• Damien Saez

    Fin des mondes → English translation

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End of the worlds

Some debts for the nations
The smiles of money.
On the platforms
of exhausted cities
you're looking for some dough
to afford
a life on credit.
Your heart is burried in sooth.
Bleak plain1.
No, it's not Waterloo,
it's the subway platforms.
Yeah, it's the chain
of the subscriptions to stuff.
You saw what that does
to people. Plain shit
for springs without roses.
They can sell my prose all they want,
fuck them.
 
A few master bankers
for millions of drowned men
in the subways,
all these people harbouring dreams,
these people who don't lift
anything but the crosses on their backs.
To live, you got to pay
To love each other, you got to pay
To die, you got to pay
And then you need insurances too,
to properly feed the paunch,
speculations over sufferings.
Well, let them all die like dogs,
since they come for more back-bending
Here, even hope
must taste, surely,
like the reign of the machines.
 
If this is the end of the worlds,
if this is hell,
if your heart is falling
down in the dirt2,
if dreams are dying,
if everything is dust.
You know it, who awaits us
when we die: worms.
If you're not outraged
to see our lands
still used as wheat fields,
the culture of destitutions3 ?
 
Subway platforms4, I see ships.
Tell me, how can we dry our sobs5?
Breaking out at daybreak
for (the sake of) our loves along the waves
of the ships on the wheat fields.
I hear mankind screaming.
Come on, let's have a beer
to make our overdrafts skyrocket.
the finger to their Dow Jones6,
these universes deep inside the cracks7
I fuck Wall Street and the rest of them,
so-called God, money, all the apostoles.
We sell our happiness on credit,
Business experts in nightclubs8
since our flesh is auctionned
and we fucked the Earth.
 
This is war, my love (x3)
 
To the waves sweeping whole countries away
To the big bosses of the total corruption
To my love in her shopping cart9
To the ones fired into the fire10
To the gang-bang of cultures
To the nuclear (waste) spreading everywhere11
To the sons of country cements12
To our kids, to our partners
To the ones that are left on the side of the road
To the wounded from the stock exchange rates
rocked by unemployed and enclaves13
To our love stories in basements
To the dictatorships of our networks.
Your shitty life on pictures
To the politicians willing to get fucked in the ass
Work more, work more14
To the dancing people, poor morons
Everyone with a hard on for dough,
for the financial tyrants,
for some jokers pulling the strings,
Uncle Tom speakers,
transactions that taste of blood.
We'll have to cut their balls off,
too bad if blood flows,
that will allow us to grow flowers
Who knows? The future might be brighter
No matter if we have to destroy everything,
if we have to rebuild the Earth
Comrade banker, you can die,
me, I'll piss on your grave
and make love to my sweetheart on it.
 
Fuck you Goldman Sachs! Fuck you!
 
This is war, my love
 
  • 1. from the famous Victor Hugos's poem "Waterloo, Waterloo, bleak plain"
  • 2. "tomber plus bas que terre" (to fall lower than ground) is idiomatic for the worst kind of degradation or humiliation
  • 3. "blé" (wheat) is one of the many slang names of "money", so the idea is that land is sold for profit. "culture" can both mean "culture" and "cultivation", so it could be read - with a bit of a stretch - as "our culture promotes destitution" and "people are farmed for money like wheat on an industrial field"
  • 4. "quai" can mean both "platform" and "embankment/wharf"
  • 5. French sobs are no more dryable than English ones, but let's call that a metonymy
  • 6. The CAC40 is the main French stock exchange indicator
  • 7. "fente" could refer to an ATM/vending machine or a vulva. Saez used this metaphor a couple of times, here for instance
  • 8. Saez is using his pet word "aux" again, which can mean so many things that the actual meaning has to be guessed
  • 9. allusion to the cover of J'accuse
  • 10. the pun is accidental!
  • 11. "dans la nature" is idiomatic for "anywhere (without control)"
  • 12. probably an allusion to the countryside being turned into concrete and asphalt-covered suburbs, tough I find the metaphor a bit stretched
  • 13. "au gré" means something like "on the whim of" here. It can be interpreted loosely as "victims of speculation become unemployed and end up in ghettos"
  • 14. 10 years ago, as a candidate, future president Sarkozy used the motto "travailler plus pour gagner plus" (work more, earn more), in an attempt to make increase of working hours more popular. This lead to a host of derisive variants ("work more, earn less", "get fired, earn nothing", etc)
Original lyrics

Fin des mondes

Click to see the original lyrics (French)

Damien Saez: Top 3
Idioms from "Fin des mondes"
Comments
Benjamin ClémentBenjamin Clément    Fri, 02/02/2018 - 22:18

Très bonne traduction.

Juste quelques petits trucs :

Des financiers aux boîtes de nuits : Je mettrais plutôt "clubs" pour "boîtes de nuits", c'est plus naturel en anglais.

Pour la note 3: J'imagine que "la culture des misères" est un jeu de mots : on vit dans un monde où la misère est comme le blé (double sens ici avec blé/argent), cultivée.

Pour la note 7 : "Fentes" fait surement référence aux fentes utilisées pour l'argent (Pour retirer de l'argent, payer par carte bleu, etc.), ou/et à la fente du sexe féminin.

Pour éviter le jeu de mots avec fire tu peux éventuellement traduire "fire" par "blaze" ou "licenciés" par '"laid off".

Pour la note 12 : "Ciments" est surement une métaphore, les gens qui vivent dans les campagnes ont "les pieds dans le ciment" (Paradoxe avec le fait que le ciment n'aurait pas sa place dans les campagnes)

Et aussi les points d'exclamations à la fin qui ne doivent pas avoir d'espaces avant.

C'est juste quelques petits trucs, mais comme je l'ai dit la traduction est vraiment super.

Benjamin ClémentBenjamin Clément    Sat, 03/02/2018 - 13:06

Le jeu de mots avec fired tu peux le garder, c'était justement si ça te gênait que je te proposais ça.

Il y a pas à aller chercher trop compliqué pour "Au gré"; c'est dans le sens "au fil de", il y a aussi une idée d'accumulation dans cette phrase et qui se développe les lignes suivantes. Mais ta traduction est pas si mal, ça part dans le sens "au gré des vents", qui est peut-être un sens double ici.

Moi par exemple cette chanson j'ai eu beaucoup de mal. Pendant longtemps elle n'était pas trop ma tasse de thé, je l'écoutais comme ça mais sans l'aimer sans plus que ça. Et il y a quelques mois j'ai eu un déclic (ça m'est arrivé plein de fois sur le triple album Messine, en commençant j'aimais assez peu de chansons de l'album, et petit à petit j'ai commencé à toutes les aimer, les unes après les autres), donc à mon sens, Saez prend du temps, c'est jamais dans la facilité et les premières, deuxièmes et troisièmes impressions on peut les mettre au feu.