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Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

Teaching English Language and Literature for Secondary Schools

Petr Husseini

Nick Cave’s Lyrics in Official and Amateur Czech Translations Master‟s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Mgr. Renata Kamenická, Ph.D.

2009

Declaration declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

...... Author‟s signature

2

Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor, Mgr. Renata Kamenická, Ph.D., for her kind help, support and valuable advice.

3 Table of Contents

Introduction ...... 5

1. Translation of Lyrics and Poetry ...... 9 1.1 Introduction ...... 9 1.2 General Nature of Lyrics and Poetry ...... 11 1.3 Tradition of Lyrics Translated into Czech ...... 17 1.4 Conclusion ...... 20

2. ’s Lyrics in and King Ink II ...... 22 2.1 Introduction ...... 22 2.2 Analysis of Lyrics by Luboš Snížek and Martina Sweeney ...... 26 2.3 Conclusion ...... 48

3. Amateur Translations on the Internet ...... 50 3.1 Introduction ...... 50 3.2 Analysis of Amateur Translations ...... 53 3.3 Conclusion ...... 69

4. Comparison of Official and Amateur Translations ...... 71

5. Translations of Selected Love Songs from 2001 to 2008 ...... 76 5.1 Introduction ...... 76 5.2 Translations ...... 76 5.3 Conclusion ...... 95

Conclusion ...... 96

Czech Résumé ...... 100

English Résumé ...... 101

Bibliography ...... 102

Appendix ...... 109

4 Introduction

In my thesis, I would like to deal with Czech translations of lyrics by the

Australian author and Nick Cave. He is one of the musicians whose lyrics might be read without music and thus be considered as poetry not always dependent on the musical background (similarly like the work of musicians/poets such as Leonard

Cohen, and Tom Waits, for instance). Nick Cave‟s work is a phenomenon on the music scene as for his poetic talent, challenging song lyrics and independent thinking similar to such music icons as the above mentioned artists. Therefore, his lyrics and translations of them are worth exploring in a deep way. Nick Cave‟s professional career as a musician began three decades ago and during this time, he has managed to produce a considerable work with admirers all over the world. His demanding lyrics make Cave‟s readers and hearers think about various topics such as spirituality, religion, existentiality, sexuality, and pure expression of emotions. Moreover, Cave is a very popular musician and author whose live shows in the Czech Republic are broadly attended by a wide range of generations. For the first time, he played in this country in

1992 and returned for instance in 1997, 1999 and 2001. Cave and his band did not omit the Czech Republic on the last two tours in 2005 and 20081.

Thanks to the publishing house Maťa appeared in the Czech Republic two publications of Nick Cave‟s translated lyrics. The first one was published in 1995 under the name King Ink which deals with the musician‟s older lyrics (translated by Luboš

Sníţek) produced with the band The Birthday Party and his first three with his band The Bad Seeds. There are also ten playlets by Cave in the book. The second

1 In Radek Diestler: “Čechům znovu zahrají Nick Cave a Morcheeba”.

5 collection was published three years after the first one under the name King Ink II

(translated by Martina Sweeney) following The Bad Seeds‟ first three records with the next ones dating chronologically from 1988 to 1997. Lyrics from these two publications will be at the centre of my further interest. I will analyse selected lyrics from the two books.

After the 1997 The Boatman‟s Call, which was the actual peak of the author‟s lyrical period, Nick Cave released four studio records with The Bad Seeds and one album with his other band . Lyrics from these releases have not been officially translated into Czech until now. The topic of love appears on these newer records as well. Concerning the translated lyrics in King Ink and King Ink II, I will focus on a number of songs that are thematically (although loosely) connected. The topic of love is one of the major themes in Nick Cave‟s work and that is why I would like to select particular songs dealing with love. The concept of love is a complex feature of Nick Cave‟s writing. Initially in the 1980s Nick Cave‟s lyrics dealt primarily with sexuality, physical expression of love, male power and violence. Later in his career there appeared a shift in his writing where he did not leave the subject of love but modified his approach to it. Since the 1990s, Cave deals mainly with the topic of spiritual love, often addressing God. My intention is to concentrate on the lyrics with the topic of love, namely such songs where Nick Cave addresses a desired and/or beloved person. I will discuss one song from each of his albums recorded with the band

The Bad Seeds. Nevertheless, I would like to make an exception with the record The

Boatman‟s Call and include three songs from this collection because I regard this release as the very peak of Nick Cave‟s lyrical ballad period. I would like to compare the meaning and form of the lyrics, the use of language, the sound patterns of his lyrics

6 and the corresponding features in translations by Sníţek, Sweeney and the amateur translators. I will also look at the actual translation strategies.

I would like to discuss three main points in my thesis: firstly, I will deal with the general issue of lyrics translation, namely its similarities and differences in comparison with translation of poetry. I will look at the broader topic of translating song lyrics and its tradition in the Czech environment – work of singers Bob Dylan, Tom Waits and

Leonard Cohen – and why are these musicians considered to be among the most important . The general topic of translating poetry and lyrics will be the subject of the first chapter. Secondly, I will analyse Nick Cave‟s lyrics and their translations in the second, third and fourth chapter. The official translations by Sníţek and Sweney will appear in the second chapter. There will be eleven Czech translated lyrics from the collections King Ink and King Ink II. The amateur translations appearing on the internet will then be discussed in the third chapter. There will be eight amateur translations selected. Also, I would like to find out whether these amateur versions seem to be inspired by their official counterparts. We can assume that the amateur translators are fans of Cave‟s work and they may be acquainted with the translations of the lyrics in

King Ink and King Ink II. The fourth chapter is dedicated to the comparison of the professional and amateur Czech translations of Cave‟s lyrics: I will focus on 1) use of language, 2) sound patterns and 3) translation strategy. Finally in the fifth chapter, I will present translations of seven selected lyrics by Nick Cave from four albums released after 1997. There are no official Czech translations of these records.

The primary argument of the thesis is the following: translations of lyrics by

Nick Cave should remain poetry and at the same time, they should fulfil the features of the accompanying music and the rhythm of the song. In other words, written lyrics should be intended for silent reading and at the same time for reading or singing aloud.

7 My main concern of the thesis is to find out 1) whether Sníţek‟s, Sweeney‟s and the amateurs‟ translations fulfil both of the requirements, or 2) whether the Czech lyrics by the two professional and the amateur internet translators are rather songs and the features of poetry are missing, or 3) whether the translations are above all poems and the musical and rhythmical attributes of the particular songs are in background. We should bear in mind that lyrics in general are intended for listening primarily. However,

I am going to demostrate the features of poetry in the work of Nick Cave and try to discover whether the poetic issues are present in the translations as well.

8 1. Translation of Lyrics and Poetry

1.1 Introduction

The first chapter deals with two particular topics: 1) the first one is the theoretical and practical approach to lyrics translation. I will look at the specifics of translating lyrics in comparison with poetry to find particular similarities and differences of the two concepts. I will use a number of publications by Susan Bassnett,

Peter Newmark, Anton Popovič and Geoffrey N. Leech concerning the general approach of poetry and lyrics translation. 2) The second aim of this part is to discover such features that poetry and lyrics have in common. Vladimír Merta‟s criteria in his work Zpívaná poezie will be the crucial source for this part of the first chapter. The findings will then be discussed in the next chapters dealing with Nick Cave‟s lyrics primarily. In this chapter, I will also introduce the Czech tradition of translated English lyrics of musicians of the similar genre, that means songs by Bob Dylan, Leonard

Cohen and Tom Waits. The aim of this chapter is not to cover the issue of poetry translation theory thoroughly but rather to formulate the significant specifics within the differences of translating poetry and lyrics.

Nick Cave is considered to be a poet among musicians. Although he is primarily regarded as a musician and a songwriter, his lyrics are also published individually in a written form in particular collections. Therefore, Cave is on the one hand considered to be a singer and an interpreter of his own songs and on the other one, a poet whose lyrics can be read without the musical accompaniment. One of the primary principles of Nick

Cave‟s work is the artistic one – for instance, he does not take part in various competitions of the music industry. Although Cave is in fact a representative of the music show business, his music and lyrics are unique regarding his own muse which is, according to him, in no competition with anybody. On the contrary, Cave stands as an

9 individual outside the glittering prizes of the music industry. He uses an original language which has a lot of cultural references to Biblical sources (of both the Old and

New Testament) and Biblical language. The creativity in Cave‟s lyrics is grounded in the rich vocabulary he uses and in the way he works with metaphors, similes and sound parallelisms. To fully understand the meaning and the connotations of his work, the readers and hearers usually need background knowledge of the popular western culture in general, literature (references to writers and poets such as W. H. Auden, Dylan

Thomas, Vladimir Nabokov), music (he follows the legacy of and his

“desperado” character in his songs – such as in “(I‟ll Love You) Till the End of the

World” or “The Mercy Seat” – and as the new “chanson singer of rock and roll”). Not only lyrics with a wide variety of topics are at the centre of his creativity.

It is also the richness of styles that displays the uniqueness of his work: formerly with the band The Birthday Party and in the early years with The Bad Seeds, Cave produced a sound which converted into a style. In the course of the 1980s, Cave included swing and Latin American elements into his music. In the 1990s, there appeared romantic ballads, songs of longing and records which sought inspiration in traditionals. The Boatman‟s Call album features Cave‟s music in the most inward way and presents the Australian musician as an outstanding composer of ballads and a brilliant player. In general, his music corresponds with the character of his lyrics.

The tender and melancholic lyrics are often accompanied by calm and slow melodies where piano and organ are often the most significant musical instruments (such as in

”, “”, “Where Do We Go Now but Nowhere?” and “Still in Love”, for instance). On the other hand, the lyrics where Cave presents aggresive issues, sexuality and black humour have a musical accompaniment dominated by electric guitars with faster melodies (such as in “Hard on for Love”, “Deanna” and “Lie

10 Down Here (& Be My Girl)”, for instance). The musical features can be compared with the nature of the particular lyrics on two CDs which are appendices of the thesis.

Altogether, there are 21 songs on the two compact discs. Cave‟s albums are always accompanied by inventive booklets, pictures, drawings and illustrations. His music and lyrics go beyond mass production.

1.2 General Nature of Lyrics and Poetry

First, I will deal with the topic of translating poetry, which is an individual field of the theory of translation. Not every translator is able to translate poetry as opposed to prose and vice versa. The prose has often a more developed and idiomatic sentence structure and poetry – such as prose – is characterized by specific imagery and sensitive word selection (Levý 226). Peter Newmark remarks that in poetry “as a unit, the word has greater importance than in any other type of text” (Newmark 163). According to him, poetry‟s aim is to transmit the feeling which represents the poet‟s behaviour and view of life. The translator‟s task is to convey the effect the poem made on himself

(Newmark 164-5). One of the problems the translators have to face is the particular period of time when the piece of poetry work was written. First, the genre may be extinct, and second, the attempt to revive the form and the tone – such as of pastorals – often leads to failure. Susan Bassnett points out that not only the poet and his contemporaries are dead, but the significance of the poem in its context might be dead too. She accepts Popovič‟s theory of the “inevitability of shifts of expression in the translation process” (Bassnett 83).

In this paragraph, I will discuss the written and spoken form of poetry and song lyrics and the importance of meaning in poems and lyrics. Poetry in its most common form is written and the same stands for its particular translations. Poems are individual

11 pieces of work. However, only a limited number of songwriters are able to write lyrics that can live their own life without music. A songwriter has to work with an original language so that his/her lyrics are able to stand alone without music (such as Cave‟s language with Biblical and cultural references and a rich vocabulary). The mass production of musical industry creates an immense quantity of music which is in fact for the audience more important than the content of the lyrics. The hearers often listen to the music only as background while doing something else and therefore, there is no special need to translate these lyrics into target languages. Popular music lyrics are often full of clichés that would also sound strange in the target language; the lyrics are predominantly meant to accompany the music, not vice versa. Apparantly, it is not surprising that Czech translations of lyrics are centered around the work of such musical legends such as Cave, Dylan, Cohen and Waits. Nick Cave‟s ability to create original language makes his lyrics attractive. Along with the three songwriters, Cave stands out above the world of popular music. He is able to produce lyrics that can be read in the original and target language without listening to the music. The purpose of poems and lyrics is therefore different: the readers of poetry and its translations concentrate solely on the written or spoken form and concentrate on its meaning. Most of the hearers of popular music pay more attention to the melody and they do not always observe every single word in a particular song. The richness of vocabulary and the language make

Cave‟s audience return to his lyrics to completely grasp the point of his songs.

Let us look at the tradition of translating poems and lyrics. There is a longer tradition of poetry translation than of lyrics. This claim is entirely logical as the history of popular music – which is inevitably connected with the history of lyrics – is limited to the period after World War II. If we translate, for instance, a piece of poetry work written many hundred years ago, the semantic shift may be more significant in

12 comparison with a more recent poetry that still keeps the contemporary meaning. Thus, the shifts in translation can be semantic because, as Popovič claims, “the translator is endeavouring to convey the semantic substance of the original in spite of the differences separating the system of the original from that of the translation” (Popovič 49).

Therefore, the issue of time and meaning of poems and lyrics respectively is a crucial one when we accept Bassnett‟s claim that the significance of an old poem might be dead. The translator may not need to tackle the difficulty of the semantic shift in the course of lyrics translation because the meaning is a more recent one. The lyrics of the famous artists such as Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits and Nick Cave originated in the last fifty years. Because of the rich language they use and the ability to formulate their inner feelings, is their work considered to be the peak of the songwriter tradition of the second half of the twentieth century.

Now, I will discuss the suprasegmental features of poetry and lyrics. The translator‟s task is to keep the rhythm and stress in the target language and the suprasegmental features are crucial for the rhythmical structure of poems and song lyrics. These issues may seem more important when translating lyrics if we regard the accompanying music and the rhythm of the songs. The lyrics and their rhythm are significant for the interpreter‟s phrasing; furthermore, the particular form has to fit within the whole song. On the other hand, Newmark allows the possibility that in translations of poetry the rhyming scheme – a part of a poem‟s form – can be altered.

According to him, the priorities depend on the translator‟s decision which particular aspect – metre, rhyme, sound or structure – is a more important one (Newmark 165). In other words, the translator of poetry decides which linguistic function or functions will be preserved in the translation but the translator of lyrics is bound by the characteristics of each particular song. However, the translated lyrics by Cave (and Dylan, Cohen and

13 Waits as well) were not primarily intended for singing. However, the translator has to take the suprasegmental features into account to preserve the form and rhythm of the songs. Without them, the translations might be a mere word-for-word interpretation of the original.

According to Popovič, the translator should not reduce his work only to translating words but he/she has to preserve the actual text and its stylistic features. The idea lies behind the image of an internally organized coherent unit (Popovič 103). His claim can be applied to all the genres of translation whether it is prose, poetry or song lyrics. Popovič adds that apart from the role of language, there are also metalinguistic issues such as paralinguistic and compositional features. These all have to be taken into consideration.

In the book Translation Studies, Susan Bassnett lists André Lefevere‟s seven strategies of poetry translation. She discusses methodological issues from a non-empirical position which she claims is “the most valuable and most needed” in the field of poetry translation (Bassnett 81). These are the seven strategies by

Lefevere: 1) Phonemic translation: its characteristics is based on reproducing SL sound in the TL and at the same time producing an adequate paraphrase. 2) Literal translation: the dominant criterion is the word-for-word translation. 3) Metrical translation: the emphasis lies in the reproduction of SL metre. 4) Poetry into prose: the communicative value and syntax of the SL text is significant. 5) Rhymed translation: the translation is governed by both metre and rhyme. 6) Blank verse translation: accuracy and high degree of literalness are needed. 7) Interpretation: the TL text differs from its source as the form and content are changed (Bassnett 81-2). I will work with this list of translation strategies in further chapters to find out which types prevail in the translations by Sníţek, Sweeney and the amateur translators. Next, Bassnett claims that

14 a translator often focuses on a number of elements of the SL text and fails to consider the poem as an organic structure. However, Popovič points out that “the translator has the right to differ organically, to be independent” (Bassnett 82). The argument corresponds with Newmark‟s opinion that translator‟s priorities depend on individual decision which aspect he/she considers to be substantial. The aspect of the specific translator‟s freedom goes hand in hand with Leech‟s argument that “a writer, and more particularly the poet, enjoys a unique freedom, amongst users of the language” (Leech 5).

At this moment, I will focus on lyrics translation. Although some poetry is also intended for reading aloud, most of the poems are read in silence and for own pleasure.

On the contrary, the essential feature of lyrics is that they are accompanying the music

(or vice versa) and are therefore designed to be read or sung aloud. Therefore, the translations should respect this primary purpose of lyrics. Vladimír Merta points out that lyrics need an increased accent on rhythmicity and regularity of rhymes (cf. Newmark‟s view of the rhyming scheme). Translations should regard this intensified emphasis if they intend to correspond with the original and respect the sung form. According to

Merta, other features of lyrics are short similes and sentences, figurativeness and colloquial language (Merta 23-4). Lyrics are inseparable parts of songs and because of that, they should be regarded this way also in the translations. Although lyrics divided from its musical accompaniment may seem as poetry itself (when reading particular collections, for instance), the readers should bear in mind that they represent a written form of specific pieces of text originally belonging to particular songs which means that they are primarily intended to be read aloud or sung. Also the title of the book, where

Merta deals with the issue of translating lyrics, is called Zpívaná poezie – the sung poetry – which implies that lyrics in general could be a kind of poetry.

15 Vladimír Merta, however, claims that there is a vast difference between poems and lyrics. He criticizes the view of a great number of reviewers who equate lyrics with poetry (Merta 23). Merta presents the differences between the two concepts. According to him, poetry can be read without any dependence of time because the reader is able to go back in the written text when it is needed to grasp the meaning. On the other hand, the lyrics flow according to the particular song and the hearer has a limited time to follow the meaning (Merta 24). But when particular lyrics appear in a written form without music than the same feature stands for them as for poems – the reader of the lyrics can return to them and concentrate on their meaning. Thus in the written form, the lyrics share similar characteristics just as poems in the possibility to return in the text to concentrate on the actual meaning. Therefore, songwriters and musicians such as Nick

Cave, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits are also considered to be poets2 because their lyrics and Czech translations published in a written form manage to stand alone without the music. It is only the case of a “correct” translation – whether the translators regard the form and sound patterns of the lyrics and whether the translations are also good poems in the target language. The nature of their lyrics equals the features

Merta requires of a good poem: appeal, lightness of rhythm, compactness, melodiousness, humour, originality, ability to create mood, to ease tension between the words, make from them meaningful and intelligent units ending with a particular point

(Merta 25). If we take these features for granted, then poems and lyrics and their translations should correspond with them.

2 In the Czech media, Cave is often called a “poet” or rather metaphorically a “bard”. See for instance the particular musical reviews on the websites and .

16 In his foreword to Nick Cave‟s collection of complete lyrics, Will Self contemplates that some of the song lyrics can be considered to be successors of poetry nowadays, at least in the work of Cave. Self mentions the collapse of poetry as a popular art form by claiming that “[W]hatever need we have for the esemplastic unities of sound, meaning and rhythm that were traditionally supplied by spoken verse, we now find it supplied in sung lyrics.”3 The aim of this work is not to consider Self‟s view about the collapse of poetry nowadays. However, if Cave represents a unification of a modern poet and singer, than Self‟s view is correct. The Australian author is a successor of the tradition of poetry in popular music and therefore his lyrics can be considered to be modern poetry. Indeed, his lyrics contain at least some of Merta‟s criteria of a good piece of poetry: for instance, the songs‟ melodiousness, the (sometimes black) humour of the lyrics, originality in all its sense as Cave stands out as an individual with his language within the spectrum of the popular music, ability to create mood with his love songs and stress on rhyming and rhytmical regularity. Moreover, Nick Cave‟s lyrics are meaningful and intelligent, having a particular point in general. Possibly, it is only a question of a successful translation to convey these characteristics into the target language as well.

1.3 Tradition of Lyrics Translated into Czech

The translated lyrics of the most famous English singing songwriters appeared in their official Czech versions in the 1990s and in the first decade of the 21st century. The history of lyrics translation of lyrics by Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits and

Nick Cave is apparently connected with the fall of the communist regime which forbade

3 See Will Self‟s “Dark Matter“.

17 the popular western culture appear on the official market more often. Thus, the demand for the music and the lyrics was satisfied with the time of political freedom and independence in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic. Apart from King Ink and

King Ink II, this section pictures the greatest translated collections of song lyrics by the other three mentioned authors. Of course that there is a great number of other Czech translations of these musicians‟ work but this part of the chapter features their ultimate collections in the Czech language. The two collections of translated lyrics by Luboš

Sníţek and Martina Sweeney respectively give us a compact picture of Cave‟s work.

The character of a similar form and completeness can be found in the Czech translations of Waits, Cohen and Dylan.

All these songwriters influenced the history of popular culture of the second half of the twentieth century. Bob Dylan is valued for new musical forms and styles he brought into music. With his lyrics, he became the speaker of many generations for the social critique he has accentuated in his work. Howard Sounes claims: “Bob Dylan changed music in the 1960s by bringing poetic lyrics to popular song. He was not afraid to say serious things in a medium that had never been taken particularly seriously, and did so with such deftness, wit, and élan that he inspired others to follow” (Sounes, x).

Also Merta values the innovations and the inspiring genius of Dylan. According to him,

Bob Dylan is one of the strong personalities who blend styles – such as talking blues, rock ballad, love serenade, psychedellic visions, spiritual, political and social songs – and in this respect produce a unique individual work (Merta 139).

Leonard Cohen was formerly a poet before he became a singer and songwriter.

The Canadian author is respected for the various number of love lyrics which are delivered by his captivating voice. Cohen has enriched the popular music with songs of inspiring emotions of love, feelings of lust, happiness and human pain. Kaye Boss

18 praises Leonard Cohen‟s ability to explore “themes of inequality, love and lust, drunkeness toward life, ecstasy and sexuality, and raw human emotion.”4

Tom Waits‟ work is valued for the variety of genres in his music and lyrics. In his work, the American singer – such as Bob Dylan – connects musical styles accompanied by his original diction as he often recites the lyrics and therefore, the delivery makes him often rather a poet than a singer. According to Neil McCormick, his songs are “poetic narratives […] set to a drunken American musical meltdown that blends jazz, blues, rock and roll, swing, folk, country and gospel with chain-gang chants, stately funeral marches, perky polkas, piratical sea-shanties and a cappella hip-hop breakbeats.”5

In the recent years, there appeared collections of lyrics translations. In fact,

Cave‟s King Ink was one of the first books of the above mentioned songwriters published on the Czech market (in 1995 namely). Three years later, in 1998, King Ink II followed the first collection. Lyrics from these two books will be presented in detail in the next chapter.

In 1996 appeared two collections of lyrics by the American musician Tom

Waits – they were named after one of Waits‟ songs Bad Liver & Broken Heart from the

Small Change album, in Czech Špatný játra & zlomený srdce.1 and Špatný játra & zlomený srdce.2. Both of the volumes were translated by Zdeněk Pecka. The albums

4 In Kaye Boss: “Leonard Cohen's Poetry and Its Influence”.

5 In Neil McCormick: “Tom Waits: The Magniciently Warped World of Tom Waits”.

Tom-Waits.html>

19 and songs are listed chronologically and also the original lyrics are included. The translations date up to the 1992 record Bone Machine6.

The greatest collection of Czech translations of Leonard Cohen‟s work was released in 2003 under the name Hudba neznámého: vybrané básně a písně. The poems and lyrics by the Canadian musician, poet and writer were translated by Václav

Procházka from the book Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs from 1993. Apart from his lyrics, there are also translations of Cohen‟s poetry collections. The albums and songs are listed chronologically as well and the time span of the first and last work in the book is 36 years (1956 – 1992).

The translated work of one of the most influential musicians of the second half of the 20th century – the American songwriter Bob Dylan – was released in 2005 under the name Lyrics/Texty 1962 – 2001, translated by Michal Bystrov (in the original

Lyrics: 1962 – 2001). The complete collection contains chronologically ordered translations of his albums from the 39-year-long time span beginning with the Bob

Dylan album and ending with his 2001 record called “Love and Theft”.7

1.4 Conclusion

To sum the first chapter up: there is a number of issues a translator has to face when he/she is translating a poem or song lyrics. First, the tradition of translating poetry is much longer which means that time plays a significant role when dealing with meaning of a poem. The songwriters in general, on the other hand, are more recent authors and the meaning of lyrics is closer to the actual language. Second, the

6 Until nowadays, Tom Waits released six other records after the Bone Machine album.

7 Since that time, Bob Dylan released three more studio albums: Modern Times, Together through Life and Christmas in Heart.

20 suprasegmental features such as rhythm and stress are unsubstitutably important above all in lyrics because the music plays another key role for the interpretation of a particular song. Here, the significance is overlapping but as Peter Newmark observes, it depends on the translator of poetry which aspect in the poem is more important than other ones. However, the translator of lyrics is limited by a specific rhythm and phrasing of a particular song. This claim goes hand in hand with the third argument that lyrics are primarily meant to be sung or at least read aloud. Therefore, translated lyrics should behave as songs, not as “real” poetry. The translations of famous songwriters can be considered to be a special kind of poetry although they are not primarily intended to be sung, but read in silence. It is beyond doubt that when people read translations of

Cave, Dylan, Cohen and Waits, they do not normally sing the lyrics but read them in silence for their own pleasure. On the other hand, we can assume that the lyrics by these authors are read prevailingly by their special audience – fans – who always have in mind that they are not reading a work of a poet but – above all – of a songwriter and musician and therefore associate the lyrics with the original work with the music.

Thus, poetry is predominantly intended for silent reading and its form corresponds with the written one meant to be read in silence for one‟s own pleasure. Lyrics, on the other hand, are closer to the spoken (or sung) form and their perception is in correspondence with spoken delivery. The audience of songwriters expects to read a text which is primarily meant to be sung and therefore, the difference between lyrics and poetry equals the contrast between a text intended mainly for listening and for reading.

21 2. Nick Cave’s Lyrics in King Ink and King Ink II

2.1 Introduction

The second chapter will be dedicated to the translations of Nick Cave‟s lyrics in the two collections King Ink and King Ink II. Both of the books are Czech versions of the original collections called after one of the songs that Nick Cave wrote in the time of his previous Australian band – The Birthday Party. The former collection was translated by Luboš Sníţek and the latter by Martina Sweeney. Although the Czech titles of the books remain the same as in English, the song “King Ink” itself is translated as “Král

šmírák” by Sníţek. I will analyse the lyrics in a chronological order. Each album of

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds will be included in this chapter8. All of the analyzed lyrics and their translations are love songs – that is a binding element in Cave‟s work. I will also present additional background of the lyrics.

First, I am going to present the criteria for my further analysis of Nick Cave‟s lyrics and their translations. The first one is Geoffrey N. Leech‟s criterion of a creative language that a poet uses. The theory is based on the principal of originality and uniquness of language that a particular author produces. According to Leech, the creative aspect of language represents an important subject of dealing with poetry

(Leech 23). He presents two possibilities how the poet may be said to use language creatively, namely “[a] if he makes original use of the established possibilities of the language; and [b] if he actually goes beyond those possibilities, that is, if he creates new communicative possibilities which are not already in the language” (Leech 24). The former is illustrated as a new language use within the correct use of the particular

8 The only album of The Bad Seeds which will not be discussed is Kicking Against the Pricks as it is a collection of covers. Also, this is the only record by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds not included in the two translated collections.

22 language and the latter as an issue that is levelled to a spelling mistake, malapropism or linguistic aberration (Leech 25). The latter also refers to a deviation of specific language codes. Leech explains his theory by two figures of a normal (Figure A) and a special

(Figure B) paradigm (Leech 30):

Figure A:

minute

day a ago year

etc.

Figure B:

minute

day NORMAL a year ago

etc.

grief DEVIANT

The figure A represents a usual language expression of time. The other figure stands for the normal and deviant language use where the phrase “a grief ago” by Dylan

Thomas is construed “as if it were a noun of time-measurement” (Leech 30). The phrase can be seen as a metaphor, according to Leech one of the examples of the abnormal and unusual – deviant – language use that violates the common usage by creating a figurative sense of a word (Leech 31). Geoffrey N. Leech also declares that a creative poet in particular enjoys a kind of a unique freedom amongst other users of language which was already mentioned in the first chapter (Leech 5). The argument goes hand in hand with the aspect of individual independence and personal decision of the poets. I would like to analyse such linguistic deviations and creativeness in the lyrics by Nick

23 Cave and compare them with the language use in the translations by Sníţek and

Sweeney.

The second criterion to analyse the lyrics and the translations is also connected with the creativity of language use. Leech descibes the presence of specific sound patterns within syllables that he calls parallelisms; he distinguishes six different types:

1) alliteration (great / grow; send / sit), 2) assonance (great / fail; send / bell),

3) consonance (great / meat; send / hand), 4) reverse rhyme (great / grazed; send / sell),

5) pararhyme (great / groat) and 6) rhyme (great / bait; send / end) (Leech 89).

According to Leech, the parallelisms are aspects of a poetic language (Leech 93). I have chosen this criterion because sound patterns are crucial if we talk about lyrics which are above all intended for a spoken/sung form and therefore, the sound criterion is significant as the parallelisms are often connected with rhymes and their regularity

(n.b. Merta names the lyrics‟ need on increased regularity of rhymes). I would like to compare the original lyrics with Sníţek‟s and Sweeney‟s translations to find out what role the parallelisms and sound regularities play in the original versions and whether they are present in the Czech translations of the lyrics as well.

Jiří Levý also talks about the significance of rhyming in poetry. He claims that the rhyme is a specific and inevitable feature of the translational poetry in that it has a loose relationship to the semantic composition of a particular poem. Levý says that it happens only rarely if two words in the target language rhyme and also correspond with the former meaning in the source text. The solution to preserve the rhyme within the particular lines of the poem is to arrange the composition differently and alter the semantic connections between the words in the poem and at the same time maintain the whole layers of meaning (Levý 228). If we consider the written lyrics to be a certain kind of poetry than the same claim can be considered when we analyze their

24 translations. Songwriters in general often work with rhymes which are important in music because of the rhythm and the stress of the singers‟ deliveries. I will cover features in each of the analysed lyrics according to the criteria stated in the previous paragraphs.

The third criterion goes back to the translation strategies by André Lefevere depicted in the first chapter. The seven strategies of poetry translation are 1) phonemic translation 2) literal translation, 3) metrical translation, 4) poetry into prose, 5) rhymed translation, 6) blank verse 7) interpretation (Bassnett 81-2). I am going to identify the translation strategy in each of the Czech lyrics by Sníţek and Sweeney, respectively.

The reason why I will discuss the translations according to the strategies is to trace prevailing methods of translators.

Generally speaking, translations of lyrics by Nick Cave should remain poetry and at the same time, they should fit within the whole rhythm of the song. Vladimír

Merta points out that lyrics need an increased accent on rhythmicity and regularity of rhymes (Merta 23). In other words, written lyrics should be intended for silent reading and at the same time for reading or singing aloud. My main concern of this chapter is to find out 1) whether Sníţek‟s and Sweeney‟s translations fulfil both of the requirements, or 2) whether the Czech lyrics are rather songs and the features of poetry – creative language and use of specific sound patterns – are missing, or 3) whether the translations are above all poems and the musical and rhythmical attributes of the particular songs are in background. We should bear in mind that lyrics in general are intended for listening above all. It is evident that translations of Nick Cave published in the collections King

Ink and King Ink II are not meant primarily to be sung but it will be interesting to find out whether the nature of the original lyrics by Cave is transferred into target language.

25 2.2 Analysis of Lyrics by Luboš Snížek and Martina

Sweeney

This subchapter will deal with an analysis of translations by Luboš Sníţek and

Martina Sweeney. The lyrics will appear in a chronological order. I will also quote the respective lyrics by Cave from the book The Complete Lyrics 1978 – 2001 to compare them with the Czech translations. The first lyrics in this chapter are from the title song,

”, of the first album of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds from 1984.

The record is typical of the beginnings of Nick Cave with his new band – the raw power of The Birthday Party remains present in this song and on the whole album as well but

Cave‟s lyrical gift is starting to shine through (Hanson 56). On this record, Cave also pays tribute to his inspirer Leonard Cohen with the cover of “Avalanche” from Cohen‟s

1971 album. The character of “From Her to Eternity” is an obsessed lover of a girl living in a flat above him, in Room 29. The girl is the object of his passion. The core of the song is “a suggestion that longing after a beloved person might be fatal and more important than a requited love” (Husseini 21). The song features a strong rhythmical line and the lyrics are characterized by a distinct stress on the last word of each line. In the original, there is no clear pattern of sound patterns as the ones which appear are scattered and the ends do not usually feature any regular parallelisms. The rhymes in the Czech version by Luboš Sníţek – “Od ní aţ na věčnost” – are random as well but at other places than in the original lyrics.

Nick Cave Luboš Sníţek

Ah read her diary on her sheets Čtu její deník v jejích peřinách

Scrutinizin‟ every lil bit of dirt a kaţdej kousek špíny mě zajímá.

Tore out a page‟n‟stufft it inside my shirt Stránku jsem vytrh a za košili si ji dal.

26 Fled outa the window, Oknem jsem utek

And shinning it down the vine a po psím víně se vrátil

Outa her night-mare, and back into mine z její noční můry zas do tý svý.

(Cave 84) (Sníţek 95)

This strophe is one of the strongest passages of the song as it is important for the story on the one hand; on the other one, this excerpt features the masculine rhymes

(“dirt / shirt”, “vine / mine”), which correspond with the strong rhythmical line of the song. The verse endings are closed with one-syllable stressed words; according to David

Abercrombie, these are line-end markers (coinciding with the last syllable of the line) – one of the possibilities of line delimitations (Leech 114). The stress on the final word in each verse is accentuated. On the contrary, the same does not happen in the

Czech translation: the only regular pattern of rhymes and the consonants at the end of the particular lines in the original (a-b-b-c-d-d) should be preserved for the sake of the significant stress and rhythm of the song. Also, there are no monosyllabic words at the end of the lines. The stress which is put on the final word is not present in the Czech version. The deviant language use which is characterized in the original version by the incorrect spelling is not much visible in “Od ní aţ na věčnost”. The translation strategy that Sníţek chose is poetry into prose – the syntax differs from the original and the rhymes are not present. Compare Sníţek‟s translation with my own solution:

čtu ten deník zpod jejích dek

kaţdej kousek špíny prozkoumal sem

jednu stránku jsem vytrh a za košili dal sem

oknem sem zdrh

slez sem po víně psím

z jejích nočních můr uţ zase k těm svým.

27 The pattern of this strophe remains the same as in the original: the form of the rhymes is preserved (a-b-b-c-d-d) and the verses end with masculine rhymes and monosyllabic words. The translation is closer to the rhymed strategy. Moreover, the non-standard spelling puts this version closer to Cave‟s original language use. Sníţek‟s version displays more features of song lyrics than of poetry because the rhythm of the original, the stresses and the rhyming at the end of the lines are missing.

The next love song, “Say Goodbye to the Little Girl Tree”, comes from the second release by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds from 1985 which is called The

Firstborn Is Dead. The title of the album hints at another inspirer of Cave – Elvis

Presley. In the opening track, “Tupelo”, the author juxtaposes the birth of the Biblical brothers Jacob and Esau with that of Presley and his older twin, Jesse Garon, who died shortly after birth (Dax 91). This record features a typical slow blues rhythm of The

Firstborn Is Dead album and the love theme of a beloved girl who leaves the character of the song. The lyrics contain a pattern where each new strophe begins with the same line “Say goodbye to the little girl tree” (Cave 104). This is very typical of song lyrics.

The repeated verses of the strophes are in Sníţek‟s version – “Sbohem dej dívce jako prouteček” – as well; moreover, the lines are often word-for-word translations – see the exclamations, for instance:

Nick Cave Luboš Sníţek

O you know that I must say goodbye Ty víš, ţe musím sbohem dát

To the little girl tree dívce jako prouteček

(Cave 104) (Sníţek 126)

O say goodbye to the little girl tree Ó, sbohem dej dívce jak prouteček

O Lord you know I must say goodbye Ó Pane, ty víš, ţe musím sbohem dát

(Cave 104) (Sníţek 126)

28 O little girl the truth would be Jó holka jako nůţ

An axe in thee pravda v tobě tkví.

(Cave 104) (Sníţek 126)

In general, exclamations are rather typical of spoken language and therefore of songs as well in comparison to poetry. We can find another typical lyrics feature appearing in “Say Goodbye to the Little Girl Tree” in the repetitive lines:

Nick Cave Luboš Sníţek

For you know that I must die Pro tebe, víš, umřít musím.

Yes you know that I must die Pro tebe, víš, umřít musím.

O you know that I must die Ó-ó, ty víš, ţe umřít musím.

(Cave 105) (Sníţek 127)

There are also rhymes representing the sound patterns in the lyrics (“be / thee”;

“daughter / mortar”). However, the particular rhymes at the end of the verses are not present in the Czech translation of the song:

Nick Cave Luboš Sníţek

O little girl the truth would be Jó holka jako nůţ

An axe in thee pravda v tobě tkví.

O father look to your daughter Táto, na dceru svou se podívej.

Brick of grief and stricken mortar Cihla zármutku a malta zvětralá.

(Cave 104) (Sníţek 126)

In comparison with Luboš Sníţek‟s translation, the sound patterns can be seen in the version of my own. Again, the strategy is closer to the rhymed translation.

ó holčičko ta pravda je

jako sekera v tobě

29 ó otče na dceru pohleď

jen cihla smutku a malta zvětralá je teď

The rhymed strategy is used in my translation. The language creativity of the original song lies in the connection of concepts (the truth is compared to an axe and the girl to a brick of grief and stricken mortar). The Czech version displays features of the literal translation strategy. All in all, Sníţek respects the patterns of spoken and sung form and translates this song rather as a text for singing than for reading in silence because of the evident presence of exclamations and repetitions in his version. The parallelisms are not present in Sníţek‟s translation. Therefore, the song character of his lyrics is more apparent than the poetic one.

Another song from Nick Cave‟s next release, Your Funeral, My Trial from 1986, belongs to his wide concept of love songs that rank among his work before the shift from sexuality to spirituality. The lyrics of “Hard on for Love” (translated as “Ztvrda na lásku” by Luboš Sníţek) contain strong sexual imagery. Moreover, it is one of the loudest songs by Cave and it belongs to the one half of Your Funeral, My Trial album which has a particular rock feel whereas the other half features bona fide ballads. In

“Hard on for Love”, Cave sings from the perspective of a man who is driven by sexual desire and waits in his lust for a young girl he wants to seduce (Dax 111). The theme of the song connects also Biblical imagery – which is very typical of the work of Nick

Cave – with the character‟s sexual longing. There are three typical features of lyrics in

“Hard on for Love” once again: 1) repetitions, 2) exclamations and 3) a strong chorus.

They are all to be found in Sníţek‟s translation:

Nick Cave Luboš Sníţek

Her breasts rise and fall Ňadra se jí prudce dmou.

Her breasts rise and fall Ňadra se jí prudce dmou.

30 (Cave 128) (Sníţek 154)

O money lender! O clover gender! Ó lichvářko! Ó pohlaví rozťaté!

(Cave 127) (Sníţek 153)

Hard on for love. Hard on for love Ztvrda na lásku. Ztvrda na lásku.

Hard on for love. Hard on for love Ztvrda na lásku. Ztvrda na lásku.

(Cave 128) (Sníţek 153)

Another feature which is typical of poetry just as of lyrics as well and which can be found in the third strophe of “Hard on for Love” is alliteration: “I am his rod and his staff / I am his sceptre and shaft” (Cave 127). The double entendre behind these lines is evident as Cave names four erected objects and projects himself into them. The alliteration accentuates the rhythm of the song. Sníţek does not use alliteration in his version but he presents grammatical rhymes in the verses: “Jsem jeho holí i mečem. /

Jsem jeho kopím i ţezlem.” (Sníţek 153). The creativity of the lyrics lies in the use of metaphors which in Czech are not preserved. Compare, for instance, the two lines from the first paragraph: “That I steal like a robber / From her altar of love” (Cave 127).

Sníţek translates these two lines in a following way: “a já se jako lupič plíţím / od ní láskou proměněn.” (Sníţek 153). The originality of the metaphor “altar of love” is translated loosely by Sníţek. Compare the Czech version with my own: “a já se vkrádám jako lupič / z jejího oltáře slasti”. The metaphor is closer to the original lyrics as it corresponds with the previous meaning more. All in all, the Czech translation contains again features of song lyrics – repetitions and exclamations – and less poetic devices and sound patterns than the original – e.g. omission of alliteration and loose translation of metaphors – and therefore Sníţek‟s “Ztvrda na lásku” represents the spoken/sung form of the lyrics rather than the poetic one. The literal strategy is a dominant method of Sníţek‟s translation of “Hard on for Love”.

31 The next analysed song – “Deanna” – and its translation is a part of the King

Ink II collection, which was translated into Czech by Martina Sweeney under the same name. Maximilan Dax points out that “Deanna” is “one of Cave‟s greats […] thanks to his stunningly pervading vocals and the murderous intensity of the music“ (Dax 125).

These attributes go hand in hand with the urgency in the singer‟s voice and the topic of the song. The speed of the singer‟s delivery is in accordance with the dynamic rhythm of the music; Nick Cave sings from the standpoint of a lover who “came for Deanna‟s soul”. The joyful rhythm and melody make this record an unusual track in Cave‟s discography. The dynamics of the song is emphasized in the second strophe by the masculine rhymes at the end of the verses which provide the lyrics with dynamics.

Nevertheless, these rhymes are not to be found in Sweeney‟s translation. Compare the original and the Czech version of the second strophe:

Nick Cave Martina Sweeney

We will eat out of their pantries Vyţerem jim špajzy

And their parlours a jejich salónky

Ashy leavings in their beds a v postelích jim popel necháme

And we‟ll unload into their heads a nastěhujem se jim do palic

In this mean season v týhle zlý době

This little angel that I squezzin‟ ten malej andílek, kterýho svírám

She ain‟t been mean to me na mě nikdy nebyl zlej

(Cave 143) (Sweeney 16)

In my translation, the significant rhymes appear at the end of the lines as they do in the original. The dynamic character is more perceptible:

Vyţerem všechno z jejich spiţíren

proţenem se jejich salónem

32 popel jim nasypem na postel

a vrazíme se jim do hlav

v tenhle zatracenej čas

ten andílek, co ho mám v hrsti zas

na mě nikdy nebyl zlej

Thus, the pairs of the particular lines rhyme at the end, namely with masculine rhymes. Although the third and fourth lines do not end with any particular sound patterns, the stress is preserved with the consonants at the end of the lines. The last line serves as a bridge between the strophe and the following refrain. Martina Sweeney‟s translation lacks the dynamics which is accentuated by the rhymes in the original – her translated Czech excerpt is a literal translation which corresponds also with the syntax of the original and it does not regard the dynamic pattern of the song.

The next album by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds represents a very important break in the work of the Australian musician. The Good Son was recorded in Brazil after Cave moved to São Paulo. There came a break in his writing. The spirituality in love songs became one of the main topics in Cave‟s work of the 1990s and the shift has been started off in Brazil (Husseini 14). The lyrics and the music changed – the lyrics became more spiritual, often addressing God and a beloved woman and the music got often calmer and the instrumentation with rather gentler melodies was completely different in relation to previous releases by Nick Cave (Hanson 81). Probably, the author found inspiration again in the work of Leonard Cohen as Amy Hanson points out: “In style, this album owes a debt to Leonard Cohen more than any other: the fact that Cohen himself released songs like „“The Stranger Song”‟9, for instance, make this

9 On The Good Son, there is “The Weeping Song”, “The Ship Song”, “The Hammer Song” and “The

Witness Song”, for instance.

33 an obvious comment to make but it is also there in the gentle, courtly manner of the album” (Hanson 82).

From The Good Son album, I will analyse the translation of “The Ship Song”, nowadays one of the classical ballads by Nick Cave. In the original version, the song has both features of a poem and lyrics. The pattern of each strophe is constant as each of them has four lines and there is a strong refrain which opens the composition. The refrain is slightly altered in the song, which happens quite often in music. However, the form of the strophes of “The Ship Song” always stays the same. The creativity lies in the presence of sound patterns. I will display the patterns on the two alterations of the refrains and compare them with “Lodní píseň” by Sweeney:

Nick Cave Martina Sweeney

Come sail your ships around me Svými loďmi mě obepluj

And burn your bridges down a všechny své můstky spal

We make a little history, baby Tvoříme tak trochu dějiny

Every time you come around pokaţdé kdyţ se objevíš

Come loose your dogs upon me Pošli na mě svoje psy

And let your hair hang down a rozpusť si vlasy

You are a little mystery to me Jsi pro mě malé tajemství

Every time you come around pokaţdé kdyţ se objevíš

(Cave 171) (Sweeney 46)

In the original, both of the refrains begin with a call upon the singer‟s lover and this pattern goes on in each of the second lines. The third one is different and the last – fourth – line is the same in both cases. The form and the structure of lines remain equal.

The assonance at the end of the even lines is present – “down / around”. The beginning

34 of the refrains contains also a call upon the beloved woman; unlike in the original version however, the lines begin with different words (“svými / pošli”). The even lines begin with small letters which implies that the translator connects the idea of the particular lines with the first and the third ones, respectively. The fourth lines are equal in the translation. In Sweeney‟s translation, there is no assonance or any other example of parallelisms. Compare her version with my solution of the respective verses: “a všechny své mosty spal / […] / pokaţdé kdyţ vejdeš dál” and “a rozpusť si vlasy své /

[…] / pokaţdé kdyţ se setkáme”. The assonance in my translation is replaced by rhymes. To sum up: the strategy of the Czech version by Sweeney is a literal one and the poetic character is not present. The rhymed translation is a more appropriate strategy in order to preserve the rhythm of the song.

The next love song, “” (in Czech “Přímo k tobě” by Martina

Sweeney), from the following 1992 album Henry‟s Dream follows the nature of Nick

Cave‟s lyrical ballads such as “The Ship Song” from The Good Son collection.

“Straight to You” is a fatalistic song of love; nevertheless, it‟s topic is rather pain and separation from the beloved person than the joy and passion between two lovers. The lyrics feature a lonely man who pledges to return to his love and who at last stays alone

– “Gone are the days of rainbows / Gone are the nights from swinging from the stars”

(Dax 132). The form of the lyrics is constant in each strophe and – as in “The Ship

Song” – there is a refrain which follows each strophe and it is altered in one instance.

Moreover, the pattern shows that the third and fourth lines of each of the strophes rhyme; in particular, they are grammatical rhymes: “undoing / running”, “a-stealing / a- running”, “mountains / sparks”, “colliding / running” . The creativity of “Straight to

You” is present for instance in the metaphors which have been already mentioned in this paragraph: 1) “days of rainbows” and 2) “nights swinging from the stars”.

35 Therefore, such as the previous song, “Straight to You” has features of both a poem and lyrics. I will compare the form of the lyrics and the rhymes of the original and

Sweeney‟s translation.

The form of “Přímo k tobě” in King Ink II stays constant as in “Straight to You” in The Complete Lyrics 1978-2001. Each strophe has four lines and it is followed immediately by a refrain. Sweeney respects the pattern of the strophes. However, there are no rhymes in her version. In the original, this seems to be important as Cave lays the bridge between the strophe and the refrain by two lines which rhyme at the end with grammatical rhymes. Compare Cave‟s version with the translation by Martina Sweeney:

Nick Cave Martina Sweeeney

This is the time of our great undoing Tohle je čas naší velkolepé zkázy

This is the time that I‟ll come running Tohle je čas, kdy poběţím

Well, now, sorrow, it comes a-stealing teď ţal se vkrádá

And I‟ll cry, girl, but I‟ll come a-running A já se rozpláču, holka, ale poběţím

For the sea will swallow up the mountains protoţe moře teď všechny hory spolyká

And the sky will throw thunder-bolts a obloha hromy a blesky

and sparks vyšle

The chariots of angels are colliding andělská spřeţení do sebe naráţejí

Well, I‟ll run, babe, but I‟ll come running jo, poběţím, holka, poběţím

(Cave 190-1) (Sweeney 67-8)

In the Czech version, it is evident that there are no sound patterns at the end of the lines. Sweeney uses the literal strategy of translation again. The lexis and the syntax are word-for-word translations and the Czech lyrics lack the rhyme regularity of the original. Here is my own translation of the lyrics. As stated above, the rhymes at the end of the lines are important as they serve as a bridge between the strophe and

36 the coming refrain; the third couple of lines – just as in the original – ends with a plural form. Apart from this, the regular form of the strophes supports the poetic nature of the song:

tohle je čas, kdy nás do velké záhuby vedu

tohle je čas, kdy běţet budu

[……………………………………..]

a teď ţal se vkrádá k nám

a já pláču, lásko, ale stále utíkám

[……………………………………..]

protoţe moře teď spolyká všechny hory

a nebe vyšle hromy blesky

[……………………………………..]

andělská spřeţení, ta se sráţí

běţím, lásko, dál a stále mé nohy běţí

To sum up: in Czech, the –ing form is missing and it is more difficult to find a rhyme at the end of the last two lines of each strophe because Nick Cave uses the present continuous tense in the respective places and applies the grammatical rhymes there. Sweeney freed herself from the pattern of rhymes; in her translation, the word order dominates the structure of the song and it is equal to the English lyrics – in “Přímo k tobě”, her strategy is the literal translation. In my version, the rhymes at the end of the verses connect the poetic and song character of the lyrics.

The following album of The Bad Seeds, Let Love In from 1994, was another breakthrough in the history of the band. In fact, Cave had written some of the songs about his devastating relationship with his wife Viviane Carneiro: there are topics of admonishment, pain and the pleasures of being in love. Moreover, the singer often sings

37 in the first person and his gripping storytelling gets new perspectives as he is no more hidden behind some imaginary character. The record represents a collection of the loudest songs Cave did in the 1990s10. The release was publicly very well received and the single “? (Part 1)” became Nick Cave‟s best selling one up till then

(Dax 151). I will now analyse the lyrics of this song.

“Do You Love Me? (Part 1)” (translated as “Miluješ mě?” by Martina Sweeney) has a feel of a spoken poem as Nick Cave almost recites the lyrics. There is also an inward nature of a confession to his beloved woman. In the song, the narration flows with the machinelike rhythm of Martyn P. Casey‟s bass guitar and each strophe has its climax in the storming refrain accompanied by the backing vocals of the band:

Do you love me?

Do you love me?

Do you love me?

Like I love you? (Cave 211)

The last line of the refrain has stress on the words “I” and “you”. Martina

Sweeney translates it as “Tak jako já tebe?” (91). Therefore, in respect to the stress of the original verse, “já” and the syllable “-be” could be stressed and the translated verse would appropriately fit into the rhythm of the refrain.

The use of alliteration in the song is evident. I will compare the translation of this particular parallelism. Compare the respective lines in the translation by Sweeney:

Nick Cave Martina Sweeney

And I kissed away a thousand tears A slíbal jsem tisíce slz

10 The album obviously influenced other artists as for instance the legendary thrash-metal band covered the song “” on their Garage Inc. album (released in 1998).

38 Some begged, some borrowed, some jedny vyprošené, jiné vypůjčené, jiné

stolen ukradené

Some kept safe for tomorrow další schované na zítřek

On an endless night, silver V té nekonečné noci stříbrnými hvězdami

star-spangled poseté

Still I seemed obsolete and small ale pořád jsem byl tak nicotný a malý

(Cave 211) (Sweeney 91)

In the first instance, Sweeney is aware of the allitearation and we can find it in her version. In the second example of the alliteration, she translates “some” in the second line as “další”. Although there are alliterations in these two lines, here is my solution: “Jedny vyprošené, jiné vypůjčené, jiné ukradené / Jiné schované v suchu na zítřek.” The beginning letters of “vyprošené” and “vypůjčené” correspond with the equal ones of “begged” and “borrowed”. The translation of “schované v suchu” solves the alliteration of “some kept safe” of the original. The third alliteration “silver-star spangled” is translated as “stříbrnými hvězdami poseté”. Compare this line with my solution: “V té nesmírné noci stříbrnými hvězdami poseté”. Thus, the “s” sound is present in “nesmírné” in contrast to Sweeney‟s line. There is no alliteration in the Czech version of the fourth instance. Compare it with my solution: “Ale stejně jsem byl tak slabý a směšný”. In this case, Sweeney uses very close equivalents of “obsolete and small” and the required poetic sound effect is not present. In my translation, the meaning of “slabý a směšný” is more distant from the original but the alliteration is present within the original significance. Therefore, Martina Sweeney tries to preserve the alliterations of Nick Cave‟s original lyrics but not in a consistent way. To sum up: her lyrics of “Do You Love Me? (Part 1)” have rather a nature of a song than of a poem in comparison to the original as Cave pays attention to the poetic devices more

39 thoroughly. Cave‟s creativity of language in these lyrics lies in the use of alliteration and their metaphoric meaning which is significant for the poetic character of the whole song. In this case, Sweeney preserves some of the sound patterns and their use but her version lacks the original poetic character because of the literal translation.

Further analysis will be dedicated to “Where the Wild Roses Grow” from

Murder Ballads, a concept album from 199611. The songs on the record share specific features: the release was planned as a whole – the individual tracks are about morbidity, murder and insane killers. Originally, Nick Cave planned to make a compact collection, not individual hits (Husseini 23). The author presents his audience a breathtaking story.

The duet features the Australian pop star as Elisa Day. Nick Cave sings from a perspective of an insane killer. The story takes place in three days and it follows a kind of a “Beauty and the Beast” pattern: the girl is young, beautiful and innocent and the man is strange, mysterious and much older than her. On the first day, she falls in love with him, on the second one, he visits her, brings her a flower and invites her to take her to the place “where the wild roses grow” where he – on the third day – kills her after he declares love to her. The song is opened with a chorus which is followed by two strophes throughout the song, each one sung by either Minogue or Cave on their own.

This changing represents the different perspective from the view of the two characters.

Nick Cave‟s part is rather a narration, his delivery of the lyrics is as if for reading aloud.

Martina Sweeney‟s version – “Kde rostou divoké růţe” – corresponds with the form of the lyrics and their meaning as well. Her version is a word-for-word translation; also, the lines of her version are formally in accordance with the original – this would be important when the reader reads the lyrics in silence or aloud – because she respects the

11 There are two traditionals among others “” and “Henry Lee” (which features PJ Harvey) and a cover of Bob Dylan‟s “Death Is Not the End”.

40 form of the strophes, she formally fulfils the features of a poem; her translation preserves the nature of song lyrics as well:

Nick Cave Martina Sweeney

From the first day I saw her Od prvního dne, kdy jsem ji spatřil, věděl

I knew she was the one jsem, ţe je ta pravá

As she stared in my eyes and smiled Kdyţ mi pohlédla do očí a usmála se

For her lips were the colour of the roses její rty měly barvu růţí

That grew down the river, all bloody and jeţ rostly dole u řeky, krvavé

wild a divoké

(Cave 242) (Sweeney 127)

Compare these two strophes from the original with the Czech version in King

Ink II: the formal requirements of the beginnings and ends of the lines are preserved and the narration does not lose its song character if we compare it with Cave‟s authentic delivery. However, there is a wide variety of sound patterns within syllables in the original lyrics. The poetic devices – representing also the creativity of language – can be found in the second and fourth lines of the strophes; there are what Leech calls rhymes where the vocal and final consonant chime (Leech 89) (“smiled / wild”,

“embrace / face”, “sorrow / follow”, “kissed / fist”), an assonance (“seen / free”) and a reverse rhyme (“thief / teeth”) (Cave 242-3). In summation, these sound patterns represent the poetic character of the lyrics. However, Sweeney does not use any of these patterns in her translation and the poetic nature is therefore not present. The literal strategy dominates her translation again.

The individual tracks on the next album, The Boatman‟s Call from 1997, belong to the most intimate work the Australian musician has ever done. The often raw and loud records featuring the rocking sound of electric guitar and drums on his last

41 two releases Let Love In and were replaced especially by the piano – which is the most significant musical instrument of the whole record – and the singer‟s solemn and “reverential” delivery. On the album, “Cave explored themes of love and loss more fully, and more honestly, than ever before” (Hanson 114). Up to the present moment, I have dealt with one love song from each of The Bad Seeds releases.

Now, I have decided to analyse three songs from The Boatman‟s Call as this album presents the peak of Cave‟s lyrical and poetic period. Amy Hanson claims that “it can be argued that The Boatman‟s Call is the sound of Cave enjoying his finest hour; open, empty, rich and naked, it is a volume of poetry set to music” (Hanson 115). However, the album is just a continuation of the songwriter‟s evolving career, the peak of the shift

“from sexuality to spirituality” regarding his love songs; Nick Cave altered the form of them but the content remained constant as the author himself asserts: “[I]t‟s a record that‟s very much about normal pain and normal life. A lot of what I was singing about was going on as I was making this record” (Hanson 116). I will analyse these lyrics as all of them are representative love songs of the album: 1) “Into My Arms”,

2) “Where Do We Go Now but Nowhere?” and 3) “West Country Girl”.

The opening track of the album, “Into My Arms”, is one of the representatives of songs of pure expression of love – the singer praises the beloved woman and finds that he does not believe in anything else than her and everything she does. The piano is the dominant musical instrument of the record and it accompanies the tender delivery of

Cave‟s voice. The pattern of parallelisms is regular as the second and fourth lines of each strophe rhyme at the end. After the fourth line, the delivery slightly speeds up as it reaches the refrain which ends each of the strophes. The lines regularly rhyme in the original which does not happen in the Czech translation. However, there is an absolute rhyme in the third strophe of the Czech version (compare “do / you”, “true /

42 you” and “too / you” with “ano / tebe”, “zaváhám / ochraňovali” and “ty / ty”).

Regarding this feature, Sweeney translates the song again rather as lyrics than poetry as she does not keep the regular form which characterizes the poetic nature of the original and its rhythmical regularity. However, what she does is that she stresses the apparent spoken/sung form of the lyrics – there is a high number of paratactic sentences/lines;

Cave also uses a lot of conjunctions and compound sentences and therefore, each strophe is in fact a long compound sentence. Let us look at the second strophe from the lyrics by Cave and the Czech translation “Do mého náručí” by

Sweeney.

Nick Cave Martina Sweeney

And I don‟t believe in the existence of Já nevěřím v existenci

angels andělů

But looking at you I wonder if that‟s true ale kdyţ na tebe pohlédnu, zaváhám

But if I did I would summon them together Kdybych věřil, svolal bych je

And ask them to watch over you a poţádal, aby tě ochraňovali

To each burn a candle for you a za tebe kaţdý jednu svíci zapálil

To make bright and clear your path a cestu tvou jasnou a světlou učinil

And to walk, like Christ in grace and a s tebou kráčel jako Kristus v lásce a

love milosti

And guide you into my arms a doprovázel tě do mého náručí

(Cave 265) (Sweeney 167)

As was noted above, the parallelisms at the end of the second and fourth lines are not preserved but there are even more conjuctions which open each verse. All in all, the lyrics characterteristics prevails as the regular form of rhymes and the specific sound

43 patterns do not appear in the translation. Again, Martina Sweeney‟s strategy of translation is a literal one as the structure of lines resembles the original.

The second song from The Boatman‟s Call album analysed in this chapter is called “Where Do We Go Now but Nowhere?”; the track is translated as “Kam jen jdeme, kdyţ ne nikam” by Sweeney. The regularity of parallelisms is present in the original version once again as all the first and third lines in each strophe rhyme with the last word. The even verses rhyme at the end with the exception of two strophes. There is a variety of sound patterns: 1) rhymes (the term according to Leech): “well / bell”, “bear

/ nowhere”, “talk / chalk”, “Prayer / nowhere”, “bright / light”, “hair / nowhere”, “air / nowhere”, “mope / hope”, “band / hand”, “scare / nowhere” and “life / wife”, 2) one instance of a consonance: “sun / down”, 3) assonances: “lap / that”, “made / blades”,

“home / moans” and 4) one example of an absolute rhyme: “one / one”. Cave also puts stress on the final words which are significant for the rhythm of the song and therefore, it should be regarded in the translation if the text should represent both poetic and lyrics features. Let us look at two strophes from “Where Do We Go Now but Nowhere?” and its Czech translation by Sweeney.

Nick Cave Martina Sweeney

Across clinical benches with nothing Na lavičkách v nemocnici není si o čem

to talk povídat

Breathing tea and biscuits and the Serenity dýcháme vůni čaje, piškotů a

Prayer modliteb

While the bones of our childhood crumble zatímco našemu dítěti kosti jako křída se

like chalk drolí

O where do we go now but nowhere Ach, kam jen jdeme, kdyţ ne nikam

44 I remember a girl so bold and so Na tu holku si vzpomínám, byla tak

bright odváţná a bystrá

Loose-limbed and laughing and brazen uvolněná a rozesmátá a nestydatá a

and bare nahá

Sits gnawing her knuckles in the chemical teď sedí, hryţe si prsty v umělým

light světle

O where do we go now but nowhere Ach, kam jen jdeme, kdyţ ne nikam

(Cave 273) (Sweeney 177)

Again, there is apparently a lower number of parallelisms in the translation of

Martina Sweeney than in the original lyrics by Cave. The poetic nature of the lyrics is not present again and the literal strategy of her translation prevails. There remains the polysyndetic coordination in the Czech version of the sixth line. Compare: “Loose- limbed and laughing and brazen and bare” with “uvolněná a rozesmátá a nestydatá a nahá”. The syntactic coordination of this line is in accordance with the Czech version which stresses the literal strategy of translation. As for other sound patterns, Cave also uses alliteration in the sixth line: see the two pairs of them in the English lyrics; in comparison, Sweeney has only one alliteration in her version of “brazen and bare”. At the same time, there is no alliteration in the fifth line by Sweeney (“bold and so bright” translated as “odváţná a bystrá”). To preserve this poetic device, here is my solution of the alliterations: 1) “bdělá a bystrá” and 2) “rozevlátá a rozesmátá a nestydatá a nahá”.

Here is my translation of the whole two strophes:

Na nemocničních lavičkách uţ nikdo nemluví

cítíme, jak voní čaj, sušenky a modlitba klidu

zatímco kosti našeho dětství se jako křída drolí

ach, kam jen to jdeme, kdyţ ne nikam

45 Tu holku si pamatuji, tak bdělá a bystrá

rozevlátá a rozesmátá a nestydatá a nahá

teď jen sedí, prsty si hryţe, světla umělá

ach, kam jen to jdeme, kdyţ ne nikam

To sum up: the sound patterns of Cave‟s “Where Do We Go Now but

Nowhere?” are preserved in this version – the alliterations and the parallelisms at the end of the verses – unlike in Sweeney‟s translation. Again, she translates the lyrics rather as a song but not as poetry using the literal strategy. In “Where Do We Go Now but Nowhere?” Cave shows creativity in the variety of sound patterns which are not present in Sweeney‟s version of the Czech “Kam jen jdeme, kdyţ ne nikam”.

The last song from The Boatman‟s Call I will deal with in this chapter is “West

Country Girl”; it is translated as “Holka od jihozápadu” by Sweeney. In his essay “The

Secret Life of the Love Song”, Nick Cave considers this song to be primarily a poem; according to him, it is “a simple poem about a girl” (Cave 3). The lyrics have a similar nature as the previous track. They have a specific rhythm with the stress on the last word which rhymes with the final word from the previous line. There is a regularity as each couple of lines finishes with a specific parallelism. The topic of “West Country

Girl” is very similar to other songs on the album as Cave sings about a woman he loved but she now remains only in his memories. Along with another song from the album – “Black Hair” – the track could be an universal touchstone for people who have ever loved somebody (Hanson 115).

There are no strophes and no refrains as the song flows as a stream of lines. This makes the visual side of the lyrics dissimilar to every record on The Boatman‟s Call.

The form is respected in Sweeney‟s translation. On the other hand, there are again no

46 sound patterns at the end of the lines. Let us look at both versions of Cave‟s “West

Country Girl” and Sweeney‟s “Holka od jihozápadu”:

Nick Cave Martina Sweeney

With a crooked smile and a heart-shaped S lišáckým úsměvem a tváří jak

face srdíčko

Comes from the West Country where the přišla z Jihozápadu, kde ptáci basem

birds sing bass zpívají

She‟s got a house-big heart where we all Má srdce jako dům, v němţ všichni

live ţijeme

And plead and counsel and forgive a doznáváme se, soudíme a odpouštíme

Her widow‟s peak, her lips I‟ve kissed Líbal jsem ji do vlasů, líbal jsem ji na rty

Her glove of bones at her wrist její ruku s kostnaným zápěstím,

That I have held in my hand které jsem svíral v dlani

Her Spanish fly and her monkey gland její španělskou mušku a opičí ţlázu

Her Godly body and its fourteen stations její boţské tělo a jeho čtrnáct zastavení

That I have embraced my palpitations sevřel jsem v náručí se všemi doteky

(Cave 275) (Sweeney 179)

The lyrics by Sweeney feature similar characteristics as the previous ones: the translation is word-for-word and the rhythm which is stressed at the end of the lines is altered as the final words of each verse do not rhyme. Sweeney‟s translation does not preserve the creative use of language as there are no sound patterns at the end of the verses. Compare her version with my own:

Tvář jako srdce s prohnaným úsměvem na líci

přijíţdí z jihozápadu, kde z hloubky pějí ptáci

srdce jako dům, tam všichni ţijeme

47 a ţadoníme a přimlouváme se a odpouštíme

její rty jsem líbal, vlasy podepsané vdovstvím

kostnatou ruku se zápěstím

jiţ jsem drţel v dlani svý

její španělskou mušku i její ţlázu opičí

její boţské tělo a jeho čtrnáct zastavení

sevřel jsem v náručí, v srdci bušení

In my version, I have attempted to transmit the creativity and the particular sound patterns into Czech. The form of the lyrics is constant as each couple of verses rhymes at the end. The rhyming regularity and the structure of sound patterns of Cave‟s

“West Country Girl” correspond with the regular form in my translation.

2.3 Conclusion

In the second chapter, I analysed selected lyrics by Nick Cave and their translations by Luboš Sníţek and Martina Sweeney. I tried to compare the features of poetry and lyrics in the original and Czech version. The main aim of this chapter was to find out whether the Czech translations contain poetic language and whether they are at the same time work of poetry indended for reading in silence and aloud. I focused also on the use of parallelisms because they represent a significant issue of sound and rhythm of lyrics. The work of both Czech translators represents similar characateristics:

1) there prevails the literal strategy of translation – their lyrics are often word-for-word translations which regards both meaning and syntactic structure of the verses;

2) Cave‟s creative use of metaphors is not regarded by the literal translations which goes hand in hand with the third argument that 3) the parallelisms and specific sound patterns that Cave uses in his lyrics are not respected in the versions by Sníţek and

48 Sweeney. The specific regular sound patterns which are characteristic for poetic work in general can be found in a great number in the original lyrics by Nick Cave – he uses alliterations, assonances, consonances, and rhymes that often have a constant form. The literal translation frequently overshadows the poetic effect of sound patterns of Cave‟s lyrics. Therefore, the first part of the initial question is answered as the Czech lyrics by

Sníţek and Sweeney lack the creative poetic language use of their original. On the other hand, in the work of the translators, there are several features typical of spoken word and sung lyrics: exclamations, repetitions and compound sentences. Although the rhythm of the original is not fully carried over in each song, some of the translations such as “Lodní píseň”, “Miluješ mě?” “Kde rostou divoké růţe”, “Holka od jihozápadu” have features of rhythmicity of the original. The frequent lack of regularity of rhymes and rhythm – these are according to Merta significant issues of lyrics – can be explained by the literal translation strategy which causes the syntactic structure of the verses and the frequently word-for-word equivalents. Therefore, the nature of lyrics outweighs the features of poetry in the translations by Sníţek and Sweeney. In the next chapter, I am going to analyse the amateur internet versions of Nick Cave‟s lyrics.

49 3. Amateur Translations on the Internet

3.1 Introduction

In the third chapter, I will deal with a specific phenomenon which is the translation by people who are no professionals in the field of linguistics. These translators are considered to be fans of the music by Nick Cave and they present their work publicly on the internet. Often, these groups of people have a specific relationship to the work of the particular author. Such translators need to possess a satisfactory knowledge of the target language in general and an adequate acquaintance with the lyrics of the specific author as well. Although they are not trained in a professional way, these people who publish the translations on the internet can provide new material for understanding the subject of lyrics translation. Therefore, the audience can receive additional insight into the songs. As admirers of the work by Nick Cave and because of the usually perfect knowledge of the original lyrics, the amateur translators might have abilities to discover issues that could be overlooked by professionals – that concerns the significance and content of the lyrics and the form of the lyrics as well. There are 45

“unofficial” Czech translations of songs by Nick Cave on the internet12. Thirty of them are by Petr Kubíček who published them on a website of Czech amateur translators

(www.pismak.cz). At this moment, the main distinction between the official and amateur translations lies in the actual form of publication. The internet versions were not published in a standard printed form; however, their authors published them on their websites to share their work. For a better orientation in the thesis, I will call the

12 In fact, there is no phenomenon such as the “official translation” of Nick Cave‟s lyrics. However, the terms “official” and “unofficial” signal the difference between Sníţek‟s and Sweeney‟s translations in the

King Ink and King Ink II collections and the amateur versions published on various websites.

50 translations by Sníţek and Sweeney “official” and the work by amateur translators

“unofficial” and “amateur”.

In this chapter, I will first closely analyse lyrics which were discussed in the previous part of the thesis and which were translated by Martina Sweeney. The overwhelming majority of amateur lyrics were published on the internet rather recently: in most of the cases, it is explicitly mentioned on the websites that the publication appeared between the years 2007 to 2009. King Ink II was published in 1998. It can be assumed – with an almost entire probability – that at least some of the internet translators were influenced by Sweeney‟s lyrics. Most likely, their attempt was to present new ways of understanding the significance of the lyrics and personal enthusiasm to publish their own work. The assumption that the amateur translators are acquainted with the official translation is based on the fact that on a large website of song lyrics – www.diskografie.cz – appears one translation by Sníţek (“From Her to

Eternity”) and six translations by Sweeney (“New Morning”, “Lament”, “When I First

Came to Town”, “Brother, My Cup Is Empty”, “Kindness of Strangers” and “Idiot

Prayer”13).

I have managed to contact one of the amateur translators, Tomáš Novotný, via the e-mail. He translated two lyrics by Nick Cave: “Where the Wild Roses Grow” and

“I Let Love In”. Apart from these lyrics, there are hundreds of translations of songs by various interpreters. I asked him to answer two questions: first, why did he choose the two particular lyrics and second, in what way was he influenced by the official translations by Sweeeney. He sent me an e-mail with his answers: according to him, he translates lyrics in order to practice the use of English and to learn new vocabulary. He chose “Where the Wild Roses Grow” because he liked the song and its melody and that

13 See the collection of Nick Cave‟s lyrics at ..

51 he wanted to find out more about the story of the song. The translation of “I Let Love

In” was a wish of one of the visitors of his website. According to Novotný, he often translates lyrics that the visitors ask him to translate. Novotný also said that he did not know the translations by Sweeney and was not therefore influenced by them. Thus on the one hand, this example does not confirm the assumption that all the amateur translators are acquainted with the official versions. On the other one, it confirms the presumption that they publish their own work because of their personal enthusiasm.

However, the presence of the seven official translations on www.diskografie.cz confirms the assumpiton that at least some of the translators are acquainted with

King Ink and King Ink II.

These are the criteria for the choice of the following lyrics: firstly, they are love songs and secondly, their official Czech versions (by Martina Sweeney) have been already discussed in the second chapter in order to make a comparison between the unofficial and official versions. I have chosen to analyse these amateur translations: 1) “The Ship Song”, 2) “Straight to You”, 3) “Do You Love Me? (Part 1)”,

4) “Where the Wild Roses Grow” and 5) “Into My Arms”. At the same time, the lyrics of “Where the Wild Roses Grow” will be discussed thoroughly as there are three amateur versions to be found on the internet. Also, there will be an analysis of other three love songs which were not discussed yet – all of them were also translated by

Sweeney in King Ink II: 1) “Henry Lee”, 2) “I Let Love In” and 3) “Little Empty Boat”.

There are two variants of the first and second lyrics by amateur translators on the internet. The overall findings will be later compared with the official translations in the fourth chapter. The references to the amateur internet translations will appear in the footnotes.

52 These are the criteria for the analysis of the amateur translations: firstly, the creative use of language according to Leech; secondly, the presence and use of sound patterns in the Czech versions and thirdly, the choice of the translation strategy according to André Lefevere. Also, the regularities of rhythmicity and rhyming in lyrics, which are accentuated by Vladimír Merta, will be discussed. The aim of this part of the thesis is identical with the goal of the previous chapter: particularly, to find out whether the amateur translations share features of both poetry and lyrics or whether some of the specific features prevail. I will analyse the particular lyrics chronologically according to the time they were published.

3.2 Analysis of Amateur Translations

The first analysis of lyrics in this chapter deals with the translation of “The Ship

Song” by Petr Kubíček on the website of amateur authors14. The title remains untranslated. The pattern of the strophes in the original is constant – each of them has four lines. The refrain is slightly altered in the song and there is a high number of sound patterns. The creativity lies in the regular use of parallelisms such as the assonance

(“around / down”) and rhymes (“me / baby”; “fly / nigh”). The regularity of rhymes is present in the strophes and in the refrains as well: the strophes feature an a-b-a-b pattern and the refrains an a-b-c-b form. Let us look at the opening passage of the translation by

Kubíček (see also the parallel original lyrics):

Nick Cave Petr Kubíček

Come sail your ships around me Pojď plavit své lodi kolem mě

And burn your bridges down A spal svoje mosty zpět

14 See the translation at .

53 We make a little history baby Uţ jsme spolu něco zaţili, lásko

Every time you come around Pokaţdé, kdyţ jsi se u mě zastavíš

Come loose your dogs upon me Vypusť na mě své psy

And let your hair hang down A nech své vlasy volně vlát

You are a little mystery to me Jsi pro mě malá záhada

Every time you come around Pokaţdé, kdyţ jsi se u mě zastavíš

(Cave 171)

Clearly, there is no regular form of the translation. The version lacks the rhyming regularity of the original and its sound patterns. The use of language seems clumsy to a certain extent, especially in the second and fourth (that is the last) line.

Probably, the verse “Pokaţdé, kdyţ jsi se u mě zastavíš” is no typing error as it occurs five times in the whole lyrics; if this is a deliberate use of language, the use is deviant because the sentence goes against grammatical rules – this finding corresponds with

Geoffrey Leech‟s observation that in poetry, readers have to get from a linguist‟s idea of creativity to the artist‟s way of using the linguistic code; according to him, we should assess the communicative value of a language deviation (Leech 25). There prevails the literal strategy of translation in the lyrics although the verse “We make a little history, baby” is translated rather loosely as “Uţ jsme spolu něco zaţili, lásko” (cf. Sweeney‟s

“Tvoříme tak trochu dějiny” (Sweeney 46) which is a more literal translation than

Kubíček‟s solution). The translator does not transfer the rhyming form into the target language and the poetic sound patterns do not occur in his version. In conclusion, the translation of “The Ship Song” is largely a literal one and therefore resembles the lyrics by Sweeney. The non-standard linguistic patterns occur because of the non-professional

54 use of the poetic language rather then what Leech calls eccentricity15 of the creative use.

The literal strategy prevents the translation to possess a regular pattern of sound patterns which would resemble the structure of the original lyrics of “The Ship Song”.

The next lyrics translated by Petr Kubíček, which were published on the website of the amateur literary work, is another lyrical ballad “Straight to You” under the title

“Rovnou k tobě”16 (Sweeney‟s version is called “Přímo k tobě”). All in all, the translation seems to be a variation of the “official” one as the choice of lexis and syntax is very similar to the version in King Ink II. Compare for instance the first five lines of

“Rovnou k tobě”:

Petr Kubíček Martina Sweeney

Všechny věţe ze slonoviny se rozpadají Všechny věţe ze slonoviny se hroutí

A vlaštovky si nabrousily svoje zobáčky a vlaštovky si nabrousily zobáky

Tohle je čas naší velké zkázy Tohle je čas naší velkolepé zkázy

Tohle je čas, kdy přiběhnu Tohle je čas, kdy poběţím

Rovnou k tobě přímo k tobě

(Sweeney 67)

The choice of words is altered only cosmetically and therefore, the translation by

Kubíček can be considered to be a variation of Sweeney. The pattern of the lyrics is identical as both versions share the literal strategy of translation. The rhyming scheme and the regular position of sound patterns of the original is not preserved in the version by Petr Kubíček. The creative use of the metaphors “days of rainbows” and “nights of swinging from the stars” is carried over into Czech with “dny plné duhy” and “noci, kdy jsme se houpali na hvězdách”. However, this solution seems to be a literal one. On the

15 See Leech, p.25.

16 See “Rovnou k tobě” at .

55 other hand, the resemblance of Kubíček‟s and Sweeney‟s version is to be expected as

“Straight to You” does not include any complicated syntactic structure. In summation, there is again a certain resemblance between the two translations by Kubíček and

Sweeney. The amateur translator does not take the regular structure of the lyrics into focus. The regularity of sound patterns as a poetic device dealt by Leech is not preserved either. Therefore, the lack of parallelisms is the reason why the features of poetry in the song are missing.

The next lyrics, which are translated by Martina Sweeney and at the same time published on the internet by Petr Kubíček, are the translation of the song “Do You Love

Me? (Part 1)” from the Let Love In album. The lyrics, translated as “Miluješ mě?”, (the title equals Sweeney‟s version in King Ink II) feature on the one hand a regular rhyming form and a number of sound patterns, which were widely discussed in the previous chapter, on the other one (alliterations, in particular). In the original, there are also other instances of parallelisms, such as assonances (“sky / died”, “sorrows / tomorrow”) or rhymes (“head / mad”, “terror / error”). Apparently, lyrics by Kubíček display differences in comparison with Sweeney‟s version, particularly in the lexis and partially in the use of alliterations17. I will demonstrate the issue on the third strophe:

Nick Cave Petr Kubíček

She had a heartful of love and devotion Měla srdce plné lásky a oddanosti

She had a mindful of tyranny and terror Měla mysl plnou tyranie a děsu

Well, I try, I do, I really Dobrá snaţil jsem se, opravdu jsem to

try zkoušel

But I just err, baby, I do, Ale jen sem err, miláčku, stalo se, udělal

I error sem chybu

17 See “Miluješ mě?” at .

56 So come find me, my darling one Tak mě přijď najít moje drahá jediná

I'm down to the grounds, the very dregs Jsem úplně dole, ten nejhorší spodek

Ah, here she comes, blocking the sun Á tady jde a zastiňuje slunce

Blood running down the inside of her legs Krev jí teče po vnitřní straně jejích stehen

The moon in the sky is battered and mangled Měsíc na nebi je rozdrcený a roztrhaný

And the bells from the chapel go jingle- A zvony z kaple začaly zvonit a

jangle řinčet

(Cave 212)

The first two lines feature a repetition of the beginning words just as it happens in the original. Compare the translation with Cave‟s lyrics “She had a heartful of love and devotion / She had a mindful of tyranny and terror” (Cave 212) and Sweeney‟s version “V srdci měla jen lásku a oddanost / v duši jen krutost a násilí” (Sweeney 92).

Kubíček‟s translation is closer to the original although none of the translators respects the alliteration of “tyranny and terror”. Nevertheless, the creative use of language can be seen in the sixth line where “the very dregs” is translated as “ten nejhorší spodek” which in this context is quite original (cf. Sweeney‟s “v nejhustším bahně” (Sweeney

92)). Also, Kubíček enriches the lyrics with an alliteration in the penultimate line

“rozdrcený a roztrhaný” where Cave does not present this sound pattern – “The moon in the sky is battered and mangled” (Cave 212). There is another creative pattern in the last line of this strophe where Kubíček translates “jingle-jangle” as “zvonit a řinčet”.

Sweeney respects the alliteration by translating it as “a zvony z kaple bijí bim bam”

(Sweeney 92). To sum up: in “Miluješ mě?”, Kubíček presents his readers with an original use of language, such as the expression “ten nejhorší spodek”, repetitions and also an alliteration. Although the rhyming scheme is not preserved, the lyrics feature a creative solution different from Sweeney‟s translation. Therefore, the version by

57 Kubíček shares both features of poetry and song lyrics although most of the sound patterns at the end of the verses are not present.

A longer passage will be dedicated now to the translations of the lyrics of the song “Where the Wild Roses Grow”. Comercially, it is the most successful record by

Nick Cave and the popularity is reflected by a quantity of Czech translations by amateur translators. In summary, there can be found three non-professional versions on the internet. Two of the three lyrics share mutual characteristics in that they are published anonymously18. The third translation was published by Tomáš Novotný19. I will discuss the issues of 1) sound patterns 2) creative use of language and the choice of lexis and 3) the translation strategy in the three versions. The original by Nick Cave features a rhyming regularity as each of the second and fourth lines of the strophes rhyme at the end with assonances, consonances, rhymes and reverse rhymes (which was discussed in the second chapter thoroughly). None of the three versions displays neither any particular rhyming regularity, nor the use of specific sound patterns such as Cave presents in his “Where the Wild Roses Grow”. I will firstly display Cave‟s original and the version by Tomáš Novotný and secondly, the two anonymous translations will be presented. Let us look at the second strophe of “Where the Wild Roses Grow”, for instance:

Nick Cave Tomáš Novotný

When he knocked on my door and entered Kdyţ zaklepal u mých dveří

the room a vstoupil do místnosti

18 See the anonymous translations at and .

19 See the translation by Tomáš Novotný at .

58 My trembling subsided in his sure Mé rozechvění ustoupilo v jeho jistém

embrace objetí

He would be my first man, and with a Byl by mým prvním muţem,

careful hand a něţnou rukou

He wiped the tears that ran down Stíral slzy, které se rozeběhly po

my face mých tvářích

(Cave 242)

Anonymous 1 Anonymous 2

Kdyţ zaklepal na mé dveře a vešel Kdyţ zaklepal na mé dveře a vstoupil do

dovnitř pokoje

Mé roztřesení ustupovalo v jeho Moje chvění odeznělo v jeho jistém

zkušeném obětí objetí

On mohl být můj první muţ, s jemnýma Měl být mým prvním,

opatrnýma rukama a pozornou rukou

Otřel slzy stékající po mé tváři Setřel slzy z mého obličeje

The parallelisms – regular in the original version – are not preserved either in any of these three translations in this strophe or in the remaining ones. The rhyming regularity which is significant for the rhythm of “Where the Wild Roses Grow” is not present in these amateur versions. Their syntactic structure is similar; however, only

Novotný – in the last verse – uses a relative clause unlike the two other translators. He also divides the strophe into six verses. The syntactic form of the first translation along with the division of verses is the most obvious difference among these passages of the amateur versions; moreover, none of the translators uses any specific sound patterns such as rhymes and assonances of the original. These certain phenomena are significant

59 in the whole context of comparison: the form and structure of sound patterns goes hand in hand with the rhythm of the song. The parallelisms are accentuated and the stress of each verse lies there. Therefore, the lack of parallelisms in the amateur translations causes that they do not resemble the formal structure of the original because the main point of these Czech versions is the song‟s semantic issue but not the rhythmical one.

It is interesting to follow and compare the choice of lexis and the particular use of language in the three versions. This part of analysis will deal with the creative use of language. Generally at particular places, all of the amateur translators move away from the word-for-word translations and use specific original expressions that differ from one another. I will discuss four instances referring to the use of specific expressions. The following lyrics present the original verses by Cave and the three respective translations of each line which will be discussed further on:

Nick Cave Tomáš Novotný20

My trembling subsided in his sure embrace Mé rozechvění ustoupilo v jeho jistém

(Cave 242) objetí

I said, „Do you know where the wild roses Řekl jsem,

grow “Víš, kde rostou divoké růţe

So sweet and scarlet and free?‟ Tak sladké a rudé a nespoutané?”

(Cave 242)

Said, „Will you give me your loss and your Řekl:

sorrow?‟ “Dáš mi svou poráţku a svůj smutek?”

(Cave 242)

20

60 And she lay on the bank, the wind A ona si lehla na břeh

light as a thief vítr tichý, jako zloděj

(Cave 243)

Anonymous 121 Anonymous 222

Mé roztřesení ustupovalo v jeho zkušeném Moje chvění odeznělo v jeho jistém

obětí objetí

Řekl jsem: „Víš, kde rostou divoké růţe? Řekl jsem, “Víš kde rostou divoké růţe

Tak rozkošné a rudé a volné?“ Tak sladké šarlatové a volné?”

Řekl: „Dáš mi svůj zármutek a ztrátu?“ Řekl: Dáš mi svůj smutek a ţal?”

Leţela na mělčině, vítr jemný jako A ona leţí na břehu, dech sestupuje jako

zloděj zloděj

The first example features distinct translations of the word “trembling”. The translation by Novotný, “rozechvění”, is probably the closest Czech equivalent. The second one, “roztřesení”, is the most unusual one because the word signifies rather the whole physical state of the body; however, in a poetic sense, the expression can be transferred to the metaphoric condition of the whole mind23. The second example – “So sweet and scarlet and free?” – presents three different versions: the Anonymous 2 features “Tak sladké šarlatové a volné?” which is the most literal one and Novotný‟s and the first anonymous solutions feature two expressions which are more distant from

21

22

23 Martina Sweeney also uses the word “chvění”. See p. 127.

61 the nearest meaning: 1) “nespoutané” for “free” and 2) “rozkošné” for “sweet”24. The third example displays the different solutions of the part of the verse “your loss and your sorrow” – Novotný‟s version is the most evident word-for-word translation – “svou poráţku a svůj smutek”; the solution of Anonymous 1 is poetically interesting because the verse is not a literal translation of the original and at the same time, it features an alliteration with “zármutek a ztrátu”. The version of Anonymous 2 features a pleonasm with “smutek a ţal” and the effect of the word “loss” is missing25.

The last example discussed in connection with “Where the Wild Roses Grow” is the translation of the simile “the wind light as a thief”. Novotný‟s version is a word-for- word solution with “vítr tichý, jako zloděj”; the Anonymous 1 solution is similar to the original with “vítr jemný jako zloděj” and the Anonymous 2 shifts the meaning to “dech sestupuje jako zloděj” which is also the most creative solution out of the three amateur translations as it moves away from the word-for-word solution26; at the same time, the significance is altered as the “light wind” is here transferred to the breath of Cave‟s character. Although the three versions are lexically close to each other and none of them is strictly different, all of their authors come up with an original and creative language with its distinctive features.

The third issue I will briefly discuss is the translation strategy. Although the original meaning differs or is shifted within particular places, the strategy which

24 Martina Sweeney transfers the physical perception from the sense of taste to the olfactory one as she translates “sweet” as “voňavé”. Just as Tomáš Novotný in the first amateur translation, she translates

“free” as “nespoutané”. See p. 127.

25 Martina Sweeney translates the verse as “a zeptal se: „Dáš mi svůj osud a své trápení?“”. Thus, her version of this part of the lyrics is more distant from the word-for-word equivalent of the word “loss”.

See p. 127.

26 Martina Sweeney‟s translation of the verse: “a ona na břeh ulehla, jak zloděj tichý vítr vál”. See p. 128.

62 prevails is the literal one. That concerns the syntactic structure of the translations above all and most of the lexis of the original lyrics as well. Probably, the literal translation can be influenced by the official versions by Martina Sweeney. To sum up the versions of “Where the Wild Roses Grow”: the three amateur translators prove that they are able to use their own creative language and particular expressions which could enrich the translation of Cave‟s lyrics when we compare their versions with the official one by

Sweeney.

The next lyrics by Petr Kubíček is the translation of “Into My Arms”. The Czech version – “Do mé náruče” – lacks the regular structure of sound patterns of the original.

In each strophe of the original, the a-b-a-b form is respected. However, because of the literal strategy of translation, there are no parallelims at the end of the verses. On the one hand, the word-for-word equivalents regard the significance of the song and language use of Nick Cave, but on the other one, they prevent the presence of the regular form of the sound patterns in the target language. Compare the first strophe of the lyrics:

Nick Cave Petr Kubíček27

I don't believe in an interventionist God Nevěřím na zasahujícího Boha

But I know, darling, that you do Ale vím, drahoušku, ţe ty ano

But if I did I would kneel down and Ale kdybych věřil, tak bych poklekl

ask Him poţádal Ho

Not to intervene when it came to you Aby nezasahoval aţ to k tobě přijde

(Cave 265)

The word-for-word translation is apparent. The word order does not differ in a perceptible measure from the original lyrics. To sum up: because the meaning is again

27

63 the most significant issue of the Czech version, the rhymes as features of poetic language at the end of the the second and fourth lines – typical of the whole song – are therefore not preserved in Kubíček‟s translation. The literal strategy is present again and the rhythm of the song is not a significant issue of the Czech version.

I will now closely look at next three love lyrics translated by amateur translators.

These songs were not discussed in this work yet; the unofficial versions can be found on the internet. The record “Henry Lee”28 comes from the Murder Ballads album. I will compare two amateur translations of the song according to the same criteria as before in this chapter: 1) the creative use of language, 2) sound patterns and 3) translation strategy. Both of the versions of “Henry Lee” were published anonymously. First, I will discuss the parallelisms in the lyrics. As usual in the songs by Cave, the original features a regular rhyming structure: each strophe contains four verses where the second and fourth one feature rhymes at the end: 1) absolute rhymes: “And stay all night with me / […] / That will compare with me”; “And stay all night with thee / […] / I love far better than thee”; “Come take him by his feet / […] / Which is more than one hundred feet”; 2) a rhyme: “Just for a kiss or two / […] / She plugged him through and through”;

3) assonance: “‟Till the flesh drops from your bones / […] / Can wait forever for you to come home” (Cave 238-9). Once again, no sound patterns in the two translations are respected. Let us compare the first strophe of the original with the same passage of the

Czech internet versions:

28 “Henry Lee” is based on the traditional folk song “”; Nick Cave‟s lyrics are a variation of the original Scottish ballad. See Lyle Lofgren‟s “Remembering the Old Songs: Henry Lee”.

64 Nick Cave Anonymous 129 Anonymous 230

Get down, get down, little Lehni si, lehni, můj malej Klekni, klekni si, malý

Henry Lee Henry Lee Henry Lee

And stay all night with me A zůstaň se mnou celou noc A zůstaň celou noc se mnou

You won't find a girl in this V tomhle proklatým světě V tomhle zatraceném světě si

damn world nenajdeš holku nenajdeš dívku

That will compare with me Která by se mi vyrovnala Která by se mi mohla rovnat

(Cave 238)

In the translations, there are no special parallelisms or any other regular sound patterns either in the first strophe, or in the further ones. Thus, the absolute rhymes, assonances and rhymes of Cave‟s lyrics are not preserved. The use of sound patterns goes hand in hand with the translation strategy and the use of creative language which will be discussed now. The literal strategy prevails and also, the translator of the first anonymous version admits on her blog that she was influenced by the official translation. The poetic devices are lost in both of the amateur lyrics. However, creative language use can be found in them. For instance, the first author translates “in that merry green land” as “tam v zelené dálavě” – cf. the latter word-for-word version

“v zelené zemi” which corresponds with Sweeney‟s version. In the second translation, there is “A drobným perořízkem svírajíc ve své ruce” in the third strophe for “And with a little pen-knife held in her hand” – cf. the former version “A s malý noţíkem, který měla v ruce” and Sweeney‟s “V ruce své nůţ sevřela” (Sweeney 123) which are rather literal translations. The third instance of creative language use can be also considered to be a misunderstanding of the original lyrics or maybe a very daring interpretation of the

29

30

65 particular verse which is the last line of the chorus: “A little bird lit down on Henry

Lee” (Cave 238) translated by both (!) of the amateur authors as “Opilá kočička leţí na

Henry Leem” – cf. Sweeney‟s “Malý ptáček usedl na Henry Leeho”. The coincidence of the solution is very peculiar which hints at the assumption that one of the translators was influenced by the work of the other one. However, the inventive translation is explained by the author: according to her, Cave considered “the little bird” to be the female character of the song and that the expression “lit down” means to be drunk.

However, the actual verb “to light down” means to come down and therefore, this line in the anonymous translation is an incomprehension of the original meaning. Sweeney translates this verse literally. To sum up: the amateur translation only confirms the claim that amateur translators are able to create their own solutions (even if it is an incorrect translation) which differ from Sweeney‟s translation of “Henry Lee”. The word-for-word strategy is present in both of the amateur versions with the exception of the particular original expressions discussed above. Again, the language use could add another insight into the work of Nick Cave beside the official translation by Sweeney.

The lyrics from the song “I Let Love In” will be at the centre of interest further on. There are two translations to be found on the internet – by Tomáš Novotný and Petr

Kubíček, whose lyrics have been previously discussed in this chapter. Nick Cave‟s lyrics – as usually – feature regularity of rhymes and of the whole form of the song.

First, I will discuss the form of the strophes and the structure of sound patterns: there are strophes of three lines and an intermezzo of four lines – in all of them, parallelisms are present: the verses end with assonances and/or rhymes (“twins / in / sins”; “bold / behold / hole”; “terrorized / lobotomized / disguise”; “door / warned / scorned” (Cave

221)). Apart from these, there are alliterations such as “Despair and Deception, Love's ugly little twins” and “Far worse to be Love‟s lover than the lover that Love has

66 scorned” (Cave 221). The form of the strophes is preserved only in the translation by

Petr Kubíček as each of them has the same distribution of verses as the original.

Novotný doubles the number of lines in each strophe – there are six of them in comparison with three by Cave and Kubíček – compare the first strophe (the slashes indicate the end of the verses):

Nick Cave Tomáš Novotný31 Petr Kubíček32

Despair and Deception, Zoufalství a klam / Zoufalství a klam, lásky

Love‟s ugly little twins / Láska je ošklivé malé dvojče / malý odporný dvojčata /

Came a-knocking on my Přišla a zaklepala na mé dveře / Přišli zaklepat na moje door, I let them in / Nechám ji vstoupit / dveře, já je pozval dál /

Darling, you‟re the Miláčku, Ty jsi trest / Miláčku ty jsi trest za punishment for all of my za všechny mé dřívější všechny moje dřívější former sins / hříchy / hříchy /

(Cave 221)

Only the form is preserved in the second translation but not the sound patterns in any of them. The difference in the first strophe of the two internet versions lies in the misunderstanding of the original meaning in the translation by Novotný who in his lyrics features love to be the “ugly twin” but in fact the twins of love are “despair and deception” (n. b. the alliteration in comparison with no sound pattern in any of the two versions). In summation: the absence of any parallelisms confirms the claim again that the Czech translations of Nick Cave in general – whether professional or amateur – are rather focused on the meaning and content than on their form and parallelisms. Also, the poetic character of the original is diminished in the Czech versions. The creativity of the

31

32

67 language use does not differ considerably from the official translation by Sweeney. The dominant literal strategy is present in the amateur translations again.

The last amateur version by Petr Kubíček discussed in this section is the translation of the song “Little Empty Boat” – in Czech “Malá prázdná loď”. The original features regular structure in each of the strophes where the even lines end with rhymes (“understand / hand”, “good / foot”, “understand / hand”, “gloom / broom”,

“prone / alone”, “pissed / resist”) and assonances (“friend / again”, “me / leave”)

(Cave 282-3). The author‟s skill to invent such a variety of regular parallelisms is not preserved in the Czech translation by Kubíček. In his lyrics, the literal strategy is used again and the importance of sound patterns is minor. Compare the second strophe, for instance:

Nick Cave Petr Kubíček33

Your tiny little face Tvoje maličká tvář

Keeps yapping in the gloom Stále ţvaní v příšeří

Seven steps behind me Šest stop za mnou

With your dustpan and broom S prachovkou a koštětem

I couldn't help but imagine you nemůţu si pomoct ale představuju si tě

All postured and prone Pózující a povolnou

But there's a little guy on my shoulder Ale na mým rameně je chlápek

Says I should go home alone A říká ţe bych měl jít domů sám

(Cave 282)

The word order and the individual expressions are preserved in Kubíček‟s version; the literal strategy is prevailing. In fact, the translation resembles Sweeney‟s lyrics with minor differences such as “ţvaní” instead of “štěká” (Sweeney 191) in the

33

68 second line. The word-for-word translation is confirmed partly in the fourth line where

Kubíček has “prachovka” for “dustpan” opposed to Sweeney‟s “se smetáčkem a lopatkou” (Sweeney 191) which is a rather fixed expression. It is also important to add that Kubíček preserves the alliteration in the sixth line; however, there is a rather loose translation in the official version: “v té poloze nataţenou na zemi” (Sweeney 191). To sum up: although the amateur version lacks the poetic devices such as Nick Cave‟s frequent parallelisms, the lyrics are not just a copy of the official ones. Moreover, the plurality of various solutions is the greatest contribution to the understanding of this particular song. However, the variety of parallelisms and the structure of the lyrics which distinguish the poetic nature in the original are diminished in the amateur translations.

3.3 Conclusion

In this chapter, I discussed the amateur internet translations. Some of them were published anonymously but most of them were written by Tomáš Novotný and Petr

Kubíček. The aim of this section was to find out whether the translations feature both devices of poetry and lyrics or whether some of them are missing in the Czech versions.

The other objective was to discover at what level are the internet versions contributive to the officially published printed translations.

In general, the amateur lyrics lack the significant sound patterns of the original –

Nick Cave‟s ability to create a quantity of parallelisms, which appear regularly in his songs, is not preserved (apart from minor exceptions) in the internet translations. Their poetic nature is rather secondary. On the other hand, the translators are able to use creative language which is in certain instances different from the official translation by

Martina Sweeney. The deviation from Sweeney‟s lyrics confirms a certain ability of

69 amateur translators to create their own language which opens new layers of understanding the original. Although some of the amateur translations seem to be inspired by Sweeney (which was also explicitly admitted by one of the translators in case of the “Henry Lee” lyrics), they are able to use their own lexical choice different from the lyrics in the Czech King Ink II. The variety of solutions presents the readers with new insight and a way to comprehend the significance of Nick Cave‟s work.

Although the rhyming regularity – and therefore the accent on rhythmicity as well – is not present in the amateur translations, the internet lyrics have more features of songs than of poems. The lack of regularity of rhymes and rhythm appears because of the chosen translation strategy which is predominantly a literal one. The word-for-word solutions refer to the choice of lexis on the one hand and the syntactic structure on the other one. Primarily, the amateur translators focus on the significance of the songs by

Nick Cave. They do not respect the rhythmical issues of the lyrics as the specific sound patterns do not occur (with the exception of a number of alliterations in particular instances). The syntactic structure of their translations resembles the original counterparts. In other words: a specific syntax contributes to the rhythm and rhyming in the English original by Cave but in Czech, the same structure does not function in a similar way. Mostly, the meaning of the lyrics is preserved but the parallelisms and formal composition of sound patterns disappear.

70 4. Comparison of Official and Amateur Translations

In the fourth chapter, I am going to compare the findings from the two previous parts of the thesis. I would like to present the common issues and the main differences between the work of Luboš Sníţek and Martina Sweeney on the one hand and the amateur translators on the other one.

In the second chapter, I analysed the translations by Sníţek and Sweeney in the collections King Ink and King Ink II to find out whether their versions share features of poetry and lyrics just as the original. The creative use of Cave‟s language – which is supported by metaphors, sound parallelisms, regular structure of rhymes and rhythmicity – puts him among famous songwriters. In translation – in an ideal way – the creative ability needs to be preserved so that the lyrics are not just a literal version in the target language. Although the translations published in the King Ink and King Ink II collections are intended for reading in silence (not for singing) mainly, the lyrics characteristics should be significant also in translation.

In the third chapter, I discussed the amateur translations of Nick Cave‟s lyrics. I dealt with the issue of language creativity, use of sound patterns and translation strategy just as in the second chapter to support the thesis that the translations of lyrics by Nick

Cave should remain poetry and at the same time, they should respect the criteria of music and rhythmicity of the particular song.

The most visible difference between the professionals and the internet translators can be found in their actual use of language. The clumsiness is sometimes obvious when we read the lyrics by the amateur authors. Often, the expressions do not collocate or appear to be unnatural. Also, in the work of the amateur translators are often grammatical and typing errors. Compare, for instance, the initial two lines by Sweeney

71 and Kubíček from “The Ship Song”. Although both of the translations seem to be word- for-word, Sweeney‟s language is more natural:

Martina Sweeney Petr Kubíček

Svými loďmi mě obepluj Pojď plavit své lodi kolem mě

A všechny své můstky spal (Sweeney 46) A spal svoje mosty zpět

The unskillful use of language can be viewed in the version of “Where the Wild

Roses Grow” as well. Compare one line by Sweeney and Novotný:

Martina Sweeney Tomáš Novotný a zeptal se: „Dáš mi svůj osud a své Řekl: „Dáš mi svou poráţku a svůj

trápení?“ (Sweeney 127) smutek?“

In this context, the distinction in the use of language is quite understandable as the amateur translators do not use the written form professionally. This claim refers to both of the songs.

The next issue which can be compared is the general structure of lyrics. The regular form of strophes in Cave‟s lyrics is almost exclusively preserved in the translations: the number of lines within particular strophes and choruses remains unaltered in the official and amateur versions. This rule refers to Sníţek‟s and

Sweeney‟s official translation and with the exception of Novotný‟s translations also to the amateur versions. Compare, for instance, the strophe structure of “I Let Love In”

(translated as “Vpustím lásku dovnitř” by Sweeney and “Nechal jsem vstoupit lásku” by

Kubíček) where the number of lines within one strophe is preserved:

Nick Cave Martina Sweeney Petr Kubíček34

Despair and Deception, Zoufalství a Klam, ošklivý Zoufalst ví a klam, lásky

34

72 Love‟s ugly little twins dvojčata lásky malý odporný dvojčata

Came a-knocking on my zaklepaly na moje dveře a Přišli zaklepat na moje dveře,

door, I let them in já je pustil dál já je pozval dál

Darling, you‟re the Miláčku, jsi trest Miláčku ty jsi trest

punishment for all my za všechny moje za všechny moje

former sins bývalý hříchy dřívější hříchy

(Cave 221) (Sweeney 101)

In general, with the exception of Tomáš Novotný‟s translations of “Where the

Wild Roses Grow” and “I Let Love In”, the official and amateur versions preserve the number of lines within the particular strophes.

Let us look now at the regularity of parallelisms. The constant form of Nick

Cave‟s lyrics goes hand in hand with the use of sound patterns that correspond at the end of the verses in the original. Frequently, they are not present either in the Czech lyrics by Sníţek and Sweeney or in the lyrics by the amateur translators. By way of illustration, let us look at the structure of sound parallelisms in the second strophe of

“Into My Arms” and the official and amateur versions (translated as “Do mého náručí” by Sweeney and as “Do mé náruče” by Kubíček):

Nick Cave Martina Sweeney Petr Kubíček

And I don‟t believe in the Já nevěřím v existenci A nevěřím na existenci

existence of angels andělů andělů

But looking at you I onder ale kdyţ na tebe pohlédnu, Ale kdyţ se podívám na tebe,

if that's true zaváhám tak se divím je li to

pravda

But if I did I would summon Kdybych věřil, svolal Ale kdybych věřil, tak bych

them together bych je je svolal dohromady

73 And ask them to watch over A poţádal, aby tě A ţádal bych je aby tě

you ochraňovali hlídali

(Cave 265) (Sweeney 167)

The structure of parallelisms in Cave‟s original version of “Into My Arms” was discussed in the second chapter. All the even verses of each strophe rhyme at the end of the respective lines. It is obvious that there is again no regularity when we talk about sound patterns in the translations; the reason for this finding is that the literal strategy is present. This fact could prove the assumption that for translators of Nick Cave, the meaning of the lyrics is the most important issue and therefore, other features – such as the structure of verses, parallelisms and particular regularities – are in background.

Nevertheless, the sound patterns are also present in the Czech versions of Cave‟s lyrics – but rarely – such as alliterations in Sweeney‟s translations of “Miluješ mě?” and “Kam jen jdeme, kdyţ ne nikam” and Kubíček‟s version of

“Miluješ mě?”.

The last issue I will compare is the general translation strategy of the proffesional and amateur translators. The literal strategy prevails in both of the translation categories. This claim concerns the syntactic and semantic issues, which once again confirms the finding that the significance of the lyrics is the most crucial issue for the professionals and amateurs. Often, the work of both of the groups of translators lacks the poetic devices of Nick Cave‟s original lyrics; therefore, when we compare their work, we can assert that the translations are again rather song lyrics than the genre of poetry. Consequently, the lack of regularity of rhymes and rhythmicity is clarified by the predominant word-for-word translations. It is very probable that the amateur translators of Nick Cave are acquainted with the official Czech lyrics in

King Ink and King Ink II as their solutions are often very similar to the versions in the

74 two collections. A great difference between the professional and amateur translators can be found in their actual use of language because Sníţek and Sweeney are professionally acquainted with the literary language as translators of English speaking authors. The plurality of the real possibilities of interpreting the significance of Cave‟s lyrics in the amateurs‟ translations presents the admirers of Nick Cave with a new insight into the author‟s work and an oppoturnity to view his song lyrics from a point of view of an interested fan who is not a professional in the field of literature.

75 5. Translations of Selected Love Songs from 2001 to 2008

5.1 Introduction

The fifth chapter of the thesis will deal with the translation of seven love songs from the last four albums by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. These are the criteria for the selection of the particular songs: 1) they were not officially translated into Czech (all of them appeared after the publication on King Ink II, 2) all of them are love songs and

3) at least one of the lyrics from each of the four albums should be represented. The collections , Nocturama, Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus and Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! were released from 2001 to 2008. There is a musical variety to be found on these albums but the topic of love is still predominantly present. I have selected these lyrics to translate (they are chronologically ordered): 1) “And No More

Shall We Part”, 2) “Wonderful Life”, 3) “Still in Love”, 4) “Breathless”, 5) “Babe, You

Turn Me On”, 6) “Supernaturally” and 7) “Lie Down Here (& Be My Girl)”. First, the original lyrics and the Czech version of the particular song will be displayed and afterward, commentary on each of the translations will be presented. The discussed features of the particular song can be compared with the Czech translation. Apart from

“And No More Shall We Part”, I will quote the original lyrics from booklets of the albums Nocturama, Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus and Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! because these three records were released after the publication of the collection The

Complete Lyrics 1978 – 2001.

5.2 Translations

“And No More Shall We Part” “A nikdy uţ se nerozejdeme”

And no more shall we part A nikdy uţ se nerozejdeme

76 It will no longer be necessary dál uţ to nebude nutné

And no more will I say, dear heart a nikdy uţ neřeknu, drahé srdce mé

I am alone and she has left me jsem zase sám a ona opustila mne

And no more shall we part A nikdy uţ se nerozejdeme

The contracts are drawn up, the ring is smlouvy uţ jsou sepsány, prsten je

locked upon the finger zamknut na prsteníčku

And never again will my letters start a nikdy uţ nezačnou dopisy mé

Sadly, or in the depths of winter v hloubkách zimy nebo ve smutku

And no more shall we part A nikdy uţ se nerozejdeme

All the hatchets have been buried now všechny sekery uţ jsme zakopali

And all of birds will sing to your a všichni ptáci pro tvé

beautiful heart srdce nádherné

Upon the bough ve větvích zazpívali

And no more shall we part A nikdy uţ se nerozejdeme

Your chain of command has been silenced t voje řetězce příkazů uţ utišeny

now byly

And all of those birds would've sung to your a všichni ti ptáci by zazpívali pro tvé srdce

beautiful heart nádherné

Anyhow jakkoli

Lord, stay by me Pane, buď při mně

Don‟t go down neodcházej

77 I will never be free nikdy nebudu ţít svobodně

If I‟m not free now jestli nebudu teď svobodnej

Lord, stay by me Pane, buď při mně

Don‟t go down neodcházej

I never was free já nikdy neţil svobodně

What are you talking about? o čem to mluvíš? Povídej

For no more shall we part protoţe nikdy uţ se nerozejdeme

And no more shall we part (Cave 305) a nikdy uţ se nerozejdeme

The lyrics from “And No More Shall We Part” from the No More Shall We Part album show typical features of Nick Cave‟s work. The strophes have a regular number of verses. The only exception appears at the end of the lyrics where there is a repetition of the title of the song. Another characteristic feature is the sound pattern at the end of the lines: there are rhymes (such as “part / heart”) and assonances (such as “down / about”). The rhyming regularity features an important issue in connection with the rhythm of the song: therefore, the pattern should be also preserved in the translation to respect the presence of the poetic parallelisms and of the song‟s rhythmical nature.

Thus, the rhymed strategy of translation is appropriate. All in all, the Czech version features a regular form of strophes and sound patterns – the odd and even lines end with rhymes and therefore, the features of poetry and lyrics are preserved.

“Wonderful Life” “Nádherný ţivot”

Come in, babe Pojď dál, lásko

Across these purple fields přes tato nachová pole

The sun has sunk behind you slunce uţ zapadlo za tebou

Across these purple fields přes tato nachová pole

78 That idiot-boy in the corner ten malý idiot v rohu

Is speaking deviated truths říká abnormální fakta

Come on, admit it, babe tak pojď, a přiznej si to, lásko

It‟s a wonderful life je to nádherný ţivot

If you can find it kdyţ ho dokáţeš najít

If you can find it kdyţ ho dokáţeš najít

If you can find it kdyţ ho dokáţeš najít

It‟s a wonderful life that you bring co tě provází, je to nádherný ţivot jen

Ooh it‟s a wonderful thing ach, je to věc nádherná přecejen

Speak our secret into your hands Vyslovuj naše tajemství do dlaní svých

And hold it in between a zadrţ je v nich

Plunge your hands into the water ponoř své ruce do vod hlubokých

And drown it in the sea a utop je v mořích

There will be nothing between us, baby nic uţ mezi námi nebude stát, lásko

But the air that we breathe neţ ten vzduch, co dýcháme

Don‟t cry neplakej

It‟s a wonderful, wonderful life je to nádherný, nádherný ţivot

If you can find it kdyţ ho dokáţeš najít

If you can find it kdyţ ho dokáţeš najít

If you can find it kdyţ ho dokáţeš najít

It‟s a wonderful life that you bring co tě provází, je to nádherný ţivot jen

It‟s a wonderful, wonderful thing je to věc nádherná, nádherná přecejen

We can build our dungeons in the air Můţeme stavět ţaláře ve vzduchu

79 And sit and cry the blues a sedět a v rytmu blues plakat

We can stomp across this world můţeme dupat po celém tomto světě

With nails hammered through our shoes s hřebíky nabitými do našich bagančat

We can join that troubled chorus můţeme se přidat k tomu ztrápenému sboru

Who criticise and accuse co umí jen kritizovat a nadávat

It don‟t matter much na tom nesejde

We got nothing much to lose nemáme uţ co ztratit, nic naplat

But this wonderful life jen tento nádherný ţivot

If you can find it kdyţ ho dokáţeš najít

And when you find it a kdyţ ho najdeš

And when you find it a kdyţ ho najdeš

It‟s a wonderful life that you bring co tě provází, je to nádherný ţivot jen

It‟s a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful thing je to věc nádherná, nádherná, nádherná přecejen

Sometimes our secrets are all we‟ve got Někdy naše tajemství jsou vším co máme jen

With our lives we must defend našimi ţivoty je musíme bránit

Sometimes the air between us, babe někdy ten vzduch mezi námi, lásko

Is unbearably thin je tak nesnesitelně nicotný

Sometimes it‟s wise to lay down your glove někdy je moudré poloţit rukavice

And just give in a vzdát to, vím

Come in, come in pojď dál s tím, pojď dál s tím

Come in, come in pojď dál s tím, pojď dál s tím

To this wonderful life do tohoto nádherného ţivota

If you can find it kdyţ ho dokáţeš najít

And if you find it a kdyţ ho najdeš

80 It‟s a wonderful life that you bring co tě provází, je to nádherný ţivot jen

It‟s a wonderful, wonderful thing je to věc nádherná, nádherná přecejen

It‟s a wonderful life je to nádherný ţivot

It‟s a wonderful life (Cave 2-3) je to nádherný ţivot

The regularity of Cave‟s previous songs is not absolute in “Wonderful Life” from the Nocturama album. Nevertheless, the strophes share a common form – the eight lines of each of them are followed immediately by the refrain. The typical parallelisms at the end of the lines are not present in the first strophe; the second strophe features assonances as there are long vowels in the words at the end of the lines (“between / sea / breathe”); the third and fourth strophes feature rhymes of the even lines (“blues / shoes

/ accuse / lose” and “thin / in / in”). The rhythm is stressed more evidently in the last two strophes with the presence of the end rhymes – this feature is connected with the urgency in Nick Cave‟s voice as the topic of the song becomes serious with the continuing delivery. The sound patterns support the rhythm of the song. The thematic subject of the lyrics is accentuated by the rhythm and that is the reason why Cave uses the parallelisms. They are also present in the refrains (“It‟s a wonderful life that you bring / It‟s a wonderful, wonderful thing”) which serve to be the bridges between each of them. The parallelisms are also in my translation. The seriousness of the original lyrics is preserved by the help of rhymes and assonances that appear because of the rhymed strategy of translation.

“Still in Love” “Stále jsem do tebe blázen”

The cops are hanging around the house Policajti kolem tvýho baráku hlídkují

The cars outside look like they‟ve got the blues auta venku vypadají jako by drţely smutek

The moon don‟t know if it‟s day or night měsíc neví jestli je noc nebo den

Everybody‟s creeping around with plastic všichni si to kolem šinou, na botách mají

81 covers on their shoes samý návlek

You‟re making coffee for everyone concerned pro všechny zúčastněný děláš káfe

Someone points to this and someone points to j eden naznačuje to, druhej zas

that tamto

Everyone is saying that you should lie down kaţdej ti říká, ţe se máš natáhnout

But you ain‟t having none of that ale ty kašleš na tohle i na tamto

And I say to the sleepy summer rain a já povídám v ospalém letním dešti

With a complete absence of pain s naprostou absencí bolesti

You might think I‟m crazy moţná si budeš myslet, ţe jsem šílenec

But I‟m still in love with you ale stále jsem do tebe blázen

Hide your eyes, hide your tears, Schovej si oči, schovej si slzy

Hide your face, my love schovej, má lásko, svoje líce

Hide your ribbons, hide your bows schovej si stuhy, schovej si mašle

Hide your coloured cotton gloves schovej ty barevné bavlněné rukavice

Hide your trinkets, hide your treasures schovej si cetky, schovej své poklady

Hide your neatly scissored locks schovej své pečlivě střiţené vlásky

Hide your memories, hide them all schovej si vzpomínky, schovej je všechny

Stuff them in a cardboard box nastrkej je do krabice z lepenky

Or throw them into the street below nebo je vyhoď, ať létají na ulicích

Leave them to the wind and the rain and the nechej, ať je odnese vítr a déšť a

snow sníh

For you might think I‟m protoţe si moţná budeš myslet, ţe jsem

crazy šílenec

But I‟m still in love with you ale stále jsem do tebe blázen

82 Call me up, baby, and I will answer your call zavolej mi, lásko, a já ti to vezmu

Call me up but remember I am no use to you zavolej mi, ale pamatuj, ţe nejsem vůbec

at all k ničemu

Now, you‟re standing at the top of the stairs Teď stojíš nahoře na schodech

One hand on the banister, a flower in your s jednou rukou na zábradlí, ve vlasech máš

hair květ

The other one resting on your hip ta druhá ti spočívá na boku

Without a solitary care nemám zájem o celičký svět

I fall to sleep in the summer rain upadám do spánku v letním dešti

With no single memory of pain bez jediné památky bolesti

And you might think I‟m crazy a ty si moţná budeš myslet, ţe jsem šílenec

But I‟m still in love with you (Cave 9) ale stále jsem do tebe blázen

The “Still in Love” lyrics from the Nocturama album feature the regularity of

Nick Cave‟s songs again. There are three strophes: each of them is followed by the refrain. Apart from that, two lines are inserted between the second and third strophe.

The first two strophes contain eight lines where the couples of the even verses rhyme at the end with rhymes (“blues / shoes / that / that” and “love / glove / locks / box”). The last strophe contains only the half of the verses but the structure of sound patterns remains unaltered (the rhymes of the second and fourth lines: “hair / care”). Also the refrains are regular as the first two lines out of the four rhyme at the end (“rain / pain” and “snow / below”). The rhymed strategy of translation was chosen again to preserve the characteristic sound patterns – significant for the rhythmical regularity – in the

Czech version as well.

83 “Breathless” “Bez dechu”

It‟s up in the morning and on the downs Uţ je tu ráno a na kopečcích

Little white clouds like gambolling lambs malé bílé mráčky jako dovadiví beránci

And I am breathless over you a já jsem bez dechu s tebou

And the red-breasted robin beats his wings a drozd dravě křídly bouchá

His throat it trembles when he sings jeho hrdlo se chvěje, kdyţ zpívá

For he is helpless before you protoţe je bezmocný před tebou

The happy hooded bluebells bow spokojeně schované zvonečky se zaklání

And bend their heads all a-down a svoje hlavičky sklání

Heavied by the early morning dew svou tíhou orosenou

At the whispering stream, at the bubbling u šeptající říčky, u bublajícího

brook potůčku

The fishes leap up to take a look rybky skákají, aby se mrknuli po očku

For they are breathless over you neboť jsou bez dechu s tebou

Still your hands zklidni své ruce

And still your heart a zklidni své srdce

For still your face comes shining through neboť klidně dál tvá tvář září nade mnou

And all the morning glows anew a celé ráno svítí novotou

Still your mind zklidni svou mysl

Still your soul zklidni svou duši

For still, the fare of love is neboť s klidem stále znám cestu lásky

true opravdovou

And I am breathless without you a já jsem bez dechu, kdyţ nejsem s tebou

The wind circles among the trees vítr krouţí mezi stromky

And it bangs about the new-made leaves a naráţí na větve obrostlé lístky

84 For it is breathless without you neboť je bez dechu bez tebe

The fox chases the rabbit round liška honí králíka po zemi

The rabbit hides beneath the ground králík se jí schová pod zemí

For he is defenceless without you neboť je bezbranný bez tebe

The sky of daytime dies away denní obloha začíná skomírat

And all the earthly things they stop to play a všechna boţská stvoření ustávají si hrát

For we are all breathless without you neboť jsme všichni bez dechu bez tebe

I listen to my juddering bones poslouchám, jak mi kosti vibrují

The blood in my veins and the wind in my krev v ţilách mých a vítr v

lungs plicích

And I am breathless without you a jsem bez dechu bez tebe

Still your hands zklidni své ruce

And still your heart a zklidni své srdce

For still your face comes shining through neboť klidně dál tvá tvář září nade mnou

And all the morning glows anew a celé ráno svítí novotou

Still your soul zklidni svou duši

Still your mind zklidni svou mysl

Still, the fire of love is true stále s klidem oheň lásky září silou opravdovou

And I am breathless without you (Cave 16) a já jsem bez dechu, kdyţ nejsem s tebou

At a first glance, “Breathless” from the Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus album seems to be uncommon in the context of Nick Cave‟s work. The lyrics are not divided into any strophes or refrains but if we analyse it closer, the typical song structure is obvious. The lyrics have a refrain which divides the regular form of the strophes. Also, the lyrics are full of nature motifs which is quite untypical of Nick

Cave‟s songs. On the other hand, “Breathless” is another type of a love song with lyrical

85 features. The lyrics display a variety of sound patterns: each couple of lines rhymes at the end with grammatical rhymes (“downs / lambs”), rhymes (“wings / sings”) and assonances (“bow / a-down”). Alliterations are also present (“red-breasted robin beats” and “happy hooded bluebells bow”). The regular structure of the lines is accentuated by the lines that are included between the rhymed pairs of verses – they also rhyme at the end (they are mosty absolute rhymes) such as “For it is breathless without you / […] /

For he is defenceless without you (Cave 16). In my translation, I have preserved the structure of the sound patterns. However, I have not kept all the parallelisms in their original form – for instance, cf. the seventh and eight line: the assonance of “The happy hooded bluebells bow / And bend their heads all a-down” is exchanged by a rhyme

“spokojeně schované zvonečky se zaklání / a svoje hlavičky sklání”. The alliterations are also preserved in the fourth and seventh line in my version. In summation, the rhymed strategy of translation is used to respect the rhyming and rhythmical regularity of the lyrics.

“Babe, You Turn Me On” “Lásko, z tebe jsem paf”

Stay by me, stay by me Zůstaň se mnou, zůstaň se mnou

You are the one, my only true love jsi ta pravá, má jediná opravdová láska

The butcher bird makes it‟s noise Uţ ťuhýk spustil zase svou

And asks you to agree a chce, ať souhlasíš, on to zjistí

With it‟s brutal nesting habits s jeho krutými způsoby hnízdění

And it‟s pointless savagery a nesmyslnou krutostí

Now, the nightingale sings to you teď zase slavík zpívá ti

And raises up the ante a přisadí si zas tu svou

I put one hand on your round ripe jednu ruku poloţím na tvé zakulacené zralé

86 heart srdce

And the other down your panties ke kalhotkám zas tu druhou

Everything is falling, dear Všechno se rozpadá, lásko

Everything is wrong všechno je špatné zas

It‟s just history repeating itself historie se stále jen opakuje

And babe, you turn me on a lásko, z tebe jsem paf

Like a light bulb Jako ţárovka

Like a song jako píseň

You race naked through the wilderness Ţeneš se nahá celou divočinou

You torment the birds and the bees týráš kaţdého ptáčka, kaţdou včeličku

You leapt into the abyss, but find skočilas do propasti, ale zjistíš

It only goes up to your knees ţe ti stoupá jen ke kolínku

I move stealthily from tree to tree kradmo přecházím, míjím kaţdý stromek

I shadow you for hours jsem tvým stínem celé hodiny

I make like I‟m a little deer hraji si, ţe jsem jako jelínek

Grazing on the flowers co se pase u kaţdé květiny

Everything is collapsing, dear Všechno se hroutí, lásko

All moral sense has gone mravní smysl ten uţ je ten tam

It's just history repeating itself historie se stále jen opakuje

And babe, you turn me on a lásko, z tebe jsem paf

87 Like an idea Jako myšlenka

Like an Atom bomb jako atomová bomba

We stand awed inside a clearing Stojíme v úctě na palouku

We do not make a sound ani hlásku nehlesnem

The crimson snow falls all about karmínový sníh padá všude kolem

Carpeting the ground pokrývá jako koberec celou zem

Everything is falling, dear Všechno se rozpadá, lásko

All rhyme and reason gone kaţdý rým a rozum je ten tam

It‟s just history repeating itself historie se stále jen opakuje

And, babe, you turn me on a lásko, z tebe jsem paf

Like an idea Jako myšlenka

Like an Atom bomb (Cave 18) jako atomová bomba

The song “Babe, You Turn Me On” was released on the Abbatoir Blues/The

Lyre of Orpheus album. The lyrics feature a typical regular form of strophes which are followed by refrains. Apart from that, the song is opened with a couple of verses and another pair of them is inserted between the strophes. The position of parallelisms is also regular as all the even lines of both the strophes and refrains end with specific sound patterns: rhymes (e.g. “bees / knees”, “hours / flowers”, “sound / ground”) and assonances (e.g. “ante / panties”, “wrong / on”). Alliteration is present as well (“rhyme and reason”). Moreover, Cave creatively uses the title of the song as a play on words as he connects the state of “turning on” to the light bulb and atom bomb. In my translation, the presence of the particular sound patterns was preserved again to keep the rhythmical

88 pattern; the title of the song – in respect of the context – is a play on words as well: the sound of the word “paf” is close to the sound of switching on the light bulb, for instance. The refrain assonance in “wrong / on” and rhyme in “gone / on” was exchanged in the Czech version by the vowel similarity: “tam / paf”. All in all, in

“Babe, You Turn Me On”, Nick Cave‟s language creativity lies in the use of sound patterns which are significant for the rhythm and regular structure of the whole song.

Therefore, I tried to preserve their presence in my version with the help of rhymed strategy of translation.

“Supernaturally” “Nadpřirozeně”

Through the windswept coastal trees Skrz větrem ošlehané pobřeţní stromy

Where the dead come rising from the sea kde z moří vstávají mrtví

With a teddy-bear clamped between her plyšový medvídek mezi koleny

knees přitisknutý

She says, where can my loverman be? říká si, kde můţe jen můj miláček být?

Well, I‟m down here, babe, with the Eskimos lásko má, jsem tu mezi Eskymáky

With the polar bears and the Arctic snow s ledními medvědy a artktickým sněhem taky

With a party of penguins who do not know se skupinkou tučnáků, co neví

How I can get back to thee jak se dostat k tobě mám

Well I‟m gonna ask you, babe a tak se tě ptám, lásko má

Hey! Ho! Hej! Hou!

Oh baby don‟t you go ach lásko, buď se mnou

Hey! Ho! Hej! Hou!

Oh no no no ach, ou ou ou

Hey! Ho! Hej! Hou!

Oh baby, don‟t you go ach lásko, buď se mnou

89 All supernatural on me ne s takovým nadpřirozenem

Supernaturally nadpřirozeně

Once I was your hearts desire Kdysi jsem býval vášní naplněným srdcem

Now I am the ape hunkered by the fire teď jsem jen opička skrytá před ohněm

With my knuckles dragging through the mire své kosti teď tahám samým bahnem

You float by so majestically a ty se vznášíš tak majestátně

You‟re my north, my south, my east, jsi můj sever, jih, východ,

my west západ

You are the girl that I love best jsi holka, kterou budu vţdy milovat

With an army of tanks bursting from your armáda tanků z tvé hrudi na mě bude

chest směrovat

I wave my little white flag at thee já svou bílou vlaječkou na tebe mávám

Can you see it, babe? a ty to, lásko, nevidíš?

Hey! Ho! Hej! Hou!

Oh baby don‟t you go ach lásko, buď se mnou

Hey! Ho! Hej! Hou!

Oh no no no ach, ou ou ou

Hey! Ho! Hej! Hou!

Oh baby, don‟t you go ach lásko, buď se mnou

All supernatural on me ne s takovým nadpřirozenem

Supernaturally nadpřirozeně

Now I‟ve turned the mirrors to wall Uţ jsem otočil zrcadla ke zdi

I‟ve emptied out the peopled halls a vyhnal jsem ze všech hal lidi

90 I‟ve nailed shut the windows and locked the zabarikádoval okna, dveře se

doors zamčely

There is no escape, you see uţ zde není úniku, však vidíš

I chase you up and down the stairs honím tě po schodech horem dolem

Under tables and over chairs pod kaţdou ţidlí, kaţdým stolem

I reach out and I touch your hair natáhnu ruku, dotýkám se vlasou, hleď sem

And it cuts me like a knife ale jen mě to štípne jako od včely

For there is always something neboť vţdy se najde něco dalšího other little thing you gotta do nějaká jiná věc, co musíš udělat

Hey! Ho! Hej! Hou!

Oh baby don‟t you go ach lásko, buď se mnou

Hey! Ho! Hej! Hou!

Oh baby, no no no ach lásko, ou ou ou

Hey! Ho! Hej! Hou!

Oh don‟t you go ach lásko, buď se mnou

All supernatural on me ne s takovým nadpřirozenem

Supernaturally (Cave 20) nadpřirozeně

Another song from the Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus album is

“Supernaturally”. The regular form of the lyrics has an unusual pattern which did not occur in any of the lyrics that were analysed before in the thesis. Each one of the three strophes contains eight lines which are followed by a refrain. The strophes are divided into two parts of four lines. First three lines of each part feature specific sound patterns: rhymes and/or assonances (e.g. “trees / see / knees”, “Eskimos / snow / know”, “desire / fire / mire” etc.). The regular rhythm of the particular part of each strophe is altered by the fourth and eighth lines that do not share any parallelisms with the respective place.

91 The sound contrast plays a significant role because these verses serve to be the bridges to other passages of the song and these places therefore open new rhythmical regularities of the following parts. In my translation, thus, I decided to use the rhymed strategy again to reach the rhythm of the original. There are instances in my version where the sound pattern is not the exact equivalent of the original; to solve this issue, I chose to close the verses with vowels where the first three lines end with consonants or vice verse to preserve the regular pattern.

“Lie Down Here (& Be My Girl)” “Lehni si (& buď má holčička)” well, y/ lost a foe & ztratila jsi padoucha & y/ found yourself a friend našla sis přítele

(lie down here & be my girl) (lehni si & buď má holčička)

I‟m back now/ baby/ that man teď jsem zpátky/ lásko/ ten chlap he won‟t be coming round here again sem uţ nikdy více nepáchne

(lie down here & be my girl) (lehni si & buď má holčička)

I‟m trying to tread careful/ baby zkouším našlapovat opatrně/ lásko yr as brittle as the wishbone of a bird jsi křehká jako kousek ptačí kosti

(lie down here & be my girl) (lehni si & buď má holčička) we‟ve been scribbled in the margins of a story byli jsme načmáraní na okraje příběhu that is patently absurd co je zjevně absurdní dosti

(lie down here & be my girl) (lehni si & buď má holčička)

& let it all come down & dnes se má všechno stát tonight v noci

& shine & shine & zářit & zářit

& let it all come down & má se všechno stát

92 (be my girl, be my girl) (buď má holčička, buď má holčička)

it‟s a matter of some urgency je to otázka té potřeby o darling can‟t y/ see/ I can‟t hold ach lásko/ ty to nevidíš/ nemůţu to uţ

back the tide zastavit ani jeden den

(lie down here & be my girl) (lehni si & buď má holčička)

& stop yr frantic little fingers trying to collect & přestaň/ ať tvoje šílený prsty pořád the years that pour from the hole in nepočítají roky/ které mi tečou z boku dírou

my side ven

(lie down here & be my girl) (lehni si & buď má holčička) o don‟t worry baby/ this old snake ach/ neboj se/ lásko/ ten starej syčák banging at yr door has got a few co ti pořád bouchá na dveře má ještě

skins left to shed několik kůţí na převlek

(lie down here & be my girl) (lehni si & buď má holčička) o y/ look so good/ y/ look so good ach/ jsi tak nádherná/ jsi tak nádherná the rest is better left unsaid ten zbytek bych radši nedořek

(lie down here & be my girl) (lehni si & buď má holčička)

let it all come down a dnes se má všechno stát tonight v noci

& shine & we can shine & zářit & můţeme zářit let it all come down má se všechno stát

tonight (be my girl) v noci (buď má holčička)

93 one day I‟ll buy a factory & I‟ll assemble jednoho dne si koupím továrnu & sestavím

y/ si tě on a production line na lince výrobní

(lie down here & be my girl) (lehni si & buď má holčička)

I‟d buy a million of y/ baby koupil bych si tě/ lásko/ milionkrát

& every single one of them will be mine & s kaţdou z nich bych byl s ní

(lie down here & be my girl) (lehni si & buď má holčička)

I will fill the house w/ y/ stack y/ up naplním si tebou dům/ naskládám si tě in every room/ we‟ll have a real good time do kaţého pokoje/ budou to časy bezvadný

(lie down here & be my girl) (lehni si & buď má holčička) but right now/ I‟m sitting here ale zrovna teď tu sedím on my own/ going out of my mind jen tak sám/ začínám být šílený

(lie down here & be my girl) (lehni si & buď má holčička)

let it all come down dnes se má všechno stát tonight v noci

(& shine & shine) (& zářit & zářit) tonight v noci tonight (be my girl) v noci (buď má holčička) y/ look so good jsi tak nádherná y/ look so good jsi tak nádherná

&tc &tc &tc (Cave 40-2) &td &td &td

The last lyrics of this chapter are from the song “Lie Down Here (& Be My

Girl)” from the currently last album by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Dig, Lazarus,

Dig!!!. The written form of the song lyrics is unusual and creative as Cave replaces

94 “and” with the sign “&”, the commas with slashes and shortens the pronouns. Also, the lines do not begin with capital letters. However, the structure of strophes is regular as usually in the lyrics by Nick Cave: the even lines end with parallelisms: asssonances

(e.g. “friend / again”) and rhymes (e.g. “bird / absurd”, “tide / side”). Therefore, I decided to use the rhymed strategy of translation again to preserve the sound patterns and the rhythmical nature of the song.

5.3 Conclusion

In the fifth chapter, I translated seven lyrics by Nick Cave. I focused on the form of the lyrics, the sound patterns and their positions in the lyrics. All the selected songs display similar characteristics: the regularity of sound patterns and structure of the strophes, refrains and inserted lines in the particular songs. The stressed emphasis on regularity and rhythmicity is accentuated in songwriting; therefore, the need to preserve the regular pattern in the translations is significant to respect the nature of lyrics. In my versions, I tried to preserve the presence of particular sound patterns as well because they represent the poetic part of Nick Cave‟s songwriting.

In comparison with the literal strategy of translation, the rhymed method is a more appropriate technique of translating song lyrics to preserve the features of poetry and songwriting. In the songs by Nick Cave, the rhymes play a crucial role for the rhythmical structure of the lyrics and the translations should respect this issue. The literal strategy, which is mostly used in the official translations and in the work of amateur translators, does not regard the rhythmical factors. Thus at some places, I have altered the syntactic structure to preserve the sound patterns and the rhythm of the songs. The Czech lyrics correspond with the nature of poetry and lyrics of the original.

95 Conclusion

The aim of the thesis was to find out whether translations of Nick Cave‟s songs share features of lyrics and of poetry as well. Initially, there was the assumption that the song lyrics by the Australian musician Nick Cave are also poems and therefore, the specific issues of the original should be preserved in the official and amateur translations. Let us summarize the most important points of the thesis.

In the first chapter, I dealt with general nature of translating poetry and lyrics to find out similarities and differences between translations of these two particular genres.

The main distinction between song lyrics and poetry equals the contrast between a text intended on the one hand primarily for listening and for reading on the other one.

Because of its musical accompaniment, rhythm and stress play significant roles in lyrics. Although they are intended for listening above all, some of the lyrics may appear also in a written form and therefore, their attributes should be preserved in translations as well. Namely, the translator of lyrics is limited by the rhythm of the song and therefore, he/she should respect the rhythmical and rhyming regularities, above all.

Poetry, on the other hand, is inteded mainly for reading and the audience usually reads poems in silence for one‟s own pleasure. It is often a decision of the translator what aspect of the particular poem is the most important one to focus on; it can be for instance: rhythm, metre, structure or appearance of parallelisms. The similarity of song lyrics and poetry is the language which differs from the language of prose. Lyrics and poems accentuate specific features such as parallelisms and tropes.

The second chapter was dedicated to the official translations of Nick Cave‟s love song lyrics by Luboš Sníţek and Martina Sweeney. I analysed three lyrics by Sníţek

(“From Her to Eternity”, “Say Goodbye to the Little Girl Tree” and “Hard on for Love”)

96 and eight lyrics by Sweeney (“Deanna”, “The Ship Song”, “Straight to You”, “Do You

Love Me? (Part 1)”, “Where the Wild Roses Grow”, “Into My Arms”, “Where Do We

Go Now but Nowhere?” and “West Country Girl”). All in all, the literal strategy of translation prevails in the official Czech versions. This method prevents the poetic devices of the original (such as sound patterns and an original language use) to appear in the translations. Sníţek and Sweeney often reproduce the syntactic structure of

Cave‟s lyrics; predominantly, the specific sound patterns are not present in their translations. In consequence, the Czech lyrics lose the rhythmical features of the original. To sum up: Sníţek‟s and Sweeney‟s versions are above all lyrics and not poems although there is usually no rhyming and rhythmical regularity because of the literal strategy of translation. The abundance of various sound patterns in the original versions – such as alliterations, rhymes, assonances and consonances – is not preserved in the official Czech translations.

The third chapter was dedicated to the Czech amateur internet translations of

Nick Cave. I analysed eight song lyrics by various authors (“The Ship Song”, “Straight to You”, “Do You Love Me? (Part 1)”, “Where the Wild Roses Grow”, “Into My

Arms”, “Henry Lee”, “I Let Love In” and “Little Empty Boat”). The findings were similar to the results of the third chapter. Namely, the sound patterns of Nick Cave‟s original lyrics are not respected and the literal strategy of translation is prevailing. Thus, the poetic devices are missing in the amateur translations as well. To sum up: the general lack of the rhyming and rhythmical regularities is due to the literal strategy of translation. The main concern of the professional and amateur translators is the meaning of the lyrics but not the syntactic and rhyming structures.

In the fourth chapter, I dealt with the comparison of the translations by the professional and internet translators. The main difference between the work of the two

97 groups appears in the actual use of language. Because both Sníţek and Sweeney are professionals in the field of translation, their abilities to formulate language are on a higher level. On the contrary, in the work of the amateur translators, the language use is clumsy in some instances and there are also spelling mistakes (in “The Ship Song”,

“Straight to You” and “I Let Love In”, for instance). On the other hand, the amateur translators are able to come up with their own original solutions. However, the sentence structures and the word-for-word translations of Cave‟s lyrics are very close to the official versions. We can assume that the internet translators are acquainted with the translations in King Ink and King Ink II – this claim is confirmed by one of the amateur translators on her website and moreover by the fact that seven of the official translations appear on the lyrics website www.diskografie.cz beside the amateur versions.

The fifth chapter was dedicated to my translation of seven selected love lyrics which were not officially translated into Czech (“And No More Shall We Part”,

“Wonderful Life”, “Still in Love”, “Breathless”, “Babe, You Turn Me On”,

“Supernaturally” and “Lie Down Here (& Be My Girl)”). In my translations, I focused on the structure and content of the love song lyrics. I chose the rhymed strategy of translation to respect the specific features of 1) poetry – sound patterns, original use of parallelisms and of 2) lyrics – rhyming and rhythmical regularities. These are namely the hallmarks of Nick Cave‟s song lyrics where the features of poetry and lyrics meet together.

To sum up: Luboš Sníţek‟s, Martina Sweeney‟s and the amateur translators‟

Czech versions do not correspond with the featurs of poetry of Nick Cave‟s lyrics. In principle, their versions are not poems in the actual sense. The rhythmical and sound attributes of the original lyrics are in background. In their translations, the meaning of the songs is the most significant issue; thus, the rhythm and various parallelisms do not

98 play a crucial role in their versions. The literal strategy of translation is the dominant feature of the official and amateur Czech versions. The rhymed strategy, which was chosen by me in the fifth chapter, carries the hallmarks of Cave‟s work into Czech. The parallelisms and the specific language use are present and also the particular regularities of the original lyrics are preserved as well.

99 Czech Résumé

Diplomová práce se zabývá písňovými texty australského hudebníka Nicka

Cavea a jejich českými překlady. V práci jsou srovnávány oficiální české verze od

Luboše Sníţka a Martiny Sweeney, které vyšly ve sbírkách King Ink a King Ink II, s překlady od amatérských autorů publikované na internetu. Práce vychází z hypotézy, ţe písňové texty Nicka Cavea jsou zároveň poezií. Hlavním cílem diplomové práce je zjistit, zda se básnické prvky původních verzí objevují i v překladech a jaké jsou zároveň hlavní rozdíly mezi překlady profesionálních a amatérských překladatelů.

Základní otázkou je, zda jsou české překlady Nicka Cavea poezií i písňovými texty, nebo zda se překlady blíţí buďto formě básní či jsou především texty písňovými.

První kapitola se týká obecného srovnání překládání poezie a písňových textů.

Tato část slouţí jako teoretický podklad pro další analýzu, která následuje v dalších kapitolách. V první části je také představena tradice českých překladů písňových textů

Bob Dylana, Leonarda Cohena a Toma Waitse. Druhá kapitola analyzuje oficiální české překlady od Luboše Sníţka a Martiny Sweeney. Tato část se týká jedenácti vybraných

Caveových písňových textů, které volně spojuje téma lásky. Ve třetí kapitole se zabývám amatérskými překlady, které byly publikovány na různých internetových stránkách. V této části analyzuji pět písní, jejichţ oficiální české verze se objevily v předchozí kapitole, a také tři další milostné písňové texty. Čtvrtá kapitola nabízí srovnání oficiálních a amatérských překladů, jeţ jsem analyzoval v předchozích dvou kapitolách. Poslední kapitola je věnována mým překladům sedmi Caveových písňových textů, které nebyly dosud oficiálně přeloţeny do češtiny. Tyto skladby pocházejí z let

2001 aţ 2008.

100 English Résumé

The thesis deals with song lyrics by the Australian musician Nick Cave and their

Czech translations. I compare Luboš Sníţek‟s and Martina Sweeney‟s official Czech versions published in the collections King Ink and King Ink II with the internet translations by a number of amateur authors. The primary argument of the thesis is the assumption that Nick Cave‟s song lyrics are also poems and the main aim is to find out whether the particular features of poetry are present in the official and amateur Czech translations as well. The main concern of the thesis is to find out whether Sníţek‟s,

Sweeney‟s and the amateurs‟ translations are both poetry and song lyrics or whether the

Czech versions are either poems or whether they are primarily song lyrics.

The first chapter deals with the general issue of lyrics and poetry translation.

This part of the thesis provides the theoretical background for a further analysis. The initial chapter also presents the Czech tradition of translations of lyrics by songwriters

Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits. In the second chapter, I analyze the official translations by Luboš Sníţek and Martina Sweeney. There are eleven selected lyrics loosely bound by the topic of love. In the third chapter, I discuss the amateur translations published on various websites. This part deals with five song lyrics – their official Czech translations were discussed in the previous chapter – and three other love song lyrics. In the fourth chapter, there is a comparison of the official and amateur translations that were discussed in the second and third chapters. The last part of the thesis presents my translation of seven song lyrics that were not officially translated into

Czech so far. These songs come from 2001 to 2008.

101 Bibliography

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2004.

---, Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!. Mute Records, 2008.

---, From Her to Eternity. Mute Records, 1984.

---, Henry‟s Dream. Mute Records, 1992.

---, Kicking against the Pricks. Mute Records, 1986.

105 ---, Let Love In. Mute Records, 1994.

---, Murder Ballads. Mute Records, 1996.

---, Nocturama. Mute Records, 2003.

---, No More Shall We Part. Mute Records, 2001.

---, . Mute Records, 1988.

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---, Together through Life. Columbia Records, 2009.

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Waits, Tom. Bone Machine. Island Records, 1992.

---, Small Change. Asylum Records, 1976.

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2001.

---, “Avalanche”. From Her to Eternity. Mute Records, 1984.

---, “Babe, You Turn Me On”. Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus. Mute Records,

2004.

---, “Black Hair”. The Boatman‟s Call. Mute Records, 1997.

106 ---, “Breathless”. Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus. Mute Records, 2004.

---, “Brother, My Cup Is Empty”. Henry‟s Dream. Mute Records, 1992.

---, “Deanna”. Tender Prey. Mute Records, 1988.

---, “Death is Not the End”. Murder Ballads. Mute Records, 1996.

---, “Do You Love Me? (Part 1)”. Let Love In. Mute Records, 1994.

---, “From Her to Eternity”. From Her to Eternity. Mute Records, 1984.

---, “Hard on for Love”. Your Funeral… My Trial. Mute Records, 1986.

---, “Henry Lee”. Murder Ballads. Mute Records, 1996.

---, “”. The Boatman‟s Call. Mute Records, 1997.

---, “I Let Love In”. Let Love In. Mute Records, 1994.

---, “(I‟ll Love You) Till the End of the World”. B-Sides and Rarities. Mute Records,

2005.

---, “Into My Arms”. The Boatman‟s Call. Mute Records, 1997.

---, “Kindness of Strangers”. Murder Ballads. Mute Records, 1996.

---, “King Ink”. Prayers on Fire. 4AD, 1981.

---, “Lament”. The Good Son. Mute Records, 1990.

---, “Lie Down Here (& Be My Girl)”. Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!. Mute Records, 2008.

---, “Little Empty Boat”. B-Sides and Rarities. Mute Records, 2005.

---, “New Morning”. Tender Prey. Mute Records, 1988.

---, “Say Goodbye to the Little Girl Tree”. The Firstborn Is Dead. Mute Records, 1985.

---, “Stagger Lee”. Murder Ballads. Mute Records, 1996.

---, “Still in Love”. Nocturama. Mute Records, 2003.

---, “Straight to You”. Henry‟s Dream. Mute Records, 1992.

---, “Supernaturally”. Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus. Mute Records, 2004.

---, “The Hammer Song”. The Good Son. Mute Records, 1990.

107 ---, “The Mercy Seat”. Tender Prey. Mute Records, 1988.

---, “The Ship Song”. The Good Son. Mute Records, 1992.

---, “The Weeping Song”. The Good Son. Mute Records, 1990.

---, “The Witness Song”. The Good Son. Mute Records, 1990.

---, “Tupelo”. The Firstborn Is Dead. Mute Records, 1985.

---, “West Country Girl”. The Boatman‟s Call. Mute Records, 1997.

---, “When I First Came to Town”. Henry‟s Dream. Mute Records, 1992.

---, “Where Do We Go Now but Nowhere?”. The Boatman‟s Call. Mute Records, 1997.

---, “Where the Wild Roses Grow”. Murder Ballads. Mute Records, 1996.

---, “Wonderful Life”. Nocturama. Mute Records, 2003.

Cohen, Leonard. “Avalanche”. Songs of Love and Hate. Columbia Records, 1971.

---, “The Stranger Song”. Songs of Leonard Cohen. Columbia Records, 1967.

Dylan, Bob. “Death is Not the End”. Down in the Groove. Columbia Records, 1988.

Waits, Tom. “Bad Liver and a Broken Heart”. Small Change. Asylum Records, 1976.

108 Appendix

Compact Discs

35Track Listing – CD 1: Track Listing – CD 2:

1. “From Her to Eternity” 12. “Henry Lee”

2. “Say Goodbye to the Little Girl Tree” 13. “I Let Love In”

3. “Hard on for Love” 14. “Little Empty Boat”

4. “Deanna” 15. “And No More Shall We Part”

5. “The Ship Song” 16. “Wonderful Life”

6. “Straight to You” 17. “Still in Love”

7. “Do You Love Me? (Part 1)” 18. “Breathless”

8. “Where the Wild Roses Grow” 19. “Babe, You Turn Me On”

9. “Into My Arms” 20. “Supernaturally”

10. “Where Do We Go Now but Nowhere?” 21. “Lie Down Here (& Be My Girl)”

11. “West Country Girl”

35 The songs are listed according to the order of their appearance in the thesis.

109