Song lyrics

[upthera44.livejournal.com]

A friend of a friend wanted someone to translate her band's lyrics into English. Here is my translation, which doesn't rhyme perfectly but at least has some sort of decent rhythm. I changed a few parts a little bit. Let me know if you have any corrections or suggestions. Thanks

Остаток сил я на пути
Меняю мелочью с терпеньем
Зачем на этом свете жить
Всему я предпочту мгновенье

Огонь, звезда и солнца жар
Зажгут свои тела однажды
Чтобы потухнуть навсегда
Во мраке глубины и жажды

Зачем тебе стереотипы?
Я не хочу их повторять
Вся череда тех кадров, клипов
Которые так важно знать!

И осознав свою никчемность
При возвышеньи бытия
Душа кричит, так жить нельзя

Убей меня, убей меня (?)


What's left of my strength is on the road
It's trading trifles for patience
What are we doing on this planet when
I prefer a moment to all of this

Fire, a star, the heat of the sun
One day will ignite our bodies
And make us extinct forever
In the depth and thirst of darkness

What do you want these stereotypes for?
I don't want to repeat them
This whole caravan of cadres and clips
Which are so important to know

Realizing my own pointlessness
In the rise and fall of existence
My soul shouts, I can't live this way
Kill me, kill me

Comments

[shtepka.livejournal.com]

путь - way
road - дорога

[snorkius.livejournal.com]

What strength I had along my way
Used up on patience and chump-change
And all my years of worthless life
For but one moment I'd exchange

Something like that. I'd try translating the rest, but all the pathos and darkness and uber-angst would make me kill myself. With a butter knife.

Hardcore.

[just1user.livejournal.com]

Зажгут свои тела однажды - ignite their bodies,
and hence
Чтобы потухнуть навсегда - in order to extinct forever

Hopefully at least something is comprehensive

[pinky-the-cow.livejournal.com]

Is there any need for the rhythm? When there is, the poem or song usually has to go along with the original one and that's quite an another task. It can be done, it's interesting, but difficult.

As for the text, I find some fragments somewhat puzzling. To put things softly, such's not my favorite manner of songwriting. The original provider was probably the author and he doesn't seem to have provided much punctuation, too.

My first stumble is in the beginning:
"Остаток сил я на пути
Меняю мелочью с терпеньем"
Along the path I trade the remainders of strength,
with patience and bit by bit
"Мелочь" (singular) could very well mean money change (coins of small value) in this context, I'm almost certain it is. But does the song imply that some imaginary protagonist exchanges the remainders of his strength for patience, the exchange being continuous and by little pieces?
I lean towards the interpretation that he and his patience together or simply he (exercising patience during the process) trades his remaining strength bit by bit. "Trades away for something" is probably implied, but quite hasn't been written in Russian.
Your translation of the part is off, sorry, heh.


"Зачем на этом свете жить
Всему я предпочту мгновенье"
What's the point of living in this world?
I would prefer a (the?) moment to anything.

Surprisingly (for your friend's friend), question mark can actually be wrong (there could be colon, for instance. But something has to be there). Question mark is made up by me just from a theory based on approximate stereotypes of thinking I encountered. No original song is provided, thus one can't derive from the audio. Lack of punctuation doesn't help perfect translation.

"Огонь, звезда и солнца жар
Зажгут свои тела однажды"
There was a correct suggestion above mine regarding bodies: original lyrics go with

Fire, star and heat of sun
will set ablazestrike alight their bodies one day.

I don't think that "зажечь" is strong enough to be translated into something with "blaze" in it. Meanwhile, ignition is a different sort of putting something to fire, I guess. Something with more of an external tampering.
For some word juggling I also could advise "flame" as an option of translating "огонь". One should usually be careful with substitution, but the lyrics don't clarify which "огонь" was meant. The part counts three objects which don't add up quite well for my taste, hence the doubt (or pangs of tooth pains -_-).
Your translation suggests that the things put to fire/light were someone else's bodies. A mistake.

"Чтобы потухнуть навсегда
Во мраке глубины и жажды"
"In order to become extinct (in a sense of light going out) for ever
in the (gloomy) darkness of depth and thirst"
Yep. That's the way it is. Your translation contains the poetic rehash of the words, but you probably expected too much of a sense from the song. Don't. >_< Language rules are rules.

[pinky-the-cow.livejournal.com]

"Зачем тебе стереотипы?
Я не хочу их повторять"
Why would you need the stereotypes?
I do not want to repeat them

"Вся череда тех кадров, клипов
Которые так важно знать!"
The whole sequence of those snapshots and clipsvideos,
Which are so important to be known!
I hate how "clips"-word has way too many different meanings in English. And all of the more common among those are absolutely not conveying the Russian "клип".


"И осознав свою никчемность
При возвышеньи бытия"
And having realized its worthlessness (or "lousiness", hard to decide)
As the existence gets arisen
There's no "fall" and there's a completive form, "деепричастие "Осознав"" (somehow, I don't like multitran translating "деепричастие"—>"participle"). The "worthlessness" with the participle clause should be attributed not to the singer, but to the subject somewhere nearby, which there is and happens to be the "soul".

"Душа кричит, так жить нельзя
Убей меня, убей меня"
The soul cries out: "That's not a way to live.
Kill me, kill me."
By the way, your translation of these two lines can turn out to be the correct one and my might be wrong. It's all the matter of punctuation.
Yours translated back into Russian would be:
"Душа кричит. Так жить нельзя. Убей меня, убей меня."
Mine would be something like: "Душа кричит: "Так жить нельзя, Убей меня, убей меня.""

Intonation of live singing would probably sort things out. Unless the singer is a bad vocalist, whether or not there was a "что" conjunctive omitted would become clear. If there is "что" it's closer to my translation but uses indirect speech (and it's the soul that cries out to be killed). If there isn't, and there's a pause and those exclamations are stand-alone, it's up to the author to clarify, whether those finishing cries are of the protagonist or are the soul's cries.