共演者:
アルバム:
Zeit (2022)
オリジナル歌詞
ドイツ語
翻訳
英語
Zeit
Time
Some things must happen, some not
We watch, but aren’t we blind?
We cast shadows in the darkness
After us only the past will remain
Youth will turn into infirmity
We keep on dying until we live
Dying alive until we meet our Lord
Heading to a meeting with the Reaper
Without haste, just moving forward
At the other end Eternity awaits us
Trapped in the passing of…
Time
Please stop, don’t rush
Time
Let the moment last forever
A warm body will soon get cold
You cannot conjure the future
It does not tolerate any delay
From dust to dust1
I’m lying here in your arms
Oh, can't it just go on forever?
But time knows no mercy
Soon this moment will be history
Time
Please stop, don’t rush
Time
Let the moment last forever
Time
It’s so wonderful, so wonderful
Everybody knows
When it’s time to go
Time
Please stop, don’t rush
When our time has come
It’s the time to go
End on a high note
And time will stop
This will be the perfect moment
But time will go on
Wait, just for while
I’m still not ready…
Time
Please stop, don’t rush
Time
Let the moment last forever
Time
It’s so wonderful, so wonderful
Everybody knows
When it’s time to go
- 1. Literally: “Created and immediately destroyed”
Song details
Translation details
This is a poetic translation - deviations from the meaning of the original are present (extra words, extra or omitted information, substituted concepts).
Give a shoutout to Aldefina
コメント 7
I like your poetic translation a lot. It's just that: poetic.
A few minor things:
Whenever you wrote "the time", it should be simply "time". Same with eternity. It's just eternity, without the.
I think it should be "Trapped in the passing of time" and "Soon, this moment will be history" (the latter's clearly just a typo).
There are a few liberties you took that deviate too far from the original for my taste. Perhaps most significantly, you added a religious component that isn't as present in the original by talking about God and the Reaper. ("From dust to dust", while being a Bible quote, I take no issue with, since the idea is by no means exclusive to religion and fits well into the text.)
I would translate the line as, "We keep on dying until we live". To me, that's one of the most powerful ideas in the whole song, and I wouldn't change that personally, or at least add an annotation to explain what it actually says.
I'd suggest, "Everybody knows when it's time to go" and, "When our time has come // It's time to go".
You could also translate the idiom "Aufhören, wenn's am schönsten ist" to "Always leave them wanting more" or "End on a high note", but I think maybe your translation is more poetic than that.
These last points are purely a matter of taste.
Great work, and thanks for introducing me to this song!
Thanks muchly, :)
I made one big mistake - I published it too early. I should have waited for at least one day to check it once again. Usually I correct my translations after some time and only after doing it I publish them. This time I was in a hurry. A bit too much in a hurry.
I had got a feeling that I overdid with “the” and wanted to delete it in some places, but I simply forgot, because of being already too tired after a hard day of work.
Clearly the are no religious components in the original, but even if they don't fit Rammstein's style, they fit in my translation. I believe these lyrics have universal meaning and I treated them that way. A catholic interpretation, you may say.
Mind you, it was the seventh translation and it had to be different than the rest. For me it was important that my interpretation keeps the sense of the song and sounds good.
One can have a different opinion about a given interpretation. Whether it deviates too much from the original or not is the question of taste. All my deviations were intentional.
One thing that I have learned in 10 years, that I have been on LT, is to avoid translating literally, that's why I usually have no problem to submit a new translation, when there are already many posted - like here.
I have used one idiom you suggested. Even if you think my rendition was more poetic, I like the idiom "to die on a high note". In fact I didn't know it. One never stops learning.
I have corrected what I overlooked and followed your suggestions.
I hope it's perfect now. Thank you once again.
Well said. And my pleasure :)
Thanks, once again. Also my pleasure. Even more... :)
The best of all those translations. A joy to read!
Thanks, Andrea. :) It was a must for me.
There's hardly any German music on the Polish Radio, but this song for some time was on the top of the hits and I must say the lyrics are really tough and very emotional.
This is very, very funny. I don't even know ANY Polish music. And German Radio seems to know only one Rammstein song and that's Engel. Hard to believe since they've got so much very clever lyrics and cool music.