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Now the NaPoWriMo prompt calls for homophonic translation. One has to find a poem in a language you don’t know, and translate it into English based on the look of the words and their sounds. I should have given up on this one. French looks like nothing on earth, in English, but I’m sure some deep esoteric meaning can be found in the result … NOT!
Le Revenant
Comme les anges à l’oeil fauve,
Je reviendrai dans ton alcôve
Et vers toi glisserai sans bruit
Avec les ombres de la nuit;
Et je te donnerai, ma brune,
Des baisers froids comme la lune
Et des caresses de serpent
Autour d’une fosse rampant.
Quand viendra le matin livide,
Tu trouveras ma place vide,
Où jusqu’au soir il fera froid.
Comme d’autres par la tendresse,
Sur ta vie et sur ta jeunesse,
Moi, je veux régner par l’effroi.
— Charles Baudelaire
Lure Revving Ant
Come less angers a loyal fave,
Due rev and dry dance tonal cave
Adverse to english raisins brute
‘Ave clues sombre ‘s deal a newt;
Eat jet at dinner, rhyme mob rune,
Does bases freed scum meal a loon,
Eat hair scares says the serpent
A tour dune fuss see ram pant.
Queue and fiend rail in live heed,
Too true mar place feed,
Ordure squaw sore ill fear affray.
Come me daughters pa late undress
Sort of heat sorta dewness,
Major vex reign upper left ray.
© Colonialist April 2014 (WordPress)
P.S.
Of a stack of proper translations, I like this one by our Roy Campbell:
The Ghost
Like angels fierce and tawny-eyed,
Back to your chamber I will glide,
And noiselessly into your sight
Steal with the shadows of the night.
And I will bring you, brown delight,
Kisses as cold as lunar night
And the caresses of a snake
Revolving in a grave. At break
Of morning in its livid hue,
You’d find I had bequeathed to you
An empty place as cold as stone.
Others by tenderness and ruth
Would reign over your life and youth,
But I would rule by fear alone.
— Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)
Colonialist's Blog 
Try this one: 😉
(Schnaderhuepfl – alpine)
Und’s hat einer g’sunga
Und’s hat sich net g’reimt.
Dem g’hoert wohl die Zunga
Wo andershin g’leimt.
(not going to do the whole “holarihiaho” thing)
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Whahahahah! Lure Revving Ant! No Col! You truly are the master at this. Not even Bing translator can beat you! 😆
We just use the Bing Translator when we want to have fun. Here’s only the first verse:
As the angels to the wild eyes,
I will return in your alcove
And to you creep silently
With the shadows of the night;
Nah, your translation is the best Col. Love it! 😀
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Bing lacks zing? 🙂
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Absolutely! 😆
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Even though I know absolutely no French, good job! And I think you should have done one in Chinese 😉
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I don’t think that ‘squiggle, simpler squiggle, squiggle, elaborate squiggle, squiggle’ would have been too entertaining!
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That gave me a hearty chuckle 🙂
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I’m clearly not in a poetic mood, I started reading the second verse as Easy Jet!
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I could never get on with 19C French poets when a school student (gawd knows how I got B for French A-level) but I would totes get it now… This one’s quite erotic…
Anyway, good try Col. There was a lovely homophonic set of nursery rhymes ‘translated’ into French (forgotten the author’s name) which had such wonders as a version about the egg that fell off a wall:
Un petit d’un petit
C’est en un ouailles…
Methinks this exercise works better from English to Franglais than the reverse.
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I would be unable to judge whether the reverse works!
Yes, in fact from what Viv says, pornographic!
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You’ve just got that kind of mind, don’t see it myself…!
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Prefer your version
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The CB Fans hit squad is coming to get you …
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I’m ready for ’em – packin’ Byron today!
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Yay! You go, Ginger!
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I thought that was really clever, seriously. I think you did a great job with it, I wouldn’t have known where to start. Amazing managing to make it rhyme too, even if it didn’t make sense. But what does in life? No way would I do NaPoWriMo.NaNoWriMo was enough of a bore!
I like the original too, not sure about the translation.
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I think if I had spent more time on it I might have been able to throw some sense into it, too. Trouble is, I’m letting these Mos spent on Po get in the way of things like pro editing!
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Haha. And I let blogs get in the way of it too! I need to remember blog posts and comments are for when I have time on my hands.
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:-)) You’re not alone…
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This is painful to read, though I daresay if you read it aloud to me it wouldn’t sound too bad. I didn’t much like the official translation either! Tis true that rhyming, metrical poetry doesn’t seem to translate well and I haven’t found much free verse in French. This exercise cropped up in a previous Napowrimo, and I did it with a Romanian poem, a language of which I knew not a word. A weird exercise indeed. I think I’ll give it a miss.
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I found my Romanian one: http://vivinfrance.wordpress.com/2011/04/29/translation-napo-28/
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You made an impressively good job of that! Of course, it did turn out that the barman was a barman …
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bwahaha – the barman was a barman! X-D Romanian is a strange language…
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It wasn’t an exercise I enjoyed much, but it was certainly educational. I think the Campbell translation conveys the spirit of it as well as would be possible.
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given the parameters of rhyme etc, I agree. I might have a go at a free verse translation.
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With the number of times he’s been ‘done’ you’ll have a job coming up with a fresh one.
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Agreed, it’s not much good.
I prefer the original title to The Ghost, and think it is understandable in English: I didn’t look at the Campbell version until I’d finished.
Le Revenant
Like wild-eyed angels
I will return to your room,
and slip silently close to you
in the shadows of the night;
And I will give you, my dark beauty,
kisses cold as the moon
and the caresses of a serpent
around (the next bit is pornographic as I read it – fosse is a ditch)
When pale morning comes
you’ll find my empty place.
Until evening, it will be chill.
I want to reign over your life,
and conquer your youth by fear
as others would by tenderness.
VFB
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I like this one.
As for title, it reminds me that French is as bad as English in its idiosyncrasies. Revenant – return. La revenant – the returning. Le revenant – the ghost. Aaargh!
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“Eat jet at dinner” – Col, brilliant! 😀
Poor Baudelaire is going to come & haunt you….
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.. though I’d have titled it “Lure Revving Aunt” – a bit closer to the homo… what you said.
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Nonono! That shows you know how it SHOULD be pronounced! 🙂
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hehehe
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The Charlie B Appreciation Society has already hired a hit squad …
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😉 Luckily a bit far for them. You’re safely hiding out on the SA coast.
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you speaking Jabberwocky or what 😉 has a touch of the Lewis Carroll about it
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It would have been easier to Jabberwocky it actually – ‘Cum lessengers a looweel forge’ …
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My hat – is Jabberwockying a poetic technique? O-o
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Could not make head or tail of that one…
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The reason could be that it lacks both!
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Oh thats good then. I thought it was me
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Rhyme! Yes! It works and I like it!
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As a Frenchman, and Baudelaire “follower” I cannot but remain lightning-struck! The poem in French is wonderful. And gloom, as much of Baudelaire. (He introduced and translated all of Edgar Poe in France). I’d never before heard of “Homophonic” translation. However… the result is… interesting. If poetry is the meeting of words who’d never met before, it (almost) works! Maybe a bit of reworking? “Come lesser angel, a Royal fave”? “Adverse to english reason brute”?
I like it. 🙂
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I like your thoughts on reworking, but the trouble is that now that I know the true meaning I would be striving for it rather than seeking homophones. I have made one change, though, based on a ‘d’ I should have dropped to keep the rhyme scheme constant.
Something it has taught me is a respect for the work of Baudelaire, and it has given me a wish that I were a French linguist! I love the translation of Campbell (whom I admire) but can appreciate that the poem works (of course) much better as originally written. I can see the lilt and flow of it.
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Well Poetry is tied to the language. Think of “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day till the last syllable of recorded time…”
I’ve read this particular part of Macbeth both in French and in English all the way to “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”. Though good, the french version does not quite have the same roar and fury…
Be good
Brian
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What? he asks in total confusion…
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You think YOU are confused? You should have seen me when I tried to find the homophones! Never mind if they don’t make sense!
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HAHA! Tell me about it! Mine came out sounding like a drunken monologue! 😀 I like yours though! The randomness of the lines are quite amusing! 🙂
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I shouldn’t have picked French. It has a most un-English shape to the words! Just trying to find some that would go with the sounds was enough, without striving for any sense!
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The translation by Campbell cast a glimmer of reason to the earlier shadows.
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Remember, I would have been cheating if I had had the least idea what it was actually about! I didn’t. I put down what the homophones said.
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This one is really confusing? What am i missing here?
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This exercise is groping at the sounds of a foreign poem, trying to make them into English! Just ANY English!
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