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Without the Lord Maintaining Our House and Farm

Without the Lord maintaining our house and farm
And provide us with what is inside
And send us his mercy each year
That we must always find
His deity gifts, gives and loans
That he provides with his gentle hand
Or ells our work is betrothed
 
Without the lord himself that city keeps
And guard both land and empire
And with his deity's power defend
And so maintain them
Without God himself giving grace and peace
Then those watchmen watch over in vain
All art and counsel could fall
 
Eredeti dalszöveg

Uden Herren Opholder vort Hus og Gård

Dalszövegek (Dán)

Hozzászólások
Chris SalpingidisChris Salpingidis    Csütörtök, 01/07/2021 - 22:21

Way, way, waaaaay overdue thank you for managing this, ditteonline, I honestly thought I'd already written to say thanks!

You're right, the spelling and syntax are very peculiar. Granted I only know Swedish, I would still have expected something like "Uden at(t) Herren opholder [...], og skaffer [...], og sender [...], etc, 'er' vort Arbejde forloret." Is V2 word order not a thing in Danish?

As far as the translation is concerned, and now that I understand what the Danish is saying, might I suggest some minor tweaks?

Firstly, in "Without the Lord maintaining [...], and provide [...], and send [...]", you could make all those into present participles, i.e., "maintaining [...], and providing [...], and sending [...]".

Secondly, no matter the original syntax, I think it might sound more natural to an English ear to make "ellers er vort Arbejde forloret" simply "our work would be forlorn". It's the same verb, means more less the same, and connects better to the previous embedded clauses, i.e., "without the Lord maintaining (etc), our work would be forlorn."

While on the first verse, "his divine" or "godly gifts" might sound more natural there, and "givings" might sound better than "gives".

In the second verse, it might again sound more natural to say "Without the Lord himself who keeps the city and guards [...]", instead of "city keeps" and "guard".

And then:
"and with his 'godly' power 'defends'
and so 'maintains' them,
without God himself giving grace and peace,
those watchmen watch over in vain,
all art and counsel could (or may) fall."

Just some thoughts, I'm afraid I'm one of those grammar nutcases! The text makes sense as is too 😁

Mange tak igen!