Have I mentioned my strange hobby of translating Rammstein songs into English?
Jolly Neue Deutsche Härte minstrels Rammstein sure know how to construct a terrifying wall of Teutonic sound, and it’s a lot of fun to fight back against their particular style of sonic assault by singing along. However there’s something unsatisfying about growling out German words that you don’t understand and which no actual German would understand either because they’re not actually German words, they’re just your dime-store impersonation of what it sounds like Till Lindemann is muttering/bawling about.
(Photo by Sven Mandel)
There are a few ways to deal with this. One – of course – would be to learn German. This however is a lot of hard work for someone as lazy as I am. Another would be to memorise the lyrics of every Rammstein song along with their correct pronunciations, but that would take up memory space that could be more profitably used to store odd facts about the history of London or the exact taxonomical relationships between members of the Latrodectus genus of widow spiders. So I choose the easy route and write English lyrics that attempt to preserve the general meaning of the German ones while fitting the tunes and rhyming in the right places.
This is not as difficult as might be thought. English and German are very closely related, both being members of the West Germanic language family (along with Dutch, Frisian, Yiddish and a few others), which means simple German sentences tend to be about the same length as and use similar words to their English equivalents. Many can be understood right away or with only a few seconds’ thought – for instance…
- Wir haben ein Problem
- Hier kommt die Kavallerie!
- Die Katze ist gut, ja?
- Hast du Schweinefleisch?
- Mein Hovercraft ist voll von Aalen!
- Oh, lass nicht zu, dass die Räder deines Corporation-Lastwagens, der schmutziges Wasser aus Löchern saugt, über einen armen alten Mann fahren!
As such, translating a song from German into English is fairly simple, especially when compared to doing the same for a song from a different language group (I once tried translating a song out of Moldovan and almost died).
So my latest attempt is an English version of the song that taught millions of people the wrong German word for “ten” – Sonne
(I’ve left the counting in German because it’s obvious what it is and sounds so much better than boring old “one, two, three”. Furthermore ‘vier’ sounds like ‘fear’ and ‘sechs’ like ‘sex’, the combination of which sum up Rammstein’s music pretty accurately…)
SONNE by RAMMSTEIN
Translated into (mostly) English by Purple Wyrm
Eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben, acht, neun, aus!
We’re all waiting for the light,
Be afraid but don’t take fright,
The sun is shining from my eyes…
Tonight the sunset will not come,
And the world, it counts along,
Eins!
Here comes the sun!
Zwei!
Here comes the sun!
Drei!
Of all the stars the brightest one!
Vier!
Here comes the sun!
The sun is shining from my palms,
It can burn and blind and harm,
When it breaks out of my grip,
It falls upon your face and lips,
Tonight the sunset will not come,
And the world, it counts along,
Eins!
Here comes the sun!
Zwei!
Here comes the sun!
Drei!
Of all the stars the brightest one!
Vier!
Here comes the sun!
Fünf!
Here comes the sun!
Sechs!
Here comes the sun!
Sieben!
Of all the stars the brightest one!
Acht! Neun!
Here comes the sun!
The sun is shining from my palms,
It can burn and blind and harm,
When it breaks out of my grip,
It falls upon your face and lips,
It forces hard against your chest,
Digs it’s claws into your flesh,
It hurls you down, your senses gone!
And the world, it counts along!
Eins!
Here comes the sun!
Zwei!
Here comes the sun!
Drei!
It is the brightest star of all!
Vier!
And from the sky will never fall!
Fünf!
Here comes the sun!
Sechs!
Here comes the sun!
Sieben!
Of all the stars the brightest one!
Acht! Neun!
Here comes the sun!
