TRANSLATION is often believed to be
a simple substitution of words, but this is not true even for "everyday"
translation, because every language is a system on its own -- a system
of notions allocated to sounds giving words and expressions, a system
of relationships allocated to structures giving grammar and phrases.
There probably is not even one single word that has an exact match in
any other language. One might think the French word maison
is the equivalent of the English word house,
but à la maison means at
home. You might say I am
means je suis in French, but I
am 40 years old will have to be translated as j'ai
40 ans. So translation as what is often called simple
translation is widely underestimated. This introductory remark
seems necessary especially with regard to the translation of poetry
and lyrics, because in poems words do not only convey contents, but
they tend to represent themselves as well. Poetry is always structural
reflection of and on the language itself.
This is one of the reasons why Georges Brassens is largely
unknown in the non French-speaking parts of the world. His poetry is
deeply rooted in the French language and culture, his images and
analogies emanate from language itself. TRANSLATION as a process
solely focused on contents is not sufficient for rendering foreign
poetry. As poetry means to use and select words BOTH for their
contents AND for their form, the same is absolutely necessary for the
target language. This is what I call linguistic ADAPTATION
-- the selection of equivalent means. Only contents can be translated,
form needs to be adapted.
IMITATION in this linguistic
context does not mean to make believe, but to take up the structure of
a verse as closely as possible to the original poem.
I am speaking here about the theoretical background to avoid the general
temptation to translate one's own personal interpretation. The chansons of
Georges Brassens have such a wide scope and profound depth that every attempt to
restrict them to precise views will imply the risk to make the songs more vulgar
than they actually are in French or to remove the suggestive vagueness of the
original verses. What is important is to identify the author who remains visible
regardless of whether a song evokes the French catholic and rural tradition of
the humble and modest (Les sabots d'Hélène, Pauvre Martin, Le joueur de flûteau)
or the traditional rebellious spirit of barricading (Boulevard du Temps qui
passe, Tempête dans un bénitier) -- to find the linking elements between Hécatombe
and L'épave or between L'ancêtre and La messe au pendu.
These linking elements are the stylistic, aesthetic and poetic means used
by Georges Brassens. You find a brief outline in my French summary (Traduire
Brassens), which is far from being exhaustive. The challenge of the
translator is to use an equivalent style while TRANSLATING the original
contents, because a second temptation could be to use the author's style without
respecting the original scope and depth of contents. I know that the word
ADAPTATION is widely used to describe the whole process of translating poetry,
but this is largely due to the underestimation and misunderstanding of what is
generally called TRANSLATION. In my view, TRANSLATION and LINGUISTIC ADAPTATION
give no freedom, but are linked to unavoidable restraints!
As my translations are in German, I will just refer to some aspects of
translation and adaptation of cultural aspects. For the linguistic and stylistic
means, you should read Catch 22 by Joseph Heller, who uses a similar
style.
The songs of Georges Brassens are full of allusions to French culture and
history. The translation approaches vary according to the particular song.
Personally, I did not change direct references to litterature such as the
following :
Que le brave Prévert et ses escargots veuillent Bien se passer de moi pour enterrer les feuilles
(Le 22 septembre)
Tout à fait dignes du panier De Madame de Sévigné
(Bécassine)
C'étaient pas des amis choisis Par Montaigne et La Boétie
(Les copains d'abord)
Mais se touchant le crâne en criant: « J'ai trouvé ! » La bande au professeur Nimbus est arrivé...
(Le grand Pan)
The latter example makes reference to a French comic strip (bande dessinée)
and so the word bande (band, gang, bunch) is an obvious allusion to that
and has not been chosen accidentally. This is a typical example for how Brassens
uses the French language ( I call it CONTEXTUAL LINK
in my French summary). I still have not made my mind up whether to use Nimbus or
to opt for an alternative German translation, where I replace Nimbus by Doktor
Allwissend(Doctor Know-All), not only because the Nimbus reference
in itself is less important than its meaning for the train of thought, but
because a German audience would understand nimbus ONLY as an allusion or
-- what is worse -- even reference to rain clouds. The following example may be
better to illustrate this:
C'est pas seulement à Paris Que le crime fleurit. Nous au village aussi, l'on a De beaux assassinats.
(L'assassinat)
In this example, the reference to Paris is a reference to the French capital.
In favour of the song, it is not desirable to stick to Paris in the German
translation, because Paris would be understood as a cosmopolitan city in a
foreign country so that the very idea of the first strophe (contrast between
crime in the capital and in the village) would not work out. It would of course
be possible to use the name of the German capital, but I decided to generalize
and replace the name of Paris by the German word for capital.
This is what I would call GENERALIZING ADAPTATION.
This is adaptation by translating a cultural reference or allusion according to
its function in the particular context. This approach is of course not possible
for songs like Ricochets or Le vieux Léon. I even did the
contrary for the latter chanson, where I introduced the words Paris and Montparnasse
by replacing the allusion to the town of bridges and the detailed street
names:
Il a coulé De l'eau sous les Ponts de chez nous. Les bons enfants D'la rue de Van- v's à la Gaîté...
(Le vieux Léon)
Sometimes, the decision is not so easy. In the song Hécatombe, I
replaced the name of the town of Brive-la-Gaillarde by a reference to a
non-existing (provincial and narrow-minded) town known from old German folk
songs. It is important to know that XIXth century dictionaries indicate Brive-la-Gaillarde
as symbolic for provincial and narrow-minded behaviour. This use is no longer
true, but Brassens confirms in an interview with Philippe Nemo that he did not
have in mind the actual town (which has nevertheless renamed its market square
Georges Brassens, if I'm well informed).
So every song offers its own restraints to the translator. Let's take the
example of Les quat'z'arts, which I like very much. The references to the
French bal des carabins and bal des quat'z'arts will not be
understood by foreign people and are even not very well known to everyone in
France. But again, the reference itself is less important than the train of
thought developed by Brassens in this song, which leads to the final fatalistic
statement:
Nous n'irons plus danser au grand-bal des quat'z'arts. Viens pépère, on va se ranger des corbillards.
This is a marvellous song creating a vague atmosphere of apprehension and I
would have regretted it very much not to be able to share it with a German
speaking audience, especially because the conclusion is in contrast with many
other songs and does not abolish the feeling of anxiety. Under this aspect, it
has a certain similarity with Le grand Pan. But to come back to
adaptation: The song Les quat'z'arts alludes e.g. to traditional "smutty"
songs (Saint-Éloi n'est pas mort..., Les filles de Camaret...), to libertinage
of youth... A linear translation would be incomprehensible. Allusion is a
stylistic means of Brassens, the foundation on which he builds his songs and
makes his reflections. The important thing, in my view, is to render the
reasoning of Brassens and not to explain his cultural background (the latter
could be an object for commented editions, but not for an evening of songs). So
there are two songs where I took actual liberties, but without having this
intention from the very beginning. For the songs La ronde des jurons and La
route aux quatre chansons, this approach eventually proved to be UNAVOIDABLE.
I said at the beginning that poetry always means to reflect and mirror the
language itself. The refrain of La ronde des jurons is a collection of
curses, chiefly ancient curses, as the symbolic and emblematic expression of
opposition and rebellion as a TRADITION. So it is a look on the French language
under the aspect of cursing. I was curious and did the same for the German
language and finally even had to pick out some of them, because there was not
enough space in the refrain. Once the refrain was entirely German, it was no
longer possible to sing:
Quand les Gaulois De bon aloi Du franc-parler suivaient la loi...
because the curses were no longer Gaul and French, but German curses. The
next step was unavoidable: I had to replace the Gauls by the Teutons.
Als der German, Der Aleman', Noch kein Blatt vor sein Mundwerk nahm...
Since I sing the songs both in French and in German, I can compare them and
dare say that my adaptation is closer to the original idea than any intermediate
solution I could have tried. Georges Brassens is generally known as
nonconformist or unconventional -- and so is his way to use the French language.
In the case of La ronde des jurons as well as La route aux quatre
chansons, the deviation from the cultural standards is more important than
the cultural standards themselves. How could an audience understand or let's
better say: feel unconventionality without understanding the conventions? For
the Brassens translator, it is important to reproduce nonconformism as a
stylistic means : by deviating from the linguistic standards of the target
language. If Brassens sings:
Mais se touchant le crâne en criant: « J'ai trouvé! » La bande au professeur Nimbus est arrivée Qui s'est mise à frapper les cieux d'alignement Chasser les dieux du firmament.
(Le grand Pan)
It is important to trace the source : maisons frappées d'alignement
(as an administrative procedure) and the consequence: chasser les habitants
de leur maison with an unambiguous allusion to chasser Adam et Ève du
paradis (expulsion from paradise) and to find equivalent or let's say at
least similar expressions of a similar "taste". In German, it is lucky
coincidence that the Biblic equivalent of chasser as vertreiben
alludes to marketing/selling the Gods and alignment as the
technical term of construction Flucht alludes to escape. The verb chasser
could be translated by other German words (verjagen, hinauswerfen), but
as the words tend to represent themselves in their (almost) entire scope of
meaning, it is crucial to select each word very carefully and test it for its
impact on INTERPRETABILITY. This is what I mean by PRECISION and RESTRAINT even
in terms of ADAPTATION often believed to mean freedom and liberty...
Another very important aspect is POETIC ADAPTATION.
In the case of Brassens, this means to find an adequate way for the
unconventional treatment of poetic forms against the background of the target
language. So I believe it indispensable for a faithful translation-adaptation to
reproduce the broken rhymes (within a word, as done e.g. by Edgar Allan Poe, see
my French summary) and to try to stick to the sometimes very rigorous rhyme
structures. These rhymes do not only have a poetic meaning (dividing longer
verses), but sometimes even a direct meaning in a particular song. To give an
example (Le vin):
Avant de chanter Ma vie, de fair' des Harangues, Dans ma gueul' de bois, J'ai tourné sept fois Ma langue. J'suis issu de gens Qu'étai'nt pas du gen- re sobre...
In this song, the place of the first broken rhyme (rime coupée) is so
important that I did not use a possible translation for the first six verses,
because there would have been the need to place the first broken rhyme too early.
So the rhyme here has an actual MEANING at the content level, because the first
six lines say, to put it very roughly without the original images: "Before
starting to sing/praise my life, I've thought over what I'm saying..." It
is only then that the first in-word rhyme occurs as a break of thinking while
speaking the word. The songs of Georges Brassens are a harmonious blend of
linguistic, stylistic, poetic, and musical means -- always in close connection
with the contents and the story being told.
To conclude, I'd like to point out the process of IMITATION
in translation of poetry. By the way, this is not a
translatory approach, but Louis Aragon used it as well and referred to Guillaume
Apollinaire who had a notebook where he entered the verses he liked and wanted
to imitate. The same is true for certain allusions contained in the songs of
Brassens:
La mort, la mort toujours recommencée (Mourir pour des idées)
Le plus cornard des deux n'est point
celui qu'on croit (La traîtresse)
C'est le duc de Bordeaux qui s'en va, tête
basse, Car il ressemble au mien comme deux gouttes
d'eau... (Vénus
Callipyge)
La mer, la mer toujours recommencée (Paul Valéry -- Le cimetière marin)
Le plus âne des trois n'est pas celui
qu'on pense (Lafontaine -- Le Meunier, son fils et l'Ane)
...De là je conclus qu'le duc de
Bordeaux Ressemble à mon cul comm' deux gouttes
d'eau. (Le duc de Bordeaux, chanson paillarde
anonyme)
In my translations, I try to reproduce as often as possible the original
structure of a French verse. The structure is of course closely related to the
different syntactic and grammatical means available in the languages. In German,
for example, subordinated clauses always end with a verb and this makes
imitation sometimes very difficult. But imitation also means to reproduce sounds,
as I did in my translation of Le bistrot, where I use the same rhyme
structure with the same phonetic rhyme (-asse) as in French :
Si tu fais ta cour, Tâch' que tes discours Ne l'agacent; Sois poli, mon gars, Pas de geste ou gare A la casse,
Car sa main qui claqu' Punit d'un flic-flac Les audaces. Cert's, il n'est pas né Qui mettra le nez Dans sa tasse...
(Le bistrot)
B'ginnst du einen Flirt, Pass auf, dass der Wirt Dich nicht fasse Und gleich unverfror'n Ein'n Satz warmer Ohr'n Dir verpasse.
Stets hübsch mit der Ruh, Mein Freund, sonst setzt du Dich ins Nasse! Keiner steckt ihm schief Die Nase zu tief In die Tasse...
Due to structural and syntactical restraints as
well as for the sake of a clear reasoning, I eventually had to change the
sequence of passages as shown by the two colours.
(MPG
file -- 244 kB)