Neil Faulkner schrieb, regarding Judith's filked Ode to Joy:

Very nice, but it ought to be in the proper language. Unfortunately I seem to have mislaid my English-Deutsch dictionary, and my memory's not really up to the task.

Au contraire. Let me say that, as a German, I am deeply impressed. Just a few tiny adjustments...

Neil

Liberator, Wunderraumschiff Zu die Sterne Freiheit bringt.

that should be "zu den Sternen"

Immer leben Blake und Avon, Vila stehlt und Dayna singt!

and it's "stiehlt", not "stehlt". I'd also suggest "Ewig leben", but "Immer" absolutely fine, grammmar-wise.

Inspired by this example, I'll try my hand on a German version of Judith's filk:

...

When I sit and watch my telly,

Wenn ich vor der Glotze sitze,

Pictures pass before my eyes,

tauchen Bilder in mir auf

Little dinky spaceships flying,

kleine schräge Jäger flitzen

Through those alien backdrop skies.

in dem Weltraum runter, rauf.

CHORUS:

Liberator live for ever! Take the best and leave the worse, All we wish can truly happen, In another universe.

Here I bow before the Master and will take Neil's chorus.

Curly hair styles, men with sideburns,

Lockenköpfe, Backenbärte,

High-heeled boots and leather gear,

Stöckelschuh und Lederkluft,

Evening gowns observed in quarries,

Kleidung, die sich stets vermehrte,

These are to my heart so dear.

und nach der mein Herz so ruft.

(BTW, the last but one line isn't a translation, but something which makes sense in the context. Rhythm and rhyme demanded it.)

Orac, little lights a-blinking,

Orac mit den Weihnachtslichtern,

Walls that wobble just a bit,

Wände, die man wackeln sieht,

Lots of smoke and big explosions,

stets viel Rauch in Steinbruchtrichtern,

On a BBC budget.

wo die BBC hinzieht.

Characters we know and love,

Charaktere, die wir lieben,

In a fight to set men free,

in dem Kampf um Freiheit ziehen,

In the future bleak and hopeless,

in der Zukunft, wo sich mischen

Humour blends with tragedy.

Humor und Tragödien.

Okay, okay, Schiller would have been horrified...

Tanja

Una wrote, in reply to my guilty disclaimer:

...

Okay, okay, Schiller would have been horrified...

Not if he'd seen the show.

You've got a point. He'd loved it and would have stormed off to write some more speeches for Blake and some more cutting lines for Avon. However, while he was great with complex male characters, female characters weren't his forte, to put it mildly, especially those in politics (just look at what he did to Elizabeth I. and Jeanne d'Arc), so I shudder to think how he would have reacted to Servalan...

Then Neil wrote:

Damn inflections always get me!

Never mind, I made a mistake with my own verses, but I swear it was a typo. "In dem Kampf um Freiheit ziehen" should be "In den Kampf etc."

Schiller bashing:

Sod him, I think it's great.

Thanks, but look at the results:

Judith wrote:

Neil, Tanja,

If you don't give me permission to put that on the web site, I shall force you to sing it as a duet at Redemption! I know you're both coming <very evil grin>.

You've got the permission, you've got the permission! Anything but singing in public - I'm not above claiming the Geneva convention, specifically the paragraph about torture, in order to escape. Of course Neil is free to yodel away on his own.

Why do things look so hilarious when translated into German?

Now we, on the other hand, can hardly keep a straight face when listening to the English version of "Muss I denn, muss I denn zum Städtele hinaus", as sung by Elvis Presley. (Wooden Heart) <g> Wait, that's not English, that's American...

Lastly, Sally wrote:

Judith wrote: <If you don't give me permission to put that on the web site, I shall force you to sing it as a duet at Redemption!>

Oh please please please please do ... and tape it.

Pretty?

See above. As if I'd give Judith that type of blackmail material...

Tanja

On Mon 29 Jan, angria wrote:

...

If you don't give me permission to put that on the web site, I shall force you to sing it as a duet at Redemption! I know you're both coming <very evil grin>.

You've got the permission, you've got the permission! Anything but singing in public - I'm not above claiming the Geneva convention, specifically the paragraph about torture, in order to escape. Of course Neil is free to yodel away on his own.

Right, <grin> it shall go up with the next batch of uploads.

Lastly, Sally wrote:

...

Judith wrote: <If you don't give me permission to put that on the web site, I shall force you to sing it as a duet at Redemption!>

Oh please please please please do ... and tape it.

Pretty?

See above. As if I'd give Judith that type of blackmail material...

Well, you could always record one single furtive copy and donate it to the Redemption charity auction... (Who me? On the scrounge? Yep. Got two nice new SF board games off a friend yesterday. It's all for two very good charities.)

Judith

PS. the filk was originally input with the aid of voicewriter software. It's quite good at recognising Blake's 7 type words. I'm currently writing a psychology essay with it. I can't yet do e-mail that way though. I'll probably only be on list until the pain starts again, but even being able to do some of my typing without fingers is helping.