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The King

No certainly, it is not built,
No certainly, it is not built
On sand, his dynasty,
On sand, his dynasty.
 
There is few chances that we
Dethrone the king of fools.
 
He can sleep, this sovereign,
He can sleep, this sovereign,
Like a baby, serene,1
Like a baby, serene.
 
There is few chances that we
Dethrone the king of fools.
 
Me, you , him, her, we, you, them,
Me, you , him, her, we, you, them,
Everybody follows him, docile,
Everybody follows him, docile.
 
There is few chances that we
Dethrone the king of fools.
 
It is possible, however,
It is possible, however,
That we depose the shah of Iran,
That we depose the shah of Iran,
 
But there is small chances that we
Dethrone the king of fools.
 
That one day we'll say : "It is over",
That one day we'll say : "It is over"
To the little king of Jordan,
To the little king of Jordan,
 
But there is small chances that we
Dethrone the king of fools.
 
That in Abyssinie we recuse,
That in Abyssinie we recuse,
The king of kings, the good Negus,
The king of kings, the good Negus,
 
But there is small chances that we
Dethrone the king of fools.
 
For, on the tune of a fandango,
For, on the tune of a fandango,
We send off old Franco,
We send off old Franco,
 
But there is few chances that we
Dethrone the king of fools.
 
For the crown of England,
For the crown of England,
Tonight, tomorrow, rolls on the floor,
Tonight, tomorrow, rolls on the floor,
 
But there is few chances that we
Dethrone the king of fools.
 
That, as it happened before,
That, as it happened before,
Marianne to be overthrown2
Marianne to be overthrown
 
But there is few chances that we
Dethrone the king of fools.
 
  • 1. Literally "sleeping on both ears.
  • 2. Marianne is the symbol of the french republic.
Testi originali

Le roi

Clicca per vedere il testo originale (Francese)

Georges Brassens: 3 più popolari
Idioms from "Le roi"
Commenti
AldefinaAldefina
   Dom, 18/10/2015 - 20:05

Thank you for translating these lyrics so fast. :) Yesterday I translated into English the Polish translation of the same song and I was curious how different it was from the original. Here it is:
https://lyricstranslate.com/en/kr%C3%B3l-king.html

The thing is the chorus is very rude in Polish and I wondered whether it was the case in French. Many years ago I tried to learn French on my own, but I gave up too early, so now I was forced to relay on dictionaries and the results were strange: the world “con” can be translated as “fool” (as you did) or “jerk”, but also much harder as in Polish translation and, as a consequence, in my English translation. As you’re a native speaker it would be interesting to know how you feel it. Does it really sound rude in French and you just avoided using “four-letter words” or the translator of the Polish version overdid?

Just one suggestion for the chorus: “There are small chances that we…” or - in my opinion better - “There’s a small chance that we…”.

kesslerkessler    Dom, 16/10/2016 - 08:19

It's not rude in French -- Brassens never is -- or in the English translation of that. The translation into Polish added all that. For example "con" in French does not go as far as the Polish translation of that apparently does. Yes the Polish version overdid.

AldefinaAldefina
   Dom, 16/10/2016 - 16:57

Well, the Polish lyrics are much more rude. What I wrote in my translation was already milder than the original, not because it was my intention, but because there was no direct equivalent in English. The same applies to the linked by me Russian version, which is also a free interpretation and it also uses a rather “strong” word for “con”.

The Polish song in fact hurts my ears, but I think it was an intentional provocation. “Zespół Reprezentacyjny” was formed in 1983 by students of the Warsaw University, who studied Spanish. They still exist, even if in 1990 officially they decided not to play anymore. Nevertheless they recorded later two albums and sometimes they play life, but very seldom, because one of theses guys is a TV journalist and his work doesn’t allow him to play too often.

One of these albums was with songs of Georges Brassens that they had translated on their own. Somehow most of these song are rather naughty. Even the title of this album tells almost everything “Pornograf”.

I believe that what Brassens meant here is just a play with the word “con”, which can be understood in many ways and we have the right to interpret it - whether it’s “fool” or “the part of the feminine anatomy”, so it’s hard to say whether “Zespół Reprezentacyjny” overdid in their translation.

BTW, in Polish it was translated as a “part of the masculine anatomy”, because this is how it is used in Polish, but not in English.

kesslerkessler    Lun, 17/10/2016 - 03:02

The word "con" in French usage has many meanings, a spectrum of them ranging from very mild things such as "cheat" & "fraud" & "fool" to the one the Polish translation programs have suggested here. Many machine-translation programs do use that last one, even for French=>English. But you have to be careful of machine-translation: a famous example is the experiment which fed the biblical phrase, "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" (Matthew 26:41) into German & then re-translated the German back to English -- the result was "The whiskey is good but the meat is bad"! :-)

Here I suggest the more mild term "fool" be used, for several reasons, including,

* the French are subtle -- particularly Brassens, who loved to do plays-on-words and entendres-doubles / double-meanings, jokes-with-words -- if you look at him and that gang of copains, some of them very famous too, he has rounded up in the video to assist him, they all are jokers, Moustaki & the rest, not afraid to go-extreme but good-humored & more inclined to joke & tease than to confront & condemn, you can see it in all their eyes and in their humorous-deadpan "serious" expressions. The French even call a 4-letter-word like the one your translation chose "an anglo-saxonisme", something a "dull-witted American" or even a "dumb-German" might say, but not them -- Rostand's very-famous tirade-du-nez, spoken by his Cyrano de Bergerac, gives all the reasons why the French prefer their path...

* The French is not so much the point here as is the English, tho, and in English the term "King of fools" has a famous meaning: since the Middle Ages it has been used for describing celebrations & ceremonies dedicated to poking fun at established authorities -- think of the Disney-representations of the scenes from Victor Hugo's Notre Dame, in America now more famous as The Hunchback of Notre Dame, those depict jesters & fools & merry-making crowds making fun of the king & the church & other authorities, that is how Quasimodo was translated from Hugo's terrifying & pitiful figure to the somewhat-happy clown he represents in American minds -- calling him "the King of Cunts", in your translation, simply does not fit, in English or in American English, that is a harsh, condemning, angry label for an event and feeling which is the opposite, and Brassens here I think means more the former feeling than the latter;

* profanity generally -- those "four-letter words" the French condemn as "anglo-saxon" and even "germanic" -- adds harshness to any lyric, in English -- in English "King of Fools" condemns but does not sound harsh, while "King of Cunts" interrupts the flow of the text, immediately the listeners stop and wonder whether "women" are the target, they wonder why the criticism is _so_ harsh here, they wonder whether the speaker is un-hinged to be so extreme -- modern usage allows the use of such words, as vs. 50 years ago when they were simply forbidden, but still their harshness interrupts the flow of any text, particularly lyrical text...

So the poet in Brassens would not have been insensitive to this -- he used "cons" knowing very well its meaning would be "interpreted", but I expect he knew enough english, and l'américain, not to render it as the much harsher four-letter-"profanity" word in-translation. Translation itself is a separate art. And besides, the 4-letter-word means just-women, and he was calling all or at least a lot of us "cons". "King of 'fools'" works better, here.

gregoire.tricoiregregoire.tricoire
   Lun, 19/10/2015 - 21:54

Hi, Adelfina, thank you for translating Brassens covers. I don't know if you heard of the multilingual cover album "Brassens, Echos du Monde", you can listen it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXpP4kv_K8E
The Polish version is definitively more rebellious, since it doesn't use the conditional tense (I don't know if there is a polish equivalent) and there is a sense of fatalism that is more definitive than in the original version.

Concerning the use of the word "con" by Brassens, I relied on his use of the word in many of his songs, like "Quand on est con" or "Le Blason", where it is consistently used as a synonym of "stupid". In fact, in "Le Blason" he deplored the use of the word for defining the feminine anatomy.

You are right about the chorus, But I think I'll change it to "There is few chances".

petit élèvepetit élève    Lun, 17/10/2016 - 02:36

Perso je dirais "there is little chance" ou "there are few chances", mais bon, il y a le choix.

Sinon "le roi des cons" c'est idiomatique de toute façon. "a perfect/complete jerk/idiot" ou qq chose comme ça.
Je ne vois pas comment rendre ça en utilisant "king", donc ça va forcément dévier un peu de ce que dit le français.