Talk:Wenn ich ein Vöglein wär

Disputed translation

This article was recently created by User:Tamtam90, and I thank them for that. However, the (unsourced) translation is an utter misrepresentation of the German text. The mistranslation of Wenn to 'When' is what caught my eye first. On closer reading, their English text has often no equivalent in the German: 'ford'? 'rise'? 'on earth'? 'heave'? 'dreams'? ' We stand one by one with thee'? In fact, verses 2 and 3 make no sense at all.

While correcting the translation, I also made more that half a dozen other improvements – some quite substantial – as described in my edit summaries. Tamtam90 reverted them all, twice. I would welcome the input of other editors in this matter; I've posted a note at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Poetry, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Songs and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Children's literature. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 00:25, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

• Poetic translation doesn't need to be completely identical to the original. I don't know why the awesome text (which you put instead of my original translation) must impress the readers as a song. Nevertheless, I already published (under a free license) 50 my translations into another tongue, and some (though still here, within the articles) in en-wiki. The source of the current translation is here. --Tamtam90 (talk) 14:28, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

• That "source" fails WP:RS. Your poetic translation misrepresents the meaning of the German text: "If I were", not "When"; 'wenn' / 'when' are false friends. How do you respond to my other objections in your wording? I'm going to restore my literal translation and mark yours as poetic. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 01:53, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

• About "if" your link says another thing (2nd case: "if on the condition that"). If all poets translated foreign songs literally, there hardly would be any song "expansion" at all. OK, you might do that in three columns. --Tamtam90 (talk) 11:48, 1 September 2024 (UTC)