Paul McCartney/John Lennon/Pierre Saka?

Factual Questions
1

I spotted this credit on a Joan Baez album. The song Eleanor Rigby is credited to “Paul McCartney - John Lennon - Pierre Saka” Pierre who?

I searched the web and found that Pierre Saka is a songwriter who was extant in the sixties, but don’t see anything that connects him to the Beatles. The Baez recording seems pretty straightforward - the familiar lyrics with nothing sung in French, for instance. What is the story here?

2

I don’t know, but this site seems to imply it is an adaption.

3

Was it a “French” version?

4

For what it’s worth, here is Saka’s French translation of the song.

5

Hmm, not really a translation. Instead the French lyrics are the first-person lament of someone mourning the late Eleanor.

So Saka did do an adaptation, which doesn’t explain why he got credit on a Joan Baez album, where she sings the original English words.

6

Here’s a BableFish translation of Little Nemo’s site:
*
Ah, I do not want to live all alone
Ah, I do not want to live all alone

Eleonor Rigby
was the woman whom I the most loved in my life
I say it to you

Which beautiful memories
these walks with it at the bottom of its garden
we were well

All seems to me sad
less soft than before

All seems to me sad
less soft henceforth*

I’ll stop there to avoid copywrite issues.

Saka’s poem seems to me to miss the basic motif of the original song which was about one woman’s loneliness. If she had such a passionate lover she was doing better than most of us.

7

You’re forgetting Father McKenzie. It’s about two people who are desperately lonely while they’re surrounded by others. [/nitpick]