La Marseillaise - other translations
My translation of La Marseillaise isn't the only one floating around out there. It seems that the French Presidency have paid some professionals big bucks (or big francs) to come up with a translation of their own. Furthermore, there are now translation bots such as the one at AltaVista which can knock up translations of just about anything you care to throw at them. Read about the bot's translation here.
Bot technology has really come on and it's to the programmers' and linguists' credit that, while the bots rarely produce anything like idiomatic prose and often make appalling blunders, their work can usually be understood enough for a native speaker to be able to rework it into something approaching actual language. Of course, Bots have (and in my opinion always will have) no chance of accurately rendering anything as arty as a national anthem.
I also consider the translation which appears in my bible, National Anthems of the World, 7th ed., carried out by Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Elizabeth Shaw. Read about that here.
First up I have Jean Migrenne, official translator at the Caen Memorial for Peace Museum, to thank for this excellent translation which he carried out in conjunction with Sylvère Monod. The Memorial's authorities kindly granted permission to to publish Jean's version, subject to the copyright notice appearing below.
By Jean Migrenne and Sylvère Monod
The Marseillaise
'The War Song of the Rhine Army' was originally written in Strasbourg by
Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle, a French officer, in 1792. Sung by volunteers
from Marseilles and soon known as 'La Marseillaise', it was first adopted as
national anthem in 1795 and officially reinstated in 1879.
Copyright laws apply in all countries to reproduction of parts or totality of this version of La Marseillaise in English, in any possible way and for whatever purpose, commercial or not.
For permission, contact the Mémorial at memosde@unicaen.fr.
Sons of the fatherland, let's stand,
The day of glory has arrived!
Of Tyranny now against us
The blood-stained standard has been raised! (repeat)
O hear across our countryside
Those raging cut-throat soldiers come
To slaughter our children, our wives,
Whom they wrench from our loving arms!
Rise up, brave citizens! In battle order march!
Let's march! Let's march! May our land with tainted blood be soaked!
What do they seek, this horde of slaves,
This gang of traitors and of kings?
Who do they mean to keep in chains,
Clap in irons so long-prepared? (repeat)
Frenchmen, the outrage is for us,
And our wrath it shall stir up,
For we are those they would reduce
To bondage abject and long gone!
Rise up, etc...
What! shall such barbarian swarms
Impose their rule upon our homes?
What! shall hirelings of foreign powers
Bring down our proud warlike sons? (repeat)
Great God! Why should their shackled hands
Our foreheads bend beneath their yoke,
For these vile despots to become
The masters of our destiny?
Rise up, etc...
Tremble, ye tyrants, traitors all,
Who would bring shame to every side!
Now may your parricidal schemes
At last receive their just reward! (repeat)
Everyone to fight you will rise,
And if our young heroes should fall,
France shall beget more combatants,
Just as eager to take up arms!
Rise up, etc...
French fighters, be magnanimous,
Strike hard but let your blows be fair!
Spare the lives of those sad victims
Reluctantly opposing us! (repeat)
But those despots who shed our blood,
Those accomplices of Bouillé (an émigré general)
Tigers all, who, so pitiless,
Leap up to tear their mother's breast!?
Rise up, etc...
Sacred love of our fatherland,
Sustain and guide our vengeful arms!
O Liberty, dear Liberty,
Join us, fight with thy defenders! (repeat)
Under our colours victory
Will rally to thy manly strains!
And may thy dying enemies
See thy triumph and thy glory!
Rise up, etc...
(additional stanza, children singing)
We'll enter on the battlefield
To find our elders there no more;
On their glorious dust we'll tread
And their virtues will chart our course. (repeat)
Much less eager to outlive them
Than we will be to share their graves,
Our pride will truly be sublime
When we avenge or follow them!
Rise up, etc...
English translation of the official 1887 version, by Jean MIGRENNE and Sylvère MONOD. © 2001, Le Mémorial de Caen.
AltaVista on-line translator
This was kindly submitted by Linda Reynolds.
Let us go children of the Fatherland
The day of glory arrived!
Against us of tyranny
The bloody standard is raised
Hear you in our campaigns
Mugir these wild soldiers?
They come until in your arms.
To cut the throat of your sons, your partners!
With the weapons citizens
Form your battalions
Let us go, go
That an impure blood
Water our furrows
What wants this horde of slaves
Traitors, kings entreated?
For which these wretched obstacles
These irons as of prepared a long time?
French, for us, ah! which insult
Which transport it has to excite?
It is us whom one dares to contemplate
To return to the antique slavery!
What these foreign troops!
Would make the law in our homes!
What! these phalanges mercenaries
Would embank our warlike sons!
Large God! by connected hands
Our faces under the yoke are ploieraient
Cheap despots would become
Masters of the destinies.
Tremble, perfidious tyrants and you
Opprobrium of all the parties
Tremble! your parricidal projects
Finally will receive their prices!
All is soldier to fight you
If they fall, our young heroes
France in product the new ones,
Against you any loans to be fought
French, as warriors magnanimes
Carry or retain your blows!
Save these sad victims
With regret being armed against us
But these sanguinary despots
But these accomplices of Bouillé
All these tigers which, without pity
Tear the centre of their mother!
We will enter the career
When our elder is not there any more
We will find their dust there
And traces it their virtues
Well less jealous to survive to them
To share their coffin
We will have sublimates it pride
To avenge them or to follow them!
Crowned love of the Fatherland
Lead, supports our arms avengers
Freedom, Most cherished liberty
Engagements with your defenders!
Under our flags, that victory
Runs to your males accents
That your expiring enemies
See your triumph and our glory!
As I said earlier, it's to the programmers of this bot's credit that this makes some kind of sense. Technically I could have a field day pointing out some of the errors it's committed but that defeats the object of the exercise. Nonetheless certain mistakes reveal a lack of vocabulary on behalf of the bot, which is unacceptable really since unlike humans it can't use the excuse that it forgot some words.
mugir - to
howl
ployer - to yield
mâles accents - manly tone
These are all words which should perhaps be known to the bot, although the last is correct when translated literally.
Apart from that I could mention the fact that the bot seems to be ignorant of the extremely common French practice of forming questions by inverting statements. Thus entendez-vous? becomes can you hear? and not hear you? In fairness to the bot, its translation is technically correct if the original text omits the hyphen. Since I didn't submit the text I don't know...
Even so I can't bring myself to forgive the bot for not knowing tous les partis, here meaning all good men and that la campagne means the country or fields. Hear you in our campaigns indeed!
Equally inexcusable, if not more so, is the translation of Grand Dieu (Good God or similar) by Large God. However the worst enormity is surely the rendition of Contre vous tous prêts à se battre by Against you any loans to be fought. OK, so un prêt (noun) is a loan but prêt (adjective) means ready and the line should read All ready to fight against you.
There are other quirks of which probably the most notable is that Fatherland as a proper noun means Germany, and I'm not sure how many Frenchmen would like to be mistaken for Germans!
Still, I'd like to re-emphasise my opinion that for a computer to come up with this translation is damn fine. For the most part it's understandable, and what isn't is at least worth a laugh.
Someone should teach the bot the subjunctive nevertheless...
La Marseillaise as translated for www.elysee.fr
The French presidency's web site has commissioned someone to translate La Marseillaise for them, and to good effect. This translation is very good indeed, clearly the work of several skilled professionals, and even manages to go in time with the music. Nonetheless if you thought I was taking a few liberties with my translation, you ain't seen nothin' yet. Note that these three verses also appear on the French Embassy in Fiji's site but they are incorrectly numbered. The site presents them as verses 1, 3 and 4, not 1, 6 and 7 as here.
Verse 1
Arise you children of our motherland
Oh now is here our glorious day!
Over us the bloodstained banner
Of tyranny holds sway!
Oh, do you hear there in our fields
The roar of those fierce fighting men ?
Who came right here into our midst
To slaughter sons, wives and kin.
To arms, oh citizens!
Form up in serried ranks!
March on, march on!
And drench our fields
With their tainted blood!
Verse 6
Into the fight we too shall enter
When our fathers are dead and gone
We shall find their bones laid down to rest
With the fame of their glories won!
Oh, to survive them care we not
Glad are we to share their grave
Great honor is to be our lot
To follow or to venge our brave.
Verse 7
Supreme devotion to our Motherland
Guides and sustains avenging hands.
Liberty, oh dearest Liberty
Come fight with your shielding bands!
Beneath our banner come, oh Victory
Run at your soul-stirring cry.
Oh come, come see your foes now die
Witness your pride and our glory.
Consider the lines
Nous entrerons dans la carrière
Quand nos aînés n'y seront plus
Nous y trouverons leur poussière
Et la trace de leurs vertus
which the official site translates as
Into the fight we too shall enter
When our fathers are dead and gone
We shall find their bones laid down to rest
With the fame of their glories won
It rhymes, it's dynamic, it goes with the music and it translates the idea behind the words, not the words themselves - the first rule of translation. Yet it's as far from the original text as you can get without talking about sheep shearing on a remote Australian farm. The whole translation is like that.
It's up to you to decide whether or not this is a good thing. Personally I admire them for doing it, although I think they're wrong. Indeed because I think they're wrong. Such extreme liberties shouldn't be taken with translations of official documents etcetera, but I believe they're just right for a national anthem.
Translation appearing in National Anthems of the World
Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Elizabeth Shaw's work appears in National Anthems of the World, seventh edition. I don't know if Shelley, who died in 1822 at the age of 30, or Shaw, of whom no details are given, translated the whole song or not. The book credits Shelley for the first verse and Shaw for the second, adding that Shelley originally wrote See their tears... in the first first and that Shaw suggested Behold... I've written Behold as I think it better fits the melody.
Verse 1 - Percy Bysshe Shelley
Ye sons of France, awake to glory
Hark, hark, what myriads bid you rise!
Your children, wives and grandsires hoary
Behold their tears and hear their cries!
Shall hateful tyrants mischief breeding
With hireling hosts, a ruffian band
Affright and desolate the land
While peace and liberty lie bleeding?
To arms, to arms, ye brave!
Th'avenging sword unsheathe!
March on! march on!
All hearts resolved
On victory or death.
Verse 7 - Mary Elizabeth Shaw
O sacred love of France undying
Th'avenging arm uphold and guide
Thy defenders, death defying
Fight with Freedom at their side.
Soon thy sons shall be victorious
When the banner high is raised;
And thy dying enemies, amazed
Shall behold thy triumph, great and glorious.
Wow. What a stirring text. Full of all the blood and thunder and never-say-die spirit that the Marseillaise epitomises. There can be no doubt of the song's meaning. As far as the linguistic quality is concerned, all I can say is excellent. Like the Élysée's professional translation, the English is dynamic, vibrant and stirring. The words also go in time with the music and rhyme nicely, as do those from the Presidency's site. It's inspiring stuff. It's good stuff. But is it a translation?
Well, no. Not really.
I've already said that you shouldn't translate texts on a word for word basis. Depending on the situation, you could argue for and against translating on a line by line basis. But, hell, this doesn't even agree paragraph for paragraph. Let's take the chorus, for example. Where in the "translation" does formez vos battaillons occur? Where in the original can you find anything bearing even the slightest resemblance to th'avenging sword unsheathe? The answer is nowhere.
Make no mistake, Shaw and Shelley's prose makes for a fine literary work. I haven't got a bad word to say about it. Yet it shouldn't pretend to be a translation. Let it call itself an original work inspired by La Marseillaise or whatever. Just don't let it call itself a translation because it isn't one.
Disclaimer: Yes, yes, I know. I myself did once say that when doing translations I take the texts to translation as inspiration for an original piece. Hey, everyone's allowed to be hypocritical... And besides, I didn't say it to you.
Translation appearing at frenchculture.miningco.com
This site carries a brief comment on the anthem and the same two verses as appear in National Anthems of the World. The translation is there as well but the second of the verses presented in English is definitely not a translation of the second French verse. Either that or they're really taking the word liberal to extremes. Unfortunately they give no credit for the translation. I'd guess it was either Shelley or Shaw and that whoever it was decided to do a sort of "metatranslation," rolling up all the ideas of the whole song to create this original work.
Ye sons of France, awake to glory
Oh liberty can man resign thee,
Once having felt thy gen'rous flame?
Can dungeons, bolts and bar confie thee?
Or whips they noble spirit tame?
Too long the world has wept bewailing
That falshood's dagger tyrants wield,
But freedom is our sword and shield
And all their arts are unavailing.
This is very good. But, like the previous work, it isn't a translation. The style is similar so I'd be very surprised if Shaw or Shelley hadn't written it but I don't know. Perhaps someone could shed some light on who the author is?
As remembered by Jim Jessop
Here's a translation sent to me by a gentleman named Jim Jessop. Jim tells me he came to this site looking for the words to the Marseillaise because he'd learnt them at school but had since forgotten all except the first few lines. He was disappointed because my translation was different from the one he'd been taught all those years ago. I told Jim that if he ever did come across the version he knew, I'd love to hear it.
Only a few days later Jim turned up this.
Soldiers of France the day is breaking
The day of glory dawns at last
See the tyrants' banner shaking
As it basely streams in the blast
As it basely streams in the blast
The field of battle lies before you
Fierce fowmen advance on their prey
It matters little how you die
Whether on the battle field or the scaffold high
To arms and hence away
To arms this glorious day
March on march on
Brave sons of France
To fame and victory
I think you can see why I was hoping so much that Jim would find this for me. This is great; another interpretation that really captures the spirit of the revolutionaries marching to victory, and it fits the tune very well.
Of course (and you must be getting tired of my saying it by now) it isn't a translation any more than the others are but it's a rip-roaring war song if ever there was one.
Marvin Harold Cheiten's translation
Marvin Harold Cheiten was kind enough to submit his own translation of the first stanza. In his own words:
Though I have taken a few liberties with the exact words of the original, I believe that my version captures the spirit of the piece without being too high-flown and is also very singable.
And who can say fairer than that? Here's the translation.
Oh, come you children of the Fatherland
The day of glory is at hand:
In our midst, the banner so gory
Of tyranny stalks through the land.
A tyranny stalks through the land!
Oh, can you hear, deep in the country,
The roar of the predators' guns?
They have come to turn our world to hell,
And slaughter our daughters and our loved ones.
So to arms, you native sons!
Overflow our battalions!
March on, march on: spill their blood like rain
To fertilize the plain.
Otto Elle's insight
Otto Elle offers this fascinating insight into the variations in the lyrics you see on this site and elsewhere.
I'd just like to point out some variations in the lyrics of La Marseillaise I mentioned when singing it at the army and between your french lyrics and what could be heard from Berlioz version by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra & Chorus or "notre Mireille nationale": in fact the lyrics depends on how much one feels concerned by what it's being sung.
First verse:
"Entendez-vous dans LES campagnes" [the] or
"Entendez-vous dans VOS campagnes" [your] or
"Entendez-vous dans NOS campagnes" [our].
and
"Ils viennent jusque dans VOS bras.
Égorger VOS fils, VOS compagnes!" [your] or
"Ils viennent jusque dans NOS bras.
Égorger NOS fils, NOS compagnes!" [our]
and
"Égorger nos fils, nos compagnes!" or
"Égorger nos fils ET nos compagnes!". [and]
Third verse:
"Terrasseraient nos FILS guerriers!" [sons] or
"Terrasseraient nos FIERS guerriers!". [proud warriors]
Children verse:
"Nous entrerons dans LA carrière" or
"Nous entrerons dans LES carrièreS"
and
"Et LA trace de leurs vertus" or
"Et LES traceS de leurs vertus".
Note here that "la carrière" is the best choice since it means the military career [the fact to become an army officer until the retirement i.e. being an army pensioner] and not the pit or quarry!
Finally it can be heard (and sung) with inverted verses (children verse being the last verse or the second to last one for instance...)
Hope this could be useful or at least of any interest
It certainly is of great interest. Thanks to Otto Elle.
As translated by Joseph Cannon
Reader Joseph Cannon was inspired to write his own translation.
He tells us: "My translation sacrifices exactitude in places, but each line still conveys a sense of the original. The rhyme scheme is there, the meter remains the same, and -- much to the annoyance of my neighbors -- this version can be sung."
I call on all who love our nation
The test of glory comes today
When we face a tyrant's predation
When the banners of blood come our way
(When the banners of blood come our way...)
When you hear marching invaders
Come howling for prey in your home
Destroying everywhere they roam
And loved ones are lost to the raiders...
Raise arms unto the skies!
Batallions shall arise!
March on! March on!
We'll bleed the foe
Until the day is won!
Joseph goes on to execute a "Homer Simpson-esque victory dance" in honour of his achievement and he is justifiably proud of producing a translation that captures the patriotic energy of the original piece without deviating from its melody.
Armand Thuair's "peaceful" lyrics
George Hannauer remembered reading about a "peaceful" reimagining of La Marseillaise in the New York Times.
The story goes that one Armand Thuair penned a more politically correct set of lyrics after noting that out of 175 countries he studied, only France retained such a "bellicose" anthem.
Allons enfants de la Patrie |
Arise you children of the motherland |
Ensemble citoyens |
Together, oh citizens |
I routinely receive emails from people who are disgusted with the bloodthirsty lyrics of the original anthem. They will no doubt be delighted to learn that the kinder, gentler verses received the support of dignitaries such as First Lady Danielle Miterrand.
Personally I don't care for it. Though Rouget de Lisle's marching song may seem out of place in the modern world it was written for an entirely different time. The lyrics are a part of history and go hand in hand with the stirring music we all enjoy.
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