Babelfish Song Meme, ganked from rain_luong

The Meme

You go find a song that everybody knows and put the lyrics into the Babelfish (http://babelfish.altavista.com/). Translate them from English to German, then German to French, and then French to English. Then post here with 3 clues. See who gets the song right first.

In all fairness, I probably didn't do this right: Neither of these songs are as ubiquitous as the meme would want.


The Song:

At once that all there had a manner and a girl with the hair of sweet chestnut and led you the summers bays choosing which rose there; Times ago which it was a woman, OH -, there was times she a child satisfied, and held it to you in the shades, in which the himbeeren rise wildly. And you are ridden the mountains of paddle and you sang on the opinion, and everywhere that seemed to go you of the loves wandered, in collaboration with you. It is hard to recall to him, this fact you your fist of pressing. And then, the veins are outside like roads, all along your wrist. And yes one with this one came from there, come him with this one and was not it to the bottom a long manner, was not to the bottom him a strange manner?


The Hints:

1) The artist was once voted Best Dressed Man in Montreal.

2) His biggest hit was a song about sipping Constant Comment tea while eating Mandarin Oranges with a female friend of his. This song, however, was not his biggest hit.

3) After a lengthy and intense buildup, the song ends in something of a copout that leaves the listener feeling both cheated and relieved.


And, since that first one was really for the hard-core folkies, here's another for the proggers:

The Song

Once in a dream very more these walls of lock outside to the bottom the bay, in which the worked water falls black I was however, while Minnesaenger being the song thus that sang timidly, I became lost my heart

The Hints

1) The Album this was on went Platinum.

2) It was written and sung by the band's keyboardist.

3) On tour, the electricity for the performance of this song would have been supplied by a device called "Solar Jenny One."


And, since I'm feeling extra, extra, extra bastardly today, comments will be screened until about 11:00pm CDT, so you can't peek at others' answers.

[Edited to make the Second hint for the First Song less Misleading]

There but for the grace of God . . .

ginmar has been posting lots of stuff on victimhood and the way society treats victims, and the demands we place upon them. I think her analysis is right on, but I think some aspects of it deserve a closer look.

When someone comes before us and tells us they have been, or are, the victim of a crime, be it a rape, a beating, a mugging, a house break-in or even the keying of a car, the first thing that happens in our minds is that a timid thought draws back the curtain of conciousness, steps out onto the proscenium and declares in a stage whisper "There but for the grace of God go I." In this moment, we understand that what befell this person could befall anyone at any time.

This is a fragile moment, a moment of empathy, a moment when we are drawn face to face with our own vulnerability, the horror of which we cannot bear, and that timid thought is descended upon by our shields, personae and rationalizations which beat it into submission. It is in this moment that we may turn on the victim:

What were you wearing?
Why don't you just leave him?
Why were you carrying THAT much money?
Were your doors locked?
Why would you park on the street THERE?

The tendency of these utterances to blame the victim is incidental to the real purpose, which is to flee our own vulnerability, to construct a myth of our own imperviousness, to find that magic spell, the right incantations, to keep misfortune from our door. And this victim who stands before us characterizes that misfortune. Thus our impulse is to separate the victim from ourselves, to make the victim Other, so that we may imagine that misfortune is avoidable if we just do everything right.

Unfortunately, it is not always the case that we can protect ourselves. There is simply too much random stuff in the world. Bad things happen because bad things happen. It is not punishment, but misfortune. But that glimmering moment when we first here the news and realize that it could have been us - that is reality, and that is the position from which we must approach a victim if we have any sincere wish to provide any comfort at all.