que" which made the clause that began was part of the sentence on the previous line, rather that beginning a new sentence. As you suggest, "mais" is the right word, but it comes at the end of he line not the beginning once the sentence boundary is correctly placed, and I think it's better for it to be backed by "pourtant" on the next line.

> donner le cœur -> son cœur. French uses possessives more than English.
You're right, it needs to be "son". But on the generalisation about French and English use or disuse of possessives, you must be joking! French very often uses a definite article when English requires a possesive. But this clause is one in which the possessive is required because there is no indirect object of donner to indicate whose the heart it is (and in context even if there was such an indirect object it would not be the required owner, so a possessive would still be required).

> any rich man's gold -> "tout l'or d'un (homme) riche" or something?
In the English here "any" qualifies "rich man", not "gold" so "un riche quelconque" rather that "tout l'or" is the required correction.

annabellannaannabellanna    Sun, 21/10/2018 - 17:37

Hi Tom. Mind,there is a typing error in the 4th line:"l'or d'un homme..."

michealtmichealt
   Mon, 22/10/2018 - 16:35

Hi Anna
I can't work out whether I corrected tha error before I saw your comment or whether it's still there and I just can't see it.

MiquelMiquel    Mon, 22/10/2018 - 00:22

C'est une merveilleuse traduction!