This may well go down like un canard mord/Ein toten Ente, but does anyone one else of a multilingual bent translate songs into other languages? I know I do. Here’s an example. Let’s see if it flies high, or has got something in its beady eye that makes it plummet.
Pere etait Pierre Roulant.
Ou se trouve son chapeau c’etait chez soi – sans honte.
Non mon ami
Schade! Quel dommage!
Sacre Fred!
Secoue! bébé! secoue!
Ce singe est parti au paradis
Si l’homme est cinq (l’homme est cinq)
Er sagte, Kapitän ich sagte was
Ach ja – Kapitän Vernunftig!
Jene waren die Tage mein freund.
Wir dachten sie würden nie zur Ende kommen.
À l’eau, c’est l’heure!
I used to try translating Mano Negra, Les Negresses Vertes, Elmer Food Beat and Niagara into English but gave up on that. Never felt the urge to translate Sleaford Mods into French.
Yuzhou dashi would go down a wow in the Forbidden City.
I googled ‘Yuzhou dashi’, and got this thread. It’s a small world.
Denis by Blondie, Hold on Tight by ELO, I’m Not Scared by Eighth Wonder, Fade to Grey by Visage, Eyes Without a Face by Billy Idol – all repeat the same lyric in French to sound all exotic and that. And possibly because they could think of any more words.
Some band called the Hey Jude Hitmakers did this some years earlier though.
I sometimes do it and sometimes it works…Stop! by the Spice Girls scans very nicely
“Stop right now! Thank you very much…”
“Arretez-vous! Merci Beaucoup…”
Good list. The Sisters of Mercy did something similar in German with Marian, now I think about it. And of course, ‘your band’ is a French phrase itself.
I like how the Spice Girls lyric not only scans, but rhymes as well – very pleasing, and not always easy.
Jamais, jamais, jamais
Non, non.
Non, non, non, non
Non, non, il n’y a pas des limites
Technon! Technon! Technon! Technon!
99. 9999.99 keine Grenze
I do still wonder whenever I play it, what that Japanese (is it Japanese? don’t really know) bit on the end of The Tubes “White Punks On Dope” means.
Being barely monolingual these days, I tend to do the opposite of what the O.P. suggests and convert song lyrics “in foreign” to similar-sounding nonsensical English, for chuckles.
“Ich wurde gemacht um dich zu lieben, Säugling.”
die Glucksen Brüder, mit “Zu mir, Zu dir”
Helpfully it’s translated by the band.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMWSQySvI2M
There will always be a special place in my heart for the beautiful musical antics of 3Mustaphas3. In that great tradition of ‘3’ bands – Funboy 3, Mojave 3, Spacemen 3, 3 degrees,
Or get the band to do it for you :
https://youtu.be/Y6tUIwW3kRw
Or here :
Half-arsed will-this-do frenchness? I give you Chanson d’amour by TV’s Manhattan Transfer. “Play encore” indeed.
Check out Cannon & Ball’s cover though – very funny. Yes.
“Do you want to sleep with me tonight” sounds a bit forward. Better the french translation.