(no subject)

[fpb]

I have been downloading Italian folk songs, and there is one (from Rome, natch) that I really want to hear. Title: Te ci hanno mai mannato a quer paese? - roughly translated, Did anyone ever tell you to get lost?

Edited in: I have now heard it, and it is even better than I thought - in fact, the proper description is "laugh-out-loud funny". Also, unfortunately, quite untranslatable.

Comments

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

*laughs* Sounds like when I tried to translate a pun-filled song for Spanish class.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Yeah. It's about a husband politely telling his wife he needs some space. "I know that you are supposed to be my better half, but the way things are going, you're getting to be my better three-quarters" is one of the more translatable ones. (Extra points if you can spot the reference to Rugby football.) One of the losses about the decline of marriage is that marriage has always been such an inexhaustible wellspring for comedy.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

Bah, all I know about Rugby is that the Irish team that visited Bend, Oregon in the '90s was nice enough to NOT kill the newscasters that were out running on the field with them.

I may have to steal that line, though.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. If you want to know, it's by a great Roman-dialect comedian and singer, Gigi Proietti.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

Good thing I'd only use it in print, I'd murder that name.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Again from the same song - you may change the sex: "I am no king or emperor. So how did I wind up with the privilege of such a sovereign queen in my bed?" I try, but there is no way I can make it as funny as the original.

As for the name, it's not that hard. It might be rendered in American English as G.G. Proy-Attey. Weird, perhaps, but not hard to pronounce. My own name is far worse (in fact, I almost never hear an English person pronounce it even understandably).