Quote:
Originally Posted by Azhiri
Anybody feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I imagine that rather than literally translating songs from french into english on the official english singles, the basic gist of the song is considered, and then new words are written to the music using the author's best understanding of which english words would best illustrate the concept. You might notice that the english singles Alizee has sung are kind of strange (or, to be blunt, even poorly written). I think that's why.  |
Yes unfortunately 3 of her 4 early songs that were re-written from French into English were poorly done.
Well you can just look at the direct English translation of the song Youpidou above. It certainly would have not sounded good if she used a direct translation and it would have probably have been a real problem to try and come up with words to match if not exactly, at least something pretty close to the original meaning of the French song.
So the English versions may have kept the general gist of the French version as you said, but that about all it kept. So instead of interpreting her songs, she chose to re-write them instead and she really didn't do a good job of it. Look at some of the lines of the English version.
Fried days of something that I lost
Got some something under
I see you talking to the bees
Three days of something much too fake.
Sure they are lines that we can probably come up with what we think she's trying to say, but they are the type of lines that if you asked 10 different people, you'd get 10 different definitions of what she's saying. They just plain aren't easy to follow. Which is a dam shame because if she had done a better job, I think these songs would have kicked butt in this country.
This is also true of the songs J'en ai marre and J'ai pas vingt ans. Mylene just did a poor job or re-writing these songs. But they were Farmer's songs so she had the right to do with them what ever she wanted to.
But Amelie M'a dit was a different story. It was a song about a character in a movie and I think she had to stay true to that character and though the song was almost totally re-writtena as the others, with some weak spots, the fact that she kept true to the character, made it a beautiful song, making it in my mind the best of those 4 English songs.