Christophe Bachmann wrote:
> Rob Perkins a écrit :
>> On Mar 27, 8:39 pm, "John W. Kennedy"
 wrote:
>>
>>>> (Besides, I can't imagine the difficulty of translating Sweet Home
>>>> Alabama into Russian decently. I know that translations of
operas are
>>>> often extremely bad.)
>>
>> "Gemütliches Alabama"?
> 
> "Süsses heim Alabama " ?
> Auf deutch natürlich, I don't speak any Finnish or Russian. ;-)

"Süss'" is infinitely more suited to the music.

> It's easier to translate from German or Netherlands to English than from 
> French or Italian, because many common words are cognate and have the 
> same number of syllables.

"Same number of syllables" is inadequate. Thomas Cranmer was one of the 
most brilliant artists in prose the English language ever produced, but 
the poor dear actually thought that you could sing "Lord have mercy upon 
us" to the same music as "Kyrie eleison" because they have the same 
number of syllables (which is how the spurious "upon us" got into the 
English liturgy in the first place). Fortunately, he knew he was a bad 
poet, and almost never tried it.
-- 
John W. Kennedy
"The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything...."
   -- Emile Cammaerts, "The Laughing Prophet"
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