La Marseillaise - translation

Here it is: my French to English translation of La Marseillaise. It isn't unique, there's an official translation at http://www.elysee.fr/president/la-presidence/les-symboles-de-la-republique-francaise/la-marseilllaise/la-marseillaise-de-rouget-de-lisle.637.html which I discuss under other translations, along with a "translation" carried out by a bot. Since this site was first created, many more translations have sprung up too. If you know of a particularly good one, let me know.

The translations (there are two - more on that later) are all my own work, and at no time did I claim to be perfect. If you have any suggestions as to how to improve the translation (or if you want to complain because you copied it for a school project and your teacher told you it was the worst attempt at translation he'd ever seen), feel free to send me your ideas. There's a mail link at the bottom of this page.

As I hinted above, I've provided two translations. The first is a first attempt at a literal translation, whereas with the other I took a few more liberties to try to give a better idea of the meaning of the original French. In both cases you'll see the original French and English translation lined up in a neat table so you can check off each verse.

La Marseillaise was deliberately written using flowery language and is therefore very difficult to translate, and it's almost impossible to give an English version without sounding arty-farty and stupid, but I've given it my best shot.

View the standard or liberal translation.

Send your comments to comments@marseillaise.org