Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/12/06/klingon-pop-warrior.html
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I don’t think “letting things go” really fits with the traditional Klingon ethos. I guess it’s just harder to set “PURSUE THOSE WHO DISHONORED YOU TO THE ENDS OF THE UNIVERSE UNTIL YOU END THEIR BLOODLINE OR MEET A NOBLE DEATH” to verse.
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As was pointed out in the first post about this.
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I used to be a big Trek fan. I enjoyed playing an early interactive computer video game called “Star Trek: Klingon” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Klingon) where it was actually useful to learn some of the Klingon language. But nowadays that made-up tongue just sounds to me like someone interminably trying to clear their throat, and I end up feeling as though I have to clear my throat too. It’s a nasty habit when you get into middle age.
Hang out with some Germans, sometime, or some Cantonese-speaking Chinese folks ^^’ . It ain’t just Klingons…
The official german version
The chinese version (unknown provenance).
(edit: it’s Mandarin, not Cantonese. Oops.)
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Somehow I doubt that the Klingons were big on the 12-tone scale and a European sense of harmony.
IMO the German version is oddly different because “the ice queen” (as she is translated) sings “I let (it) go” and I feel like the English version, with the “let it go!” imperative case, has “you” as understood. So…
[you should] “Let it go! Let it go!” (original version, AFAICT)
vs
“I let [it] go! I let [it] go!” (auf deutsch)
Translations, esp. dubbing to fit existing music, is often so clumsy and unsatisfying. Am I not getting the original version’s meaning?
For the past few months, I’ve lived my life to the soundtrack of Disney’s mega-hit musical “Frozen.” I wake up to the sound of my two daughters singing the Oscar-winning power anthem “Let It Go” at the top of their lungs as they get dressed for school. By breakfast, we’re on to “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?” followed by the peppy duet “Love Is an Open Door.” Between bites of oatmeal, my four-year-old chimes in with well-rehearsed counterpoint as her older sister closes her eyes and solemnly belts out the reprise to “For the First Time in Forever.”
On a scale of infectiousness, these songs are pestilential. This is a good thing; “Frozen” recently became the fifth-highest-grossing film of all time.
(contains link to cantonese, among others)
You aren’t translating a wikipedia article, you’re translating an earworm.
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The more dramatic change-- according to the interwebz-- is
Here I stand in the light of day!
Let the storm rage on!!!
The cold never bothered me anyway!
to
Hier bin ich in dem hellen Licht
und ein Sturm zieht auf.
Die Kälte, sie ist nun ein Teil von mir.
sure, it continues the theme, but 'the cold never bothered me anyway" is a tad different that “the cold is now a part of me.” Unless it’s an idiom.
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I will check in with my mom, a native German speaker.
I don’t think this is idiom at work.
I wonder if the re-lyricists were hoping to match the meter of the original lyrics, rather than the meaning. As many of us know, German as a language sometimes takes rather a lot of syllables to say something that can be said in English in fewer.
Good catch!
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