Beautiful!
I just feel that 'lovely enemies" doesn't do justice to "les belles ennemies"... can you find something closer to "the enemy's beauties"? and I think there's a typo in the last stanza "if their feel troubled"? Thanks
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Les patriotes → traduzione in Inglese
The patriots
- 1. literally: "the reverse side of their medals" but, like the English phrase I've used it's an idiom meaning "the part they don't like about the situation"
- 2. literally: "[sa]cred name of a name". Exactly what it means depends on context, here it's just a very strong emphasiser
- 3. literally: "to rinse their eyes"
- 4. lit: "the tricolour flag"
- 5. the Vosges was the scene of a big battle in 1871, towards the end of the Franco-Prussian war, a war which the French lost resulting in Alsace and Lorraine being incorporated into the German empire; it saw battles again in the first world war and in the second world war, both of which Germany lost so that the disputed territories are now once more in France.
- 6. "manchot" can mean a one-armed man or an armless man, but as these men can still wave two fingers they must be one armed and as they can't salute the missing arm must be their right arm
- 7. literally: "the arm of honour", but it means a very rude gesture
- 8. In 1914 at the time of the battle of the Marne "Rosalie" became French slang for a bayonet, perhaps as a result of a song about "la Rosalie de Mlle Lebel" popularised by the French music-hall artist Théodore Botrel
- 9. a girl's pet name, also used in Brassens' song La Fille à Cent Sous
- 10. sabrer literally means to cut down with a sabre, but also has the slang meaning to fuck when the direct object is a woman. "Screw" in English can have the same slang meaning, and can also mean "cause trouble for" and is the best thing I can think of to have a similar double meaning
- 11. literally: "at the next", ie in the next war, or perhaps the next battle - presumably these are not the dead who died on the battlefield
1. | Beautiful translations |
1. | Je me suis fait tout petit |
2. | Les passantes |
3. | La mauvaise réputation |
1. | aux petits oignons |
2. | bras d'honneur |
3. | Conter fleurette |
4. | courir la gueuse |
5. | ne plus en pouvoir |
6. | Olive branch |
7. | se rincer l'oeil |
8. | sweet nothings |
I hate to nitpick your super literate translation which I have just enjoyed, but... (who am I kidding, I live for this! ;) )
echo's (V3, L4)- you mean 'echoes'. (plural of echo). That would be a "greengrocer's apostrophe" you have there...
I'm sure just a momentary lapse rather than an error. :)
If I may, some typos are still hiding in the footnotes:
1. like the the English phrase-> like the English phrase
2. Exacly ->Exactly
3. "to rince their eyes"->"to rinse their eyes"
michealt ha scritto:sabrer literally means to cut down with a sabre, but also has the slang meaning to fuck when the direct object is a woman. "Screw" in English can have the same slang meaning, and can also mean "cause trouble for" and is the best thing I can think of to have a similar double meaning
Once I heard "stab" in this meaning, but that came from an American... ;)
"Ligne bleue des Vosges" needs some more explanation. After Alsace and Lorraine were conquered by the Prussians in 1871, the mountain chain of Vosges (which appeared as a blue line in the horizon) remained the ultimate "natural" boundary between France and the German Empire. Keeping it impassable became the leitmotiv of the French Army for decades... until the German Forces went by another way (viz. Belgium) to invade France in 1914!
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