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Talk:Poland in the Eurovision Song Contest 2005

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Translation

[edit]

"Czarna dziewczyna" means "black girl", not "beautiful girl".

My Polish isn't the best, but this is pretty unambiguous. It's what you would call, a 'goof'.... I mean, "French" isn't the same word as "breakfast". They're just, arbirtarily, different words. So, that's a little mistake, which I'll have to correct. Actually, the other page which mentions the song, the one called, "Czarna dziewczyna"-- "Black girl", the song, gives the correct translation. Well, technically, it says, "Black/African girl", which at least is a sort of reasonable.... something. Although "black" doesn't always mean "African", it's not so unreasonable of an association. But, once we start saying "beautiful"-- now, we are *really* playing *free association*-- French makes me think of breakfast, breakfast makes me think of famine, famine makes me think of the UN.... so, I guess that that's like France.

Anyway, in Polish, "beautiful" (or "pretty", I think), is "piękna". Which isn't very similar to "czarna" in terms of being confused. Like, you wouldn't confuse "tree" with "sky", or, something, because they don't sound even vaguely the same.

Anyway, when I first heard it, I thought, "red", "red girl"-- like I said, my Polish isn't very good, I'm very much a beginner, ("but maybe if I listened to some music...."), but, actually "red" in Polish is "czerwony", which is clearly not the same word as "czarna", "black". And,"piękna", "beautiful" is yet another word, a third word. Although, if I were to play free association-- black makes me think of beautiful, red makes me think of communism, England makes me think of.... Downton Abbey. But, obviously that is not serious-- that's not good translation, obvious.... that's not what good translation is about.

Incidentally, the group is called "Polish-Russian", I think, and this could mean a couple of different things, I guess. It could mean, in terms of personnel-- maybe one is from Poland, the other from Russia. Maybe it includes influence from Russian sounds and musical themes and such in the actual *music*-- compare with the idea that symphonies, which have no words, are often described as being influenced by the music of various nations: Dvorak's by Czech folk music, Grieg's by Norwegian. But, as far as the words, the translation, is concerned, those words are definitely Polish. I looked up the Russian ones; they are not similar. Sometimes even Czech words are not really like Polish ones, let alone Russian, which is.... rather more different, still.

Anyway, "Czarna dziewczyna" means "black girl", so, I'm going to change it.

Kwiataprilensis (talk) 01:19, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]