So in the past few years I got granted the chance of composing elvish lyrics for professionally produced songs, which to my and the producer's astonishments went through the ceiling receiving some fancy awards...
Now, I'm not here to brag about it! But much more putting the lyrics I came up for discussion, the final songs of course won't be changed anymore, but I feel like they provide some nice things to discuss on ;)
The Artist is called Oonagh (name has a celtic origin) and most of her songs feature german choruses and Elvish (Mostly Quenya, sometimes Sindarin) refrains. I am aware that in some songs I did stretch the grammar or other aspects of elvish quite far, but other than "regular" translations, these lines have to fulfill all of the following:
- Number of syllables has to match
- Stress of elvish words has to match desired stresses of the lines
- Vowels should be as close to producers imagination as possible
- Lines have to be "hooky" (meaning they stick to listeners minds and are easily recognized)
- As easy as possible to pronounce for the singer
- Meaning should fit to rest of song and should match to lore
- Correct grammar and vocabulary
Here's a first of the many songs I worked on:
Oonagh: Feanor
Refrain:
Feanor, Feanor
Calaher
Mana men antanelyë
Ardava harmar úsestimë
Feanor, Feanor
Moriher
Tuncel menn' alta nyérë
Nahtanel Eldar únótimë
My general idea of the refrain was to have the first half highlight Feanor's positive sites and deeds, and the second half the negative things.
Here's the literal english translation:
Feanor, Feanor
Lord of Light
What(1) us gave-you
Arda's treasures unmatched(2)
Feanor, Feanor
Lord of Darkness
Brought-you to-us(3) great sorrow
Slew-you Eldar countless
(1) Mana = what (interrogative, not relative): The sentence structure of this and the following line is a bit funky, but I'd explain it as that the third line is a kind of question - "What did he give us?" - and the 4th line is the immidiate answer - "Arda's unmatched treasures".
(2) úsestime "unmatched, incomparable" << sestima << PE12:82 (QL) sesta- "to liken, compare, make like, model on, assimilate, imitate"
(3) menn' alta elided from << menna alta
Here's the song on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eng0NXlTpL0
In case anyone is interested in an english translation of the german parts (which werent made by me) I'll happily provide them. Also please tell me whether you'd like to see more of these ;)
Tamas Ferencz Jun 08, 2016 (18:10)
Rick Spell Jun 09, 2016 (16:23)
Josua Del Socorro Jun 18, 2016 (01:10)