The Swedish Electropop Lyrical Massacree
In my oh-so-inflated opinion one of the best songs (not to mention video clips) of the last few years was Det Snurrar i min Skalle by Swedish electro-popsters Familjen. It’s a great track with only one problem – it’s in Swedish.
(Or more accurately, a dialect of Swedish the name of which temporarily escapes me..)
Now this isn’t really a problem. The song is what it is and works wonderfully even if monolingual ignoramuses such as myself can’t understand the words. But what if we want to sing along? Or for that matter simply want to know what the song is about?
Sure, you can look up a translation, but a straight translation of lyrics is never very inspiring. There’s no meter, there’s no rhyme and there’s bound to be some odd turns of phrase that sound fine in the original but are just weird when dragged kicking and screaming into another language. What you need is a more nuanced translation that takes the meaning of the lyrics and whacks it into something that would pass muster as a lyric in the new language. So where can you find such a thing for Det Snurrar i min Skalle? Well as far as I could figure out, nowhere. So I wrote my own.
This kind of work is always subjective. The translator (ie: me) has to try and balance their best guess at what the writer was trying to say with the needs of meter, rhyme and rhythm. The lyrics below are about 75%-80% accurate to my interpretation of the translations that I’ve come across, which isn’t too bad for a Sunday afternoon.
So, enjoy…
Ringing in My Head
(A probably fairly dodgy translation of Familjen’s Det Snurrar i min Skalle)
I, caught a little fire from you,
And now through my head it’s burning,
I, know what you’re about to do,
And it feels like the first time,
Let’s, show the world it’s you and me,
We’ll run to where they can’t find,
They, know that this was meant to be,
Can’t you hear them singing?
Just, as if it always had been planned,
Just like how the earth keeps spinning,
How, could you ever choose another’s hand?
You couldn’t, that’s the glory,
You, fill my head to overflow,
And I’m here to tell that story,
More, than I thought I’d ever know,
Inside my head it’s ringing,
I, caught a little fire from you,
And now through my head it’s burning,
I, know what you’re about to do,
And it feels like the first time,
Let’s, show the world it’s you and me,
We’ll run to where they can’t find,
They, know that this was meant to be,
Can’t you hear them singing?
Yeah, can’t you hear them singing?
Yeah, can’t you hear them singing?
Can’t you hear them singing?
Can’t you hear them singing?
Can’t you hear them singing?
Can’t you hear them singing?
