"La Bandera Estrellada"/"Our Anthem"/Oh, whatever...

Cafe Society
1

Oh dear, oh dear… MPSIMS or Cafe Society? Cafe Society or MPSIMS? Oh, what the hey… let’s start it here since I’ll be critiquing the interpretation, and let it get transferred according to what suits better; in any case it may even (if we’re extremey lucky) get sent to Great Debates, if not land in the Pit…

Haven’t spotted a thread specifically on “Nuestro Himno” yet. For reference’s sake, here’s a page from NPR that contains both the Spanish lyrics and a “straight” back-to-English re-translation of the Spanish lyric, so people will heve an idea of what adaptations were made:

Pretty good re-translate IMO, except that: “Se está defendiendo” does not mean “We are defending”; literally it means “it’s defending itself”, and figuratively it means “it’s making a stand”.

Now, it’s a given that you will have to make adjustments for meter and rhyme, update archaic language, and even reconceptualize figures of speech that don’t map from one language to the other. And the translation into another language is not uniquely something that has been done in this case. I’ve seen or heard English versions of Marseillaise, Deutscheslied, and Borinqueña, and Spanish translations of Marseillaise and God Save the Queen before. So*** that* ** in itself, translating/interpreting national anthems, is value-neutral – the Big Deal with this one is it’s being widely published as a radio single just as a specific immigration issue is in the news.

Audio here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/audio/2006/04/28/AU2006042800499.html

On top of this, I understand there are also “radio mix” versions wherein there’s a break-down with an extended chant or rap in a mix of English and Spanish with yet more extraneous content, but I won’t be dealing with that.

My take:

(a) At least they had mercy on the translator and did not try to do the entire 4 verses of “The Siege of Fort McHenry” :stuck_out_tongue: .

(b) It’s not so much “The Star-Spangled Banner” in Spanish, as it is a piece that contains it; it goes beyond the by now familiar style interpretations (e.g. Whitney Houston), into more of an “expanded” interpretation. Parts of the reprise verse include added content unrelated to TSSB/TSFM for the sake of “relevancy”.

(c) That said, man, that’s a weak arrangement. And the tag-team “choir of stars” format had got old back in the late 80s. But at least it’s singable by human voices.

2

I don’t know what all the fuss is about. Our neighbors to the north sing O Canada in English and French, and nobody gets offended.

I heard on the radio yesterday that the State Department had the SSB translated into Spanish many years ago.

3

How do you say " 'tis " in Spanish?

4

From what I understand they are using this (originated?) at soccer matches. You know if the Highland games somewhere in the US had translated the lyrics into gaelic and sang them… nobody would bat an eye… but because it is in spainish its a threat. As a monolingual white American I understand the fact that America is not done yet. We’re still baking in the oven. I hate it when people have this perception that ‘America’ is this concrete monolith that must stand stalward against any changes… because change is somehow bad.

5

Just a quick note here. I realize that " 'tis " ain’t in the National Anthem, but it’s the first thought that popped into my head when I heard this story, and I can’t get it out.

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You can also listen to the song through the NPR link; there’s a web extra link that contains it. (You don’t have to put up with the pesky ad that’s in the Washington Post link that way.)

I’m pretty much with Push You Down, on this. It drives me nuts when people get stuck on a static, one-dimensional definition of American. (Full disclosure: My mother is Mexican but I was born and grew up in the States; I’m fluent in German as well. So it’s probably easy for me to be more flexible that it is for others…)

GT

7

I really dig the lyrics, actually. Might (SACRILEGE ALERT!!!) even be a step up from the original.

But I’m with the OP on the arrangement. If no one had pointed it out to me, I don’t think I’d have ever realized it had any connection to the Star Spangled.

8

You obviously don’t sing all four verses. The second verse ends:

'Tis the star-spangled banner: O, long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

This might be a good place to ask a question I’ve been wondering about for a while now – Does the official national anthem include only the first verse? I remember reading that somewhere, but I see websites that list all four verses as the lyrics to The Star Spangled Banner.

[sub][wanders off singing “Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, and this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust!’”][/sub]

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The relevant statute gives us no help:

It may be a matter of regulation. It could be that, in a way similar to that related to the proportions of the US flag, we have adopted into general use an old reg from a particular department.

I know that there other cases where the standard performance is of only one of however many verses the original song has – God Save the Queen, for instance. Old-time songwriters tended to be long-winded.
BTW, as far as arrangements go, I once heard an alleged “period-authentic” version of To Anacreon in Heaven. Dammned if it sounded anything like the US National Anthem. Or like anything intelligible. So even the official version is the product of taking some licenses…

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Es is “It is”, but there’s no way I can think of to contract that one word even shorter. Unless you’re Cuban (among many others, too) – they like to skip their Ss when they can so it sometimes comes out as Eh.

Spanish doesn’t have “it” as a subject pronoun; rather “it” can only be an object.

As to “Nuestro Himno”, I have 2 viewpoints.[ol][]Why the hell is a translated anthem such a huge issue? Isn’t speaking one language while understanding a couple more common in most places on Earth? It’s not as though we even have a de jure official language anyway.[]God, that song is terrible, artistically speaking. I can’t even put into words exactly what’s wrong with it, but it’s wrong in all ways. Just awful. I think the worst thing for me is that I’m not used to Spanish being sung along to such a stilted, old melody, so it just sounds horribly unnatural.[/ol]

11

Forgive me if this is too far from discussing the artistic merits of the song, but in the interest of fighting ignorance, there are claims the Bush campaign has not always been against patriotic American songs in Spanish:
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/05/02/national-anthem-sung-in-spanish-at-first-bush-inaugural/

A link from there claims W. himself often sang the anthem in Spanish at campaign events.

Obviously this is a partisan site, but the cite they give seems eminently reasonable.

12

O Canada was originally written in French and progressively adapted into the English version.

13

As it turns out, it was translated even well before it became* legally* the National Anthem (that was only 1931, mind you), and the State Department adopted a preferred version for their publications of patriotic poems, songs, etc. for educational purposes.

Doing some research, I discover that, to my surprise, the version upon which “Nuestro Himno” is based dates back to 1919 and it does include three stanzas from Key’s “The Siege of Fort McHenry”! :o

Four major versions are available at the State Department site where they publish information about US society and values, in the Spanish page, specifically:
http://usinfo.state.gov/esp/home/topics/us_society_values/national_symbols/anthem_spanish.html

The versions are:
#1 - The 1919 translation by Francis Haffkine Snow; the one accepted by the State Department to show non-English-speakers what the Anthem means – but that’s like saying there’s a particular Spanish translation of the Constitution that it prefers: it’s really for informational/educational purposes. However, it’s the most suitable of all four versions.

#2 - A version by that most prolific of authors, “Anonymous”, that is a faithful translation of Key’s poem, mangling rhyme and meter for the sake of strict communication of what Key wrote – *except * that for “Star Spangled” it translates “starred and striped”.

#3 - A “free” translation by my hometown boy (though himself born in Asturias, Spain) Manuel Fernández Juncos (1846-1928). Interestingly, either he translated, or the editor published, only the verse, NOT the refrain, so it really works only as an interpretation of the poem, rather than the anthem. Fernández prefigures “Nuestro Himno” by tacking on some extraneous “relevant” (to the sensibilities or interests of his then-current audience) language, too.

It so happens ol’ Manuel is also the author of the official, “politically correct” verse of Borinqueña, the Puerto Rican anthem.

#4 - A version by Guillermo Hall of Guatemala. This one seems to start from the “faithful” version then frees it up to fit meter and rhyme… up to a point. It seems that he ends up with two more verses per stanza, so it breaks apart the anthem arrangement. It apparently also creates two refrains, one in which The Star-spangled Banner waves “over the battlements, calling us to fight,” the other in which it waves “over the land of the free, defending our home”.
All in all, the Haffkine version looks ever more adequate as a translation; the date kinda exempts it from accusations of PC or of subverting the meaning of the anthem.

Which still does nothing to musically improve the actual track known as “Nuestro Himno”, which so far is **not ** “growing” on me at all… Man, was José Feliciano away on other business?

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Upon seeing the newsbites regarding Nuestro Himno, my knee-jerk reaction was to say “that’s just not right – it should be in English.” After thinking it through, though, I have to say I don’t really have a problem with it…unless someone tries to make singing a verse or so in Spanish mandatory for the rest of us.

15

And everyone can see how well the Francophones and the Anglophones get along.

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200 hundred odd years of relatively peaceful co-existance, intermarriage and co-operative work to build a stable, prosperous democracy. Yeah, we’re at each other’s throats with knives I tell you. :slight_smile: