Tuesday, May 13, 2008

My issues with this year's Eurovision contestants - no. 2

Ishtar of Belgium

ORIGINAL FLEMISH LYRICS -
"O julissi na jalini
O julissi na ditini
O bulo diti non slukati
Sestrone dina katsu

O julissi na ti buku
O julissi na katinu
Dvoranu mojani bidna
Marusi naja otcha tu"


Of course, if you're not a fluent Flemish speaker, it may not be immediately clear what my problem with these lyrics is. Indeed, from the way the Belgian audience are whooping in the clip, you'd be forgiven for thinking they're spontaneously responding to some ingeniously inspiring feel-good lyrics. So I've gone to the trouble of providing a full English translation below. It's important to note, however, that in one or two cases a particular word may not be translatable, because it has no meaning as such - ie. it's a nonsense word that does not actually exist in Flemish (or in any other language for that matter). Wherever this is the case, I have simply retained the original word in the text.

ENGLISH TRANSLATION -
"O julissi na jalini
O julissi na ditini
O bulo diti non slukati
Sestrone dina katsu

O julissi na ti buku
O julissi na katinu
Dvoranu mojani bidna
Marusi naja otcha tu"


Are you starting to sense the issue here? The Dutch entry a couple of years ago implored us to realise "there is a way to understand without a language". Whatever that way is, I think we can safely say this isn't it.

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