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On The Tram Track

We’ll try our luck with you taking a risk of walking on the tram track,
We’ll sit for a while on the pipes at the start of the ring road.
The black smoke from the plant’s smokestack will be for us like a warm wind,
And the yellow pan of traffic lights there will be shining as a lodestar for us.
 
If we manage to, we won't return to the cage till the evening.
We must learn to run ourselves into the ground in two seconds,
To remain reposing there when the grey cars will make their mournful way above us
Taking with them all those who could not and did not want to welter in the ordure.
 
If we get in time, we’ll go on our way crawling on the sleepers1
You will see the sky, and I will see the earth adhered to your soles.
We will have to feed the clothes into a furnace if we come back,
If the indigo2 caps don’t receive us on our own home’s doorstep.
 
If they do, don't tell them that we were engaged in walking on the tram track
That’s the first sign of our schizophrenia and even a perpetration
Iron Felix will be sneering at us from his shabby portrait
It’ll last for a very long time; it will be a very justified
 
Punishment for the fact that we were engaged in walking on the tram track
Recompense for our great sin consisting in the walking on the tram track
They will kill us for the fact that we were walking on the tram track
They will kill us for the fact that you and me were walking on the tram track!
 
  • 1. *sleepers are for Brits, for Americans there should be ties ;)
  • 2. There's also a variant of grey colour, but the general meaning is 'police' or 'secret service'
Versuri originale

По трамвайным рельсам

Fă click aici pentru a vedea versurile originale (Rusă)

Comentarii
BlackSea4everBlackSea4ever    Joi, 25/06/2020 - 18:36

Welter in ordure (I’d not use the) is exactly валяться в грязи - it’s not an issue when reading in English
A very justified — article should be there, although, I’d have chosen: quite justified

BratBrat
   Joi, 25/06/2020 - 19:52

Thanx for the comments.
The first line seems to be ambiguous when read but it will sound OK when sung.
I don't see any problem with 'traffic lights'. It's a normally plural noun.
I used 'the clothes' to preserve the original alliteration along with singability. Though 'our' is what was actually meant by the author.
It's the definite ordure which is implied in the song, so the article is in place. :)
"A very justified" is close to what is meant in Russian, though 'quite justified' fits better, but - alas! - it breaks the rhythm.
'Even perpetration' could be sung as 'ev'n a perpetration', or just in between these variants, so the meaning would not get too far from what was meant in Russian. Even so I'll insert an 'a' there. :)
The translation is not fully equirhythmic (as from Waran4ik's viewpoint, for instance) but it's fully singable. (Only if you can sing it to the original score; I've seen quite a few Russian singers who could ever do this in their mother tongue, I myself can do it in both languages).