Can Anyone Help Translate a Nonsense Polish Rhyme?
September 24th, 2011

Nonsense rhymes are particularly hard to translate because they often make only partial sense. We find it helps to try to translate what we can, even if part of the rhyme is left in the original language.

Here’s a Polish counting-out rhyme that was sent to us by Agnieszka Magnucka. It’s for choosing who’s “It” or who goes first in a game:

Trąf, trąf, misia bella,
misia kasia kąfa cela,
misia A, misia Be,
misia kasia ką – fa – ce

Can anyone come up with an acceptable translation?

Thanks for any help!

Mama Lisa

This article was posted on Saturday, September 24th, 2011 at 2:16 pm and is filed under Counting-out Rhymes, Countries & Cultures, Languages, Mama Lisa, Nursery Rhymes, Polish, Polish Nursery Rhymes, Questions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

3 Responses to “Can Anyone Help Translate a Nonsense Polish Rhyme?”

  1. lucyferka Says:
    September 24th, 2011 at 4:30 pm

    It’s realy nonsens rhyme.
    Maybe like this:
    Here, here, teddy bear
    Teddy Katy milky will
    Teddy A, teddy B
    Teddy Katy mil ky will

    Just a proposition to keep a rhyme.
    Misia=teddy bear
    Kasi=Katy
    bella=from Italian beatufil
    all another haven’t any sense
    (cela=cell but it’s not this meaning)
    all another words don’t

  2. Lisa Yannucci Says:
    September 24th, 2011 at 7:38 pm

    Thanks Lucyferka!

  3. Lisa Says:
    November 18th, 2011 at 4:48 pm

    Here’s another Polish song question we received….

    I have a Polish children’s song playing in my head for almost 70 years now, and wonder if anyone out there knows it. In polish, the text/title begins with: “pozarastali trawa dorozki”, which my uncle taught me and my cousins long ago. I have just found a letter he wrote mentioning this song, so that’s why I have the Polish spelling (I do not speak Polish). In my childhood memory the song goes like this:

    Pozara stali, miliray noroshky
    Tamjectap tali, …..

    and that’s all I remember. Does that sound like anything you’ve heard???

    Thanks so much,

    Monica Shapiro
    Montreal, Quebec Canada

    If anyone can help, that would be great!

Leave a Reply