I scrolled past this a lot of times, but didn’t reblog it so far because it’s a little out there, even by my blog’s standard.
Anyway. Hi, native German speaker here - no idea if somebody went over the translation already, but if not, allow me. You did mostly get the gist, but I’m a perfectionist, I guess.
(honorable mention to my weird-ass brain: I normally really dislike German, but I listened to this, and a little voice piped up: “this? This is beautiful. True Art™”. It’s the kind of music I loved more than anything as a kid, sure, but still - brain, nooooo.)
It’s still a bit rough, mostly because I couldn’t be arsed, and also because 1920′s and 30′s song texts are notoriously hard to translate for some reason, “some reason” probably having a lot to do with the very dense rhymes, wordplays, outdated idioms and a certain cadence that just doesn’t work in English.
There’s nothing to be done about my sister, she’s emotionless, oh how modern.
She’s interested in a thousand things, but not in love and not in men.
You might think she’s got the slightest, faintest inclination towards the other side (read as: men), but sadly you’d be mistaken - only the cinema screen excites her
(Chorus)
My sister loves Buster Keaton (literally “loves the Buster, loves the Keaton,” but “the+name” isn’t really a thing in English like it is in German) and she sees him in every man.
All the other men are losers next to Keaton and she watches him every day.
All the other men are losers compared to Buster (yes, it’s the same thing again, just with a different rhyme and the fact that those don’t work in English annoys me), and she swoons over him from new year to new year’s eve (so, every dang day of the year)
My sister loves Buster Keaton and she prefers him over Chaplin!
There’s nothing to be done about my sister, she’d spend her last penny for Buster (and if she goes to the cinema every day to watch him, she’ll probably have to, anyway)
She says, “With dick it’s just not the same, not even half the effect!”
(okay, fun thing there: In the version you linked, it really does sound like that. In every other version of the lyrics I could find, it’s “with [insert-name-of-other-actor-here]”. No idea if somebody had some fun there at some point or if everybody just misunderstood the singer (her German sounds good, but not perfect)… I’ll just leave it at that)
Oh, that sister of mine, you’d be amazed (”you’ll laugh” is literally correct, but idioms, you know…). She does the melancholic line just because Buster is melancholic. (sure, let’s keep that one)
She buys all his photos (ALL the photos \o/) and devours them with salt and pepper (very much figuratively of course)
Oh, that sister of mine, words escape me (verses, technically speaking, but why not)
She doesn’t need pleasure to feel pleasure (that sounds so clunky in English, but I don’t have a better option, really. Maybe “she doesn’t need pleasure for her enjoyment”, or “she doesn’t need pleasure to be pleasured *nudge nudge wink wink*”)
She is so sick and perverse, as kids these days are wont to be (very freely translated, of course, but “die Jugend von heute” very much carries that same get-off-my-lawn-young-whippersnapper vibe)
God! She’s so gloomy, so sensual, so stubborn, so full of ennui (try “misanthropy”, but ennui is such a nice word) and yet so silly/goofy is my sister. But she’s like a silly little bird that craves the Rothschild fortune!
(literally, it’s just “yes, her bird (the feathered kind, not the “20′s slang for woman” kind) and Rothschild’s fortune”, but that’s missing a verb and honestly doesn’t make a lick of sense)
(needless to say, this song is an endless source of hilarity and I’m suddenly almost proud of being German.)
turnnoffyourmind
ellievsbear
stormborns
pixelskylines
romaincrisis
discoholicmusic
germansingergirl
dededos
yousharknotpass
