#407: O Living Breath of God
Jul. 8th, 2020 11:28 pmInteresting cultural mashup here; the melody is a Swedish folk tune, but the text is originally in Spanish from a 20th-century Argentine lyricist.
The translation is pretty decent, but there are a few rare/jargon-y verbs that come across a bit strangely. The end of the first verses is "que fecundaste la creación" - "that [inseminated??] creation"? "that made creation fertile"? It gets translated as "bearing the creation to wondrous birth." (Spanish seems to be slightly less dense than English in that you need more syllables to get the same point across, so sometimes English needs to "pad" with miscellaneous adjectives.)
The corresponding line in the third verse is "que consagraste la creación," which becomes "sighing with creation for freedom's birth." The verb "consagrar" literally translates as "consecrate," (or "dedicate," "confirm," "devote"...) either way the sighs and freedom are a stretch. If you add an extra n, however, "consangrar" would mean something like "to bleed with" (as in labor pains? struggling together?) which is probably just a coincidence but that's how I wanted to parse it the first time!
On that note, we're done with this section.
The translation is pretty decent, but there are a few rare/jargon-y verbs that come across a bit strangely. The end of the first verses is "que fecundaste la creación" - "that [inseminated??] creation"? "that made creation fertile"? It gets translated as "bearing the creation to wondrous birth." (Spanish seems to be slightly less dense than English in that you need more syllables to get the same point across, so sometimes English needs to "pad" with miscellaneous adjectives.)
The corresponding line in the third verse is "que consagraste la creación," which becomes "sighing with creation for freedom's birth." The verb "consagrar" literally translates as "consecrate," (or "dedicate," "confirm," "devote"...) either way the sighs and freedom are a stretch. If you add an extra n, however, "consangrar" would mean something like "to bleed with" (as in labor pains? struggling together?) which is probably just a coincidence but that's how I wanted to parse it the first time!
On that note, we're done with this section.