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LT → Russisch, Frans → Vladimir Vysotsky → Песня о друге → Engels
  • Vladimir Vysotsky
    Vladimir Vysotsky – Песня о друге

    Engels vertaling

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#12345

Song about a (true) friend

If your friendship feels a bit low
And he seems neither friend nor foe
If you can not decide for sure
If your friendship is fake or pure
Try ascending the steepest slope
Tied to opposite ends of the rope
Finding toeholds in ice and snow
His true colors will show
 
If the mountain gives him the chills
And he looks like your stomach feels
After slipping on ice, he sighs
One wrong step, and he cries
Next to you just a stranger stands
Don't rely on his trembling hands
No use cursing, just let him loose
Climbing mountains is not for a wuss
 
If he didn't complain or whine
Clenched his teeth the entire climb
When you suddenly slipped and fell
His hands fought with the rope but held
If he stayed by your side as in war
At the summit he swayed with awe
Put your life in his trusted hands
He and you are true friends
 
Russisch
Originele teksten

Песня о друге

Klik om de originele tekst te zien. (Russisch)

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Vertalingen van "Песня о друге ..."

Kirgizisch
Transliteratie
Duits #1, #2, #3
Engels #1, #2, #3, #4, #5
Fins #1, #2, #3, #4
Frans #1, #2
Hebreeuws
Hongaars
Italiaans
Oekraïens
Oezbeeks
Pools
Roemeens
Spaans
Tsjechisch
Turks
Gegeven reacties
SaintMarkSaintMark    Vrij, 24/03/2017 - 11:22

the first line of this translation is already wrong. any vysotsky fan can probably give this a quick rundown.

AldefinaAldefina    Vrij, 24/03/2017 - 11:58

Any fan of Vysotsky can only say it's a fantastic translation and as I am one of them I love it. It's not literal, very interpretative to keep the style of the original. It's very difficult to achieve this effect and he succeeded.

SaintMarkSaintMark    Vrij, 24/03/2017 - 12:13

hi adelfina.. sorry was just busy shopping on ebay LOL.. so i couldn't have a complete look at it.. it appears to be a great translation, but the first line throws me off. cause the word "friend" is completely missing, so before the song even starts you don't really know who he's talking about. it only makes sense if you read the Headline, which i didn't do.

AldefinaAldefina    Vrij, 24/03/2017 - 13:50

This interpretation was clearly intended for singing, so some compromises were unavoidable. Otherwise it wouldn't have been possible to get the rhythm and the rhymes. The result is really great. You have many English and German translations of Vysotsky's songs on LT and I must say they are, mildly expressed, far from being perfect.

I have translated some of his songs and only once I was able to make an artistic translation. Anyway, it was the second version. Even if people liked the first one and I got twice 5 stars for it I wasn't happy with the result.

And Vysotsky's songs are very difficult to translate.

EDIT.

There's only one problem with this translation - Google shows a link to Facebook with this translation, but the page was already deleted, so I cannot check whether it was copied from here or this one was copied without showing a link. That's the only reason why I decided not to vote.

AldefinaAldefina    Vrij, 24/03/2017 - 14:24

You cannot find this translation on http://www.wysotsky.com (there’s a completely different version there and also a very nice one), but you can find the second one which he submitted: http://www.wysotsky.com/1033.htm?417

There’s only the year, but not the exact date of submitting it. From my experience this site only collects all translations that they can find elsewhere. One of my translations (the one that I mentioned) is also there without the source and without my permission.

In case of other translations I was asked for permission and I agreed to publish them with my copyrights.

So most probably it was copied from here.

trotta.gnamtrotta.gnam
   Vrij, 24/03/2017 - 15:34

Hi folks,

I'm the "guilty party" in this case. Indeed, "aldelfina" is correct: I wasn't aiming
for a literal translation; that would've been really hard, way beyond my abilities.
I used the same non-literal approach with "Wolf Hunt", which is my
personal favorite. Anyhow, happy to see this discussion.
Cheers!

AldefinaAldefina    Vrij, 24/03/2017 - 16:23

Hi, was it your account on Facebook that was deleted?

trotta.gnamtrotta.gnam
   Vrij, 24/03/2017 - 18:45

No, not mine. I've never had a facebook account.
Also, thanks for the pointer to the other lyrics site that somehow
copied my "Wolf Hunt" translation (from this site) without attribution. Weird...

AldefinaAldefina    Vrij, 24/03/2017 - 19:10

I would rather say "a sad reality". I found my stolen translations on many sites - Polish mostly on tekstowo.pl (where I have also an account, though I stopped using it, because anyone can edit and "improve" translations done by other users and I don't accept that), one German translation on a Russian site (I can't recall anymore which one it was) - I wrote it from scratch again as it wasn't the best, one English on YouTube (deleted in less than 15 minutes) and many English on one Dutch site. The last case was very funny. I reported to the admins of this site one stolen translation of another user giving a link to it. When they realized that I was a moderator on LT (I didn't say that) they deleted all my stolen translations straight away and I didn't have to ask them to do it. :D

trotta.gnamtrotta.gnam
   Zat, 25/03/2017 - 03:31

Wow! I hadn't realized theft (or plagiarism) of translations was such common occurrence. It's not like anyone can make money on it. :-)
I suppose it's done for mere bragging rights. Well, following your example, I've sent an email to people who run www.wysotsky.com and
asked for at least a proper attribution. Thanks again!

SchnurrbratSchnurrbrat    Woe, 10/07/2019 - 05:22

Thank you, an interesting translation. Not sure about the first line, but enjoyed the rest.

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