La-la in translation

In a burst of complete recklessness, I translated one of my songs.  It was kind of like a butcher deciding suddenly to perform brain surgery.

The trick with translating songs is that it’s impossible to translate them literally, which means you need to think in Spanish, and understand the music and flow of the language itself.  As you may have guessed, I’m not exactly a Spanish genius.

Nevertheless, I gave it a go.  I was a little reluctant still, because I didn’t want to render the song totally useless for the future because of my hacking and smashing.

Then, Thursday night, in an act of unprecedented boldness, prepared to look foolish, I took my guitar to a Bible study and … asked for help.

I learned all the words for "rough draft" "experiment" and "pretty bad" and asked if the group would offer some suggestions.

It went better than I expected.  There were a few grammatical errors, minor ones.  Of course, I have no idea if it meant what I wanted it to mean, or if it sounded totally amateurish (of course, since it probably sounds that way in English too, I suppose that would be a sign of a good translation!).

My friends asked when I was going to sing it in a worship service… well, I think I’d better run it by some more people first.  But for your info, here’s the chorus.  If you have heard my songs, you may even be able to guess which one it is:

De gracia El ha dado
De gracia daremos también
Ni abandonado ni encarcelado
Seguimos El que da amor
You may see some mistakes yourself, if you speak the language!  Let me know.

Ah, when you’re learning a language you look pretty silly sometimes.  But sometimes you just need to make some music…