So, Sumer Is Icumen In...

[conuly]

Has anybody ever tackled translating that in a way that's, you know, singable? Because the original is very singable, and the translations make sense, but I've yet to find a translation that fits, well, any meter, let alone that one! Google is failing me, and I really don't like singing songs in another language which that pretty nearly is. I worry that a native speaker (or the equivalent) will overhear me and laugh. Yes, these are the things that worry me.

Comments

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

I'd suggest listening to a few recordings of the original being sung, and then copy. The Medieval Baebes do a nice version.

Which bits of the Middle English are you having problems with? You could always modernise just the lines that are causing trouble, leaving the rest intact.

[conuly]

Even if I get it totally right I still feel self-conscious singing things in other languages, there's the problem.

[dandelion.livejournal.com]

But you won't meet a native speaker of this one ;)

[conuly]

I never said it was sane or rational.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

We visited India and saris are the most comfortable clothes in the world, so my husband ordered one for me. I'm scared some Indian woman will catch me wearing the wrong kind of US blouse with it.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

Ah. To me, it's English, just a slightly archaic form / odd accent. A different dialect, not a different language.
Maybe a quick modernisation could be one of my jobs for the afternoon, if I can stay awake.
Looking at the Wikipedia translation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumer_Is_Icumen_In how do you feel about the stag farting - want it cleaned up?

[conuly]

I'm fine with stags farting! It at least scans about the same. I'm all for pragmatic adaptions, but when it fits in nicely as is, well.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

See what you think of this. I've left it a bit "archaic" to get it to scan, and to keep the rhyming pattern the same, but only by a single century, not eight of them.

Summer is a-coming in
Loudly sing, Cuckoo!
Grows the seed and blooms the mead
and springs the wood anew
Sing, Cuckoo!
Ewe bleateth after lamb,
Cow for calf doth moo
Bullock starteth, buck farteth,
Merry sing cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo, well you sing, cuckoo
Nor cease you ever now!

Sing cuckoo now. Sing, Cuckoo.
Sing Cuckoo. Sing cuckoo now!

[conuly]

That is positively beautiful :)

I don't mind it being somewhat archaic, I mean, it's an older song, but....

The one thing (gosh, I hate saying that and yet I always end up doing so!) is that my understanding is "is verb" back then meant something more like "has verbed" rather than "is verbing". Still, the sense is closely enough preserved. It's like quibbling over whether the die IS or HAS BEEN cast - we all understand the point, so who cares?

(Okay, okay. *I* care. The die HAS BEEN cast. It's the same thing, a too-literal mapping of auxiliary verbs to Modern English usage of same. But I'm a pedant.)

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

Good point, and I'm certainly no expert on the English of that period. What little I do know of Middle English is from the Chaucer period, 200 years or so later. English currently has far too many tenses for any sane language (and I love it!), and it used to have far too many tenses back then, too. Matching the two lots..... no hope, unless you're an expert, and I'm not.

To my mind though, the overall sense here is "wow! it's spring! listen to that cuckoo!" - very much present tense. Most of the song reflects that, it's just that first line. Still, would "Summer has a-comen in" work for you?

[conuly]

Actually, English only has two tenses, the past and the not-past. Everything else is a matter of mood and aspect and auxiliary verbs up the wazoo.


To my mind though, the overall sense here is "wow! it's spring! listen to that cuckoo!" - very much present tense. Most of the song reflects that, it's just that first line. Still, would "Summer has a-comen in" work for you?

1. Indeed.

2. No, that sounds silly. I'd rather take a slightly less accurate translation that gets the mood than a more accurate one that sounds wrong.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

I bow to your superior knowledge of English grammar :)

There are times (and this is one of them) when I really wish I'd had more formal education in this sort of thing, so I had the vocabulary of grammar to explain what I'm talking about. As it is, I have this extensive toolkit, I'm reasonably good at using the tools therein to create the meaning and mood I'm after, but I don't know what any of the tools are called!

I need to get a decent book on the subject and do some reading, I think. I've found a few websites on the subject, but they seem to be ridiculously trivial.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

It could be past, like 'He is risen' or 'I am come'. But I agree that matching the sense of the poem -- "This is spring now; summer is coming soon" -- is more important.

Maybe there's a climate factor. I've seen modern Brits complain of years when they 'never get a summer': spring weather just continues till fall weather. Maybe at the time of the poem, cool blooming weather was as warm as it got, and was thus called 'somer'?

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

I see your point, but....
The die has two possible states - still in the dice cup (not yet cast), or lying on the table showing a number (cast). Its current state is "cast", because at some point in the recent past, someone cast it. "The die is cast" has the same grammatical structure as "The die is red" or "the die is a D6".
Did that make any sense?

[conuly]

Well, I see what you're getting at, but I'm not sure you see what I'm getting at. But then maybe we're just not communicating well.

[steorra (from livejournal.com)]

my understanding is "is verb" back then meant something more like "has verbed" rather than "is verbing"

More than that, "is i-cumen" is is + past participle of come, not is + present participle of come.

Re: the song overall: In the childrens' choir I sang in growing up, when I was probably roughly grade-12-age, we started learning a rather bad modernization of the song. I knew enough Middle English at that point to know that the modernization was not good and that some of the explanations given for what things meant didn't ring true to how Middle English worked. So I got out my Middle English book, which contained the original, went over the spelling rules to work out how to transcribe it phonetically in a way our choir director would be able to understand, and prepared a translation. I was surprised to discover the "farts" bit ... checked and rechecked my translation, but had to conclude that yes, this is what the text said. I presented the transcription and translation to my teacher, and she quietly stopped having the choir learn it - I'm pretty sure she was put off by the fart bit.

[conuly]

You were learning ME in school at that point? Awesome.

[steorra (from livejournal.com)]

No, not in school.

A) I was home educated. I started playing with Middle English when I was about 11 or 12, though it was mostly a "look at it and see what I can figure out" thing, no actual learning grammar. We had some Middle English books around the house from courses my dad had taken when he was in university.

B) If this was indeed in my grade-12-age year, I was sitting in on a university course on the History of the English Language, which would have added further to my Middle English knowledge.

[conuly]

I can't write clearly. I meant to say I almost prefer it being somewhat old fashioned BECAUSE it is an older song. Edit that line.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

(nods) Just a touch of the archaic, but still in modern reach. Over-modernising it would seem wrong, to me (but then I still love the King James bible, lousy translations and all).

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

On a needlessly pedantic note, the word translated as 'farteth' doesn't mean farting in the ordinary sense: deer communicate with each other through olfactory signals from their tarsal glands.

[conuly]

Somehow, it doesn't seem like the sort of thing one associates with deer.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Well, dogs communicate by sniffing bottoms. Maybe the point is what the deer are communicating about? "Deer calleth"?

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

It's spring (the start of summer) and the stag is proving how masculine he is by defining his territory. "Buck marketh"?

[conuly]

They show how masculine they are via scent glands in their butts? Which we term "farting"?

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Yeah. They're probably rubbing their anal glands against the trees, similar to the way tomcats spray, and it may well smell like farts to humans.

This may be TMI, but male dogs also have anal glands, which sometimes get clogged and need to be expressed. IMHO this is a job for the vet, because I assisted with it once, and ewwwwwwww. Horrible smell. Biology is always so gross.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

"Buck marketh" is perfect. :)

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, they are stinky critters. In the Fall, the bucks are really stinky, and one can definitely tell when one's crossed their scent-trail, but they communicate with each other all the time by olfactory signals. Reasonable, because in the night forest they often can't see each other, and they don't really use vocal calls. Their ears are keen, but their noses are keener, and their top predator doesn't hunt by scent.

[conuly]

their top predator doesn't hunt by scent.

Is that us, or do you mean some other top predator?