Beware! This could be your dog or mine one day!
The Dog
But good dog Tray is happy now;
He has no time to say "Bow-wow!"
He seats himself in Frederick’s chair
And laughs to see the nice things there:
The soup he swallows, sup by sup—
And eats the pies and puddings up.
(Read by Kara Shallenberg.)
What’s interesting about the translation above is that it seems to have drifted from the original German meaning (see the German below). Here’s a closer translation:
The Dog (Version 2)
The dog sat at Frederick’s plate*.
Where he ate the big cake;
He ate the good liverwurst
and drank the wine for his thirst.
He brought the whip
and is very wary and suspicious of it.*Literally "table" but I changed it to "plate" to create a soft rhyme with the word "cake" on the next line.
(Translated and Read by Lisa Yannucci. Many thanks to Christina and Monique for advice on the last line.)
Here’s the original German version:
Der Hund
Der Hund an Friedrichs Tischchen saß,
wo er den großen Kuchen aß;
aß auch die gute Leberwurst
und trank den Wein für seinen Durst.
Die Peitsche hat er mitgebracht
und nimmt sie sorglich sehr in acht.(German read by Roman Buettner.)
This poem comes from the German book Der Struwwelpeter oder lustige Geschichten und drollige Bilder by Heinrich Hoffman, first published in German in 1844. The English version is called, "Struwwelpeter: Merry Tales and Funny Pictures" (English translation in 1848).
I’ve found that translators from earlier centuries were often most interested in sounding cute when translating children’s poetry. They weren’t overly concerned with the original meaning.
This artilce was posted on Wednesday, February 1st, 2012 at 10:54 pm and is filed under Authors, Books, Countries & Cultures, England, English, German, Germany, Languages, Poems, Poems about Dogs, Poetry, Poets, Recordings, Recordings of Poems, Struwwelpeter, USA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
