by Jusquin » Sat Apr 13, 2013 11:22 am
I can TOTALLY understand how people have had such a hard time with Gipsy KIngs lyrics over the years, because often what you think you're hearing might not be what they're actually singing. Translation is not easy. But it has to make sense. There are so many transcription errors! (And I'll be the first one to say that I probably got some things wrong, too.)
Another thing I wrestled with is that in Spanish (French, too, for that matter) there is something called elision, which means that if one word ends in a vowel and the next word begins with a vowel, only one of them is sounded (it occurs with some consonants as well). So you've got, for example, fue una voz sounding like fuenavo. You've also got b and v pronounced almost the same in some instances in Spanish, so someone heard vienes where I heard bailas and del tumba de verano where I heard perfumes de verano. I went with what made sense in Spanish and best matched the Eagles' lyrics in English.
And all bets are off when they're singing in what I assume to be Caló -- a language about which, admittedly, I know next to nothing. In matching sounds I hear on recordings and what I see in concert videos with lyrics I've seen, I've found malaqay for malacali ("Majiwi"), and mashimela for mashilela ("Viento del Arena"). I don't know what the word actually should be because I don't know the language -- it's just my observation based on what I do know.