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Translation
Pale Flower
One day I found a flower in the street.
It was withered and in tatters.
Already pale, almost drowned in a sigh.
I brought it to my garden to take care of it.
This flower with the sleeping petals
That I care for today with all my soul,
Found again its lost colour
Because it found a caregiver who gave it some water.
I gave it a bit of love.
I protected it in my soul,
And in winter, I kept it warm
So it wouldn't be damaged.
Today, I am the owner of this flower,
And I promised to take care of it,
So that nobody steals its colour,
So that it never goes away.1
From this flower arose so many things.
Love was born that had once been lost,
And from the light of the sun, the shadow fled,
And along with the shadow, separation and forgetfulness fled.
I gave it a bit of love.
I protected it in my soul,
And in winter, I kept it warm
So that it wouldn't be damaged.
Today, I am the owner of this flower,
And I promised to take care of it,
To hold it close to me,
So that it never goes away.
So that it never goes away.
[Repeated several times until the end of the sung lyrics
and interspersed among the following lines]
I raised my glass to my cherished flower1 with a bit of love.
And in winter my garden is filled with colour.
Oh when I see it, I fall in love with it and it carries me away and it carries me away.1
Ave Maria, Puerto Rico!
Take it, Sergio!2
- 1. a. b. c. This is one of the places where I disagree with the other English translation.
- 2. This is not translated in the other English translation. In my opinion this is what one musician says to another to indicate it's his turn to step forward. Here, it seems like Marc Anthony was saying to his band leader to take it because he was finished singing. In fact over time, I have heard quite a few songs by our pal Marc and he "talks" to Sergio in half or more of them.
Grampa Wild Willy✕
Marc Anthony: Top 3
| 1. | Vivir mi vida |
| 2. | Pa'llá voy |
| 3. | Tu amor me hace bien |
Comments
About translator
This is a translation of my Author's Comments with my French translation from September 2014:
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Here's how it happened. After getting fed up with several stations on the XM satellite radio, I finally landed on XM 150 Caliente, Latin Music, salsa, merengue, bachata, vallenato, etc. I didn't grow up in that environment, I don't speak Spanish, my Spanish vocabulary is almost non-existent, but I've always liked Latin rhythm, although all the music I had ever heard and continue to listen to was completely new to me. So I listened to this music as background while I did other things. After a few weeks, I started to get interested in the song titles I could see in the little screen of the XM receiver. So I began using my French-English dictionary, that I've had for ages, as a Spanish-English dictionary to understand the titles. (In fact, you can use the dictionary to translate words between any pair of languages chosen from a list of about thirty languages.) After a few more weeks, the inevitable happened. I finally got interested in understanding the whole songs and not just their titles. It didn't take but a couple of Google searches before I stumbled upon Lyrics Translate. I didn't bother with every song, but here and there, I would pick a given song at random to look for its translation.
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After having heard this song a couple dozen times, because they put it on the air often enough, (when I wrote my French translation, they were playing it almost every couple of hours, that's tailed off to maybe once every 2 or 3 weeks now) its turn came up, it was time to look up its translation. I didn't have to translate the title the first time I saw it. It's pretty close to the French words and you have to admit it's not too hard to figure out even if you know only English. I had thought, before looking up the translation, that he was singing about a lover that he was comparing to a pale flower, something along those lines. The melody seemed to me a bit ordinary, nothing remarkable. So I had no great expectations of finding anything outside the expected mold of the typical love song.
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I found the other English translation and started to read. Somewhere in the second verse I couldn't go on because of the tears in my eyes. This is without a doubt the most beautiful example of music I have ever encountered . . . outside of opera. This song is by far my favourite Spanish song. They could put it on the air a dozen times a day, I'd never complain.
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In any case, I find the other English translation a bit clumsy in spots, but my Spanish is pitiful if not non-existent so I don't dare offer suggestions. But I have no problem with French. So I offer this recursive translation into French of the other English translation in the hopes that some French Spaniards or some Spanish Frenchmen, I love you all, come here to offer me advice on how to perfect this [French] translation. After that, I will dare to offer a second English translation based on the advice you will give me here. [Well, that didn't exactly pan out. I got precisely 0 French Spaniards and Spanish Frenchmen to offer advice. So here I am doing this second English translation as an amalgam of my halting translation from Spanish as aided by my French translation. Maybe I'll have better luck attracting advice here.]
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And finally, this is of coursee a gift for my teammate.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCckAR5xxe8
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Update:
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I have just discovered (13 April 2015) that a new video of this song came out after I posted my French translation:
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VmoZrxXbmg
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It's not exactly what I expected but . . . it's our song . . .
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End translation from French.
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I have just noticed that a third English translation of this song appeared about a month ago. Good. The more the merrier.
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One thing worth commenting on. In both French and Spanish, nouns have gender. The word for "flower" in both those languages is female. So in those languages the flower is referred to as "she." English does not follow this practice. We would not usually refer to a flower as "she" but rather "it." That's a bit of a shame, really. I rather like the idea of calling the flower "she" or "her." But that really isn't correct.