Talk:La Brabançonne

message: I noticed in the lyric section, that the unoffical translations seem to be overlapping the images. Someone wanna fix it?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.164.197.120 (talk) 01:41, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Overlapping 

message: 1., we severly need to clean this up.
2., restore the article before my edit, if you want.
3., if you do, than: GIVE AN ACCURATE TRANSLATION. How I know it isn't accurate, is that the first line should read in English:
"Oh Belgium, Oh mother darling."
"ô Belgique, ô mère chérie."
VTAbenakiMD (talk) 22:00, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clean it up. 

message: It would appear that the Brabançonne was originally written in French.  As such, wouldn't it make sense to give the French version first? john k (talk) 19:27, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Order 

message: With apologies to Picapia and predecessor(s), I've revised both of the English translations, which had omissions and inaccuracies as well as sometimes not being "English" - e.g. "the Freedom" (1860 version).
To translate "la Loi" as "Justice" (formerly in the translation of the current French version) is surely wrong. Outside a religious context, "la Loi" means "the Law" (as in "against the law").  Here it appears to signify a written constitution and codified laws, centrally (for Belgium then and now) the Napoleonic code - in contrast with arbitrary rule (l'arbitraire), as was debated in Europe at the time. Thus the German text has "Gesetz" (statute). The idea seems to be that of national and individual liberty under constitutional monarchy. If the committees had wanted to refer to "Justice" ("la Justice"), they surely would have done so.
But the two translations still don't succeed, in my own view.  I just can't get them into plausible English.  That may be because the French is already implausible - what may have seemed fine to committees a century or so ago doesn't (to my ear) survive echoes of the crowd scenes in Monty Python's Life of Brian.
Yet translation doesn't seem to be the main problem with this article.  Its French and German Wikipedia equivalents (I can't read Dutch) show that:
*both text and tune have a very chequered history
*the official versions (those on government websites) depend only on ministerial circulars and are not legally established
*several versions are in use (not counting a bawdy student version) in all three (or four or five) languages
*the line referring to about "invincible unity" is sometimes silenced (music only), since it is rather sensitive in a period when there is hot debate over possible break-up
*to revise the English article by drawing heavily on the French, Dutch and/or German versions would have POV risks.
So, would someone who knows the topic like to undertake a thorough revision?  Sources are in the other articles.
--Wikiain (talk) 21:05, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Good tries, CalicoCatLover!  I've labelled all of the English translations "unofficial" and made the heading levels consistent as "====".  In your translation of the German version, I've made a few changes.  One is to render "hoch!" as "hail!":  here "hoch!" seems to have the sense of "give a cheer for".  There are other places in your translations where you might find alternatives or something might occur to me - but, as I've said above, the basic problem is the antiquated spirit of the originals. --Wikiain (talk) 03:33, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah Brian (CalicoCatLover), I think you have been a bit unwise. Wondering how you managed to translate from three languages without, evidently, having a very good knowledge of any of them, I investigated. I now find that you have not provided your own translations but have simply fed the texts through Google translator and then adjusted some (but, even so, not all) of the moments when the result made no sense whatever.  Although you didn't claim to have provided your own translations, you put them in and so appeared to be their author;  I think you should have acknowledged how they came about. However, I'll leave them in and have begun to try to rescue them. I am a professionally qualified translator from French and also have experience in translating from German;  I'll only tinker with the Dutch. --Wikiain (talk) 23:03, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  English translations 

message: User 69.160.120.125:  HU12 has reverted your additional recording, without a reason. I'm sure you added it in best faith, but to my ear it is really not as good as the others already there.  --Wikiain (talk) 22:54, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recordings of music 

message: If Belgium has a queen in charge, do the lyrics change? – Illegitimate Barrister (talk • contribs), 04:58, 13 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Queen 

message: Both slogans obey the Rule of Three and both contain the word "liberty". But one is a royalist slogan of privileged Belgians and the other a republican slogan of people who hate hierarchy. The parallel is less than obvious. If somebody wants to source a claim that there's a parallel, fine. Otherwise, I'm gonna delete this. — Isaac Rabinovitch (talk) 19:35, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not an obvious parallel