tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Dec 30 22:59:54 1999

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Re: Man-of-war and song translations (was Re: a young Warrior)

as a huge ManOwaR fan, and someone who has been working on translating some 
of their songs for about the last six weeks, i felt the need to comment on 
the two previous posts about this subject.

A) i'm not really sure what HovqIj said in the second post (my klingon 
reading skills still being a little rusty), so i can't comment on that one, 
and only hope i don't say the same thing.

B) as for the post by ghunchu'wI', i do have a couple of things to say. 
firstly, i don't think a tlhIngan translation of "man-of-war" {veSDuj} would 
be entirely appropriate here, as in this case, the term "ManOwaR" does in 
fact refer to a person (the band's faceless 'mascot' who has appeared on 
every album cover between Fighting the World and Hell On Stage Live, as well 
as all of their shirts and posters throughout the same period), and to a 
group of people (the band themselves). as such, the connotations of using 
the term ManOwaR are different than using the term "man-of-war". as with 
terrangan, verengan and cardaSangan (sp?), a transliteration of 'ManOwaR' 
would (in my view) be more accurate.
secondly, i do not believe the language differences or the fact that we are 
talking about songs make much of a difference. sure it will be hard, and 
some grammatical/semantic changes may need to be made in order to preserve 
the rythym of the original version, but is that not where the joys and 
challenges of translation lay?
if you wish to see just how versatile translated versions of songs can be, 
listen to the song "Herz Aus Stahl", which is a german translation of the 
original english "Heart Of Steel", one of ManOwaR's greatest songs. it was 
done originally in english by the band, translated into german by a friend 
of theirs, Marcus Ott, then recorded by the band, in german, to the original 
music. some changes are noticeable, as some of the ideas in the english 
version can't be translated literally while maintaining the song's rythym, 
but the band obviously felt that the changes did not take away from the 
impact or power (or meaning) of the song.

the two versions of the song are available on Kings Of Metal (english 
version) and every live bootleg that is available as well as their official 
live album Hell On Stage Live; and on The Hell of Steel (german version) as 
well as (i think) their second collection, Anthology. comparing the two 
versions will show just how successful the venture was.

-S'Qal-

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