This is one of those things that belong in a personal blog, or some other form of archive, for the amusement of family and close friends only...the very first "poem," or song lyric, I ever translated from French. (An older form of French, at that; the kind you study in college, not the kind you make a polite effort to speak in Montreal, at least until people feel sorry for you and speak English.) I'd translated about a half dozen from Spanish, and sung some of them in public, before college.
In college, I happened to find a recorded reconstruction of what scholars think might have been the song Richard the Lion-Hearted sang as a prisoner of war, being held for ransom.
I wanted a few hundred extra dollars to take a summer course at a different school.
I translated "Ja Nun Hons Pris" into English and sang it at a few potential sources of financial aid.
I got the money and took the summer course.
The original song had the following great asset: it's short:
Ja nun hons pris puet faire chanson
Adroitement se dolamente non
Mais par effort puet il faire chanson
Mout ai amis, mais povre sont li don
Honte i avront si por ma reancon
Suis ca deus yvers pris.
The translation does at least preserve the greatest asset of the original song:
A prisoner can sing no more
Unless he makes his songs both sad and sore.
If he made one, it might creak along so:
"I've many rich friends, but their gifts are poor.
How sad 'twould be if, because they gave no more,
I had to stay here this winter also."
A slightly different version, with an extra verse, is available free on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0kiZ7ZwD-c .
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