those-pink-specs - Tumblr blog

[those-pink-specs]

100% true of me too!

Five years!

Over the past few years or so (I didn’t even realise it’s been that long) since I discovered this blog, when I’ve been listening to Icelandic music or watching bits of Icelandic shows, I’ve been able to tell myself “I know what that word means” or “I know what case that’s in cos of the form of ég being used” and I just want to say a massive thank you. I’m definitely no where near fluent, but I’m learning, even if it’s very slow. Takk fyrir 💜💜💜

You’re very welcome! I’m really thrilled to facilitate people out there taking an interest in our language and learning to understand or speak it. Thank you!

[those-pink-specs]

It's great to read this in the context we have now. You can really appreciate his rhetorical footwork around the boycott vs. Do something debate.

Thank you for the translation and all the extra work it must have taken

Brilliant work as always

🖤

Matthías on Vikan með Gísla Marteini, 15.12.23

Another translation request I missed: Matthías was on Vikan með Gísla Marteini before Christmas, the other guests being Jón Jósep Snæbjörnsson or Jónsi, who competed in Eurovision on Iceland's behalf both in 2004 and 2012, and actress, screenwriter and director Tinna Hrafnsdóttir. The discussion touched on Palestine and Eurovision boycotts (at this point Matthías would have already been involved in Bashar Murad's Söngvakeppnin entry, but keeping it under wraps), Matthías's shift from the toughest guy around to a soft family man, his current job as a dramaturge for the National Theater, Christmas traditions, and Danish.

I fully translated more of this show than I really should have; it took ages and I should've tried to summarize more of the non-Matthías bits, but there was a lot of Matthías scattered throughout. Oh well. Hope you all enjoy hearing more from him, at least!

During the introductions, Gísli Marteinn says two of the three people on the couch have their names attached to bands they're no longer part of; he'd wanted to say "Jónsi í Svörtum fötum" (referring to Jónsi's old band Í svörtum fötum) and "Matti í Hatara" (Matti from Hatari). Matthías says "Skellur," which we could translate as, "That's rough." Gísli Marteinn affirms that neither would be correct. Jónsi says "What are we even doing these days? Are we doing anything these days?"

Gísli Marteinn mentions that last time Matthías was on the show, he was going to say he's no longer part of Hatari, but then they forgot to talk about it. Matthías goes "Oh yeah, right. That was supposed to be the big news." But Gísli Marteinn says they're all here because of the interesting stuff they're currently working on.

The show moves on to other things for a while, but we pick back up with them later, after a segment where Gísli Marteinn goes through the news of the week and makes jokes about them.

After a bit of banter with Jónsi about how Gísli Marteinn's dad jokes would have gotten him canceled many times over at Jónsi's dinner table (Gísli Marteinn says more dinner tables than his would) and a bit more talk about how they're all doing such exciting things, Gísli Marteinn moves on:

GÍSLI MARTEINN: There's one issue we didn't mention there despite being prominent in the news, and that's that we're watching the horrible actions of the Israeli army in Gaza, and it makes it hard to quite get into the Christmas spirit. And into that comes this discourse about Eurovision, which is unusual but understandable. I mean, we have two Eurovision-goers here--

JÓNSI: Uh oh.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: I mean, in both of your cases there was talk of whether we should boycott. And Matti, you went to Israel. You had a message to Israelis. When you watch this discourse, what do you think?

MATTHÍAS: Well, I think it would be very courageous and good of RÚV to send a clear message. I mean, let's imagine that after the invasion Russia had competed in Eurovision, but Ukraine hadn't. It's a bit like that, from my point of view. Israel is competing but Palestine isn't. I think either there should be a rule that while there's active warfare going on you shouldn't be in this contest that's supposed to be about peace. Or you could pull out more flags, Palestinian flags, and include Palestine. I think that would be a neat thing to call for. But the boycott movement is very important, of course, even though we didn't quite follow it when it was our turn.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Right, they wanted you to boycott.

MATTHÍAS: Yeah. But boycott is a silent action. A bunch of people boycotted the contest when we were competing; people just didn't hear about it because they weren't recorded anywhere. We went a bit of a different route, but that's not to diminish this important movement.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: No. It's a complex matter. Everyone who insists this is simple perhaps doesn't see every side of it.

MATTHÍAS: No, it is complicated. But it's also very simple. I mean, what's happening now in Gaza is just -- I think people don't realize because they're so used to hearing news about this in their ears, the region of Palestine, but this right now is just -- I'm not going to completely kill the Christmas spirit in the show, but this is so much worse than ever before, ever in the history of Palestine. And that's going on right now.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Yeah, absolutely. And I didn't mean to say that that's particularly nuanced - of course that's simple, in itself.

MATTHÍAS: Yeah. But then you get everything else, which is complicated, of course.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Jónsi, even when you went, even though it wasn't the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I remember a call for you to boycott.

JÓNSI: Yeah, there was.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Namely, you went to Baku in Azerbaijan.

JÓNSI: Yes, it was 2012, and I think that was… It's been a while, and I'm sorry, there are probably a lot of people who know a lot more about this than I do because I perhaps tend to just try to forget these kinds of things and do something else. Please excuse me, I'm sorry. How often have I apologized now?

GÍSLI MARTEINN: A lot!

MATTHÍAS: Like he said, there's no wrong thing to say on this show.

JÓNSI: Right, thank God. Wiener dog.

[laughter]

JÓNSI: No, sorry. There was discourse about how there are human rights abuses going on down there, and we became aware, the group that went, me and Greta Salóme and more, that there were people who were asking us to show solidarity in action. And it was very hard, just sort of being between a rock and a hard place. I hadn't been imagining that this was something I would be tackling - aside from the fact I was probably just a privileged dude, being pampered out there. But by finals night, we really felt like we were in a bind. It was weird to be about to compete for our country and make everyone proud, on the one hand, while knowing that there were people who, from the literal safety of their armchairs in Iceland, wanted us to do something different. And it was always a bit unclear exactly what should be done -- you get so many possibilities, and you don't really know how to react because you think it's not going to matter at all what you do, and you're always going to make someone mad. Just like how you can no longer do a good deed and tell anyone about it, because then it's time to tell you off for trumpeting it. You feel like there's no right chess move to make, these days. But nonetheless, I don't want to minimize that there are horrible things happening in Gaza, and it's weird to feel that political angle coming into the music world. But I'm not an expert on it, I admit.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Of course, and you weren't brought here to opine as an expert. But it's necessary to discuss it. And -- Tinna, we were talking before the show about how it's hard, or you feel guilty for being in a good mood, or a Christmas mood.

TINNA: Yeah, it's a different Christmas season than often before, almost like you don't dare to be happy because there's so much going on.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: But you, artists and entertainers, putting on shows and making music and creating TV shows that are meant to delight us -- give us some good message about how we can do both at the same time.

MATTHÍAS: You're commissioning a message from us?

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Yes. You were brought here to be…

MATTHÍAS: You can do both.

JÓNSI: Can't we just make it a message, like kop28 [I'm not sure what he's referencing], we're trying to show you some message that doesn't really mean anything by itself? I do realize that if I breathe here in Iceland, that doesn't really change much in Gaza. But I think we should keep talking about it, but I'm also an advocate for focusing on the good things. We should work from the good that exists in the world, and try to say, isn't the influence of good better down there than not? Maybe it doesn't affect anything, I don't know. But…

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Be joyful, but don't forget about Gaza. Is that the message?

JÓNSI: A good T-shirt.

MATTHÍAS: Yes. If you want the core message, it's that.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: To be joyful but don't forget about Gaza.

MATTHÍAS: Yes, you've got it.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Now we move to other things. Thank you for giving a bit of where your minds are at with all of this. I know it was a heavy beginning, but sometimes that's necessary.

JÓNSI: Yeah, it's necessary. That's quite true.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Should I talk about the clothes of the men on the couch next? You're both wearing Icelandic wadmal.

MATTHÍAS: You bet!

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Is this the latest fashion trend?

MATTHÍAS: I got married in this, this summer, so I just decided to use it.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: It looks great!

TINNA: They specifically asked me to sit in the middle so that they wouldn't be side by side in tweed.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: That would be tacky.

JÓNSI: My friend Gunni at [clothing store] Kormákur og Skjöldur is very happy with us both, no doubt. But he doesn't realize how ridiculously warm it is under this, and we had a heavy discussion earlier, and they had to make up my ears twice so they wouldn't get red, and it's all just firing up now.

They move on to talking with Tinna about her new TV series Heima er best, which they compare to sort of an Icelandic Succession, which was just nominated for the Nordic scriptwriting awards, and then about when Jónsi and Tinna co-starred in Grease and then in Ávaxtakarfan ("The Fruit Basket", an Icelandic children's musical about bullying featuring anthropomorphic fruit). To stay sane after writing up all this I won't translate this whole section since Matthías doesn't have much to say in it, although he does express surprise that they had theatrical productions during the summer (Grease was an indie production that just kind of rented the City Theater over the summer).

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Speaking of your former lives and such… Matti, when you went to Eurovision and were Matti the Hater [Hatari], I would have said you were just about the coolest, toughest guy in the country. Then fifteen minutes later you're on your knees at Sky Lagoon proposing to your wife and had become so soft and tender and beautiful and in love, and now you've got a kid and another on the way.

MATTHÍAS: Exactly.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Was Matti from Hatari all fake, or did you just change that much?

MATTHÍAS: Mmm, I've always been soft. The other stuff is a bit of a costume. But of course it softens you when you're in love, and softens you more when you love your child. So maybe that's the Christmas message you were looking for.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: I knew you had one in there!

MATTHÍAS: No, definitely. I was on my way home from work earlier and my sister-in-law who was babysitting called me and said, "Sóley has pooped everywhere!", and I found it to be good news, because I like hearing news of my daughter but also, "everywhere" means some of it went in the potty, so I was kind of just, "Score!" to hear that message. It changes a bit… You've got new and exciting stuff to deal with. It's wonderful. And I'm looking forward to having two. It'll be… Two girls!

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Oh?

MATTHÍAS: Yeah, it's a girl.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: I can recommend having two girls!

TINNA: I'm lucky to have two - twins. Two for one in my case.

MATTHÍAS: So you were quick.

TINNA: Just finish it all in one.

JÓNSI: In one evening, or?

TINNA: One evening! All in one, one evening.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: How old are your twins?

TINNA: They're eleven. And when I told them I was going to sit on a couch with the Hatari guy, they were like, "Wow, Mom!"

GÍSLI MARTEINN: If you've got twins, is the hardest part over, or is it only over when they're about thirty?

JÓNSI: Good question.

TINNA: I'm actually very lucky. They're very good friends and mesh together well, so it's gone pretty well for us. But then you never know what the teenage years will be like.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Right. We're making our way there.

TINNA: We're making our way there.

JÓNSI: But doesn't that make you alone against them, and then there's two of them?

TINNA: There are some plots going on that I don't quite know about, but I try to keep up the radar.

JÓNSI: A lie detector.

TINNA: Yes, and a lie detector and everything. They're watching me right now; they're probably going "Oh my God, Mom, don't talk about us!"

MATTHÍAS: And do you use these plots to write your scripts?

TINNA: Oh, yes, definitely.

JÓNSI: I also… How old are they?

TINNA: Eleven.

JÓNSI: What are their names again?

TINNA: Starkaður Máni and Jökull Þór.

JÓNSI: I'm going to look into camera two: Starkaður Máni and Jökull Þór, if you aren't good until Christmas, Matti from Hatari and Immi the Pineapple [Jónsi's character in Ávaxtakarfan, the tyrannical villain] are coming to your house.

[laughter]

MATTHÍAS: Correct.

They go to commercials. When we return to the show, Jónsi has brought out a guitar and is enthusiastically leading the audience in singing Christmas songs.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Jónsi formerly of Í svörtum fötum decided to keep everyone pumped while we went to commercials -- while capitalism took its share, since you didn't manage to bring it to its knees, dear Matti.

MATTHÍAS: The boys are working on it.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: The boys are working on bringing capitalism to its knees.

They talk about Jónsi and his wild success as a pop star in the early 2000s and how now he works for a financial corporation. He describes how fame and being surrounded by people who worship you almost regardless of what you do just kind of isn't healthy and he had just become kind of a dickhead, and he withdrew from it all to get away from it.

MATTHÍAS: But Gísli, you're one of those exceptions. You've been famous for a long time but you're not a dickhead. [He says a few more words that I can't make out over the laughter.]

GÍSLI MARTEINN: That's the best compliment I've ever gotten! Thanks, Matti, I'm grateful you say that. But back to you, you said earlier you were on your way home from work. Where do you work?

MATTHÍAS: The National Theater!

GÍSLI MARTEINN: I mean, you aren't Matti from Hatari anymore.

MATTHÍAS: No, I'm Matti from the National Theater!

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Matti from the National Theater! Who doesn't know Matti from the National Theater?

MATTHÍAS: Hopefully more people know now!

GÍSLI MARTEINN: We know you had become a playwright. You wrote award-winning plays. And theater is just your muse right now?

MATTHÍAS: It seems to be that way. The urge to write is still strong in me, and I'll probably keep doing that.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Don't you have the title of dramaturge, which nobody knows what that is, except Tinna?

MATTHÍAS: The chosen few know.

JÓNSI: Can we know what it is?

MATTHÍAS: Those of us who know what it is recognize each other.

JÓNSI: And no one says anything.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: A secret society!

MATTHÍAS: No, it's translated as 'listrænn ráðunautur' ["Artistic advisor"] for the National Theater, and of course it's the best job in the world. You get to read plays, watch them, your job is to have opinions on theater, talk about theater. You're part of a book club called the project choice committee of the National Theater, and you're in contact with all the directors, and reading scripts that Icelandic playwrights entrust to the National Theater, which is a big responsibility for me because I've been on the other side there.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Is this your dream job?

MATTHÍAS: It's -- of everything that exists that is a job, this is the best one.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Very good!

MATTHÍAS: Because the other stuff that I'd want to do even more doesn't exist as a job. It's just freelance. But this is perfect.

They turn to Tinna to talk about her project directing a drama series about Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, former president of Iceland. Matthías mentions he's excited about it and that they compared it to The Crown during the break and that really piqued his interest.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: And speaking of our heritage, you're doing the Edda [Snorra-Edda, the most comprehensive source about the old Norse religion, written in the 1200s] at the National Theater, right?

MATTHÍAS: Yes, I'm working on that as a dramaturge, and it's very exciting.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: It's your Christmas show, right?

MATTHÍAS: The National Theater's Christmas show.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: The Edda in its entirety?

MATTHÍAS: Yes, it's very comprehensive. But it's full of unexpected little twists for those of us who know these stories -- the myths, Thor, Loki, Óðinn and all that. Or for those who don't know and want to get to know their heritage, you're also welcome. But everyone who liked Njála [Brennu-Njáls saga, one of the Sagas of Icelanders written between ~1200-1350 CE] at the City Theater, if you saw that, this is the same director, Þorleifur [Örn Arnarsson]. That was one of the coolest shows I've ever seen, so this should be something.

They move on to a Berglind Festival (comedian) bit about rebranding Christmas. When we return to the studio, she has joined the couch, everyone is wearing sunglasses, and they're each doing some kind of little dance to the Christmas song remix still playing in the background. Matthías says, "You have to warn us if we're going to dance on the show." Gísli Marteinn says, "I didn't see you, did you look like dorks?" Matthías: "I don't know."

GÍSLI MARTEINN: So if we keep to the traditional Christmas, Christmas is next weekend. Do you have any bizarre Christmas traditions, or are you very standard about it?

MATTHÍAS: Speaking of rebranding, my dad… At the Ban Thai restaurant downtown, there's a course called [kung hansa?] [I looked up their menu to try to find out what the correct spelling is but unfortunately the online menu had no name similar to that], a shrimp course, and we find it Christmasy. We often have it as a starter on Christmas.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: On Christmas Eve? [Christmas Eve is the height of the Christmas celebration in Iceland.]

MATTHÍAS: Yes.

BERGLIND: So do you put an almond in the rice? [She's referring to the Icelandic Christmas tradition of making rice pudding and putting a single almond in it, often as a starter; whoever gets the almond in their bowl should try to discreetly remove it and then keep it hidden until the end of the course. If they do it successfully without being spotted, they will receive a special 'almond gift'.]

MATTHÍAS: Uh, no.

BERGLIND: Okay, lame.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: So do you just go to Tómas at Ban Thai and buy it, or do you cook it at home?

MATTHÍAS: We buy it at Ban Thai.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Wow, well done! How did that start?

MATTHÍAS: We were just at Ban Thai celebrating some milestone, as we do, and then someone said it was kind of a Christmasy taste.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Very good. Tinna, that's a hard act to follow.

TINNA: I will try my best. We have very firm traditions and always go to my mom on Christmas Eve and eat Danish duck, speaking of Danish Christmas earlier. It's an old family tradition, and we have the Christmas pudding and an almond gift and so on.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Is Danish duck getting imported?

TINNA: My mom has some secret ways of procuring Danish duck, I'm not going to get into that. In previous years we would sometimes sing afterwards, "Og nu har vi jul igen, og nu har vi jul igen, og julen varer helt til påske." [Danish: "And now we have Christmas again, and now we have Christmas again, and Christmas lasts all the way until Easter."] Do you know it?

GÍSLI MARTEINN: No!

TINNA: It's some Danish song. I love the lyrics - og julen varer helt til påske.

JÓNSI: I said that at the start of the show.

TINNA: Wouldn't that be great, just having Christmas all the way until Easter?

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Christmas until Easter, definitely!

MATTHÍAS: Now you, and earlier there were some people in the audience talking about flødeskum [whipped cream], and you [Gísli] earlier with leverpostej [Danish liver pâté] -- do people generally just speak Danish--

JÓNSI: Danish is taking us over.

MATTHÍAS: --at least at Christmas?

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Don't we? I mean, it's all Danish traditions we have here.

MATTHÍAS: It sounds great, at least.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: It sounds great. Jónsi, the pressure is on.

JÓNSI: Så man sidder i sin festlige måde [Danish: "So you sit in your festive manner…"]… No, definitely not.

He talks about his workplace's tradition where they eat as much as they can and simply decide not to gain any weight by sending a message to the cosmos; Matthías doesn't comment further from here.

[those-pink-specs]

Just leaving this here.

[those-pink-specs]

Hatari nostalgia posting.

Five whole years?

Really?

This is a brief “interview” from music festival Aldrei fór ég suður 2018 (“I Never Went South”; “going south” in Icelandic means to go to Reykjavík, particularly to move to Reykjavík from other smaller settlements, and the music festival takes place in Ísafjörður in the West fjords, the name referencing a song by Bubbi Morthens). Transcript and translation below.

Keep reading

[those-pink-specs]

When Hatari won Söngvakeppnin in 2019, were there any reactions from any ultra-conservative groups in Iceland? Cos I know in my country if a performance and song like that was selected for Eurovision, some people wouldn’t be very happy lol

Of course there were people who were displeased by it, for all sorts of reasons, as will happen with pretty much anything. People who thought it was too sexual for a family-friendly contest because of the BDSM aesthetics, people who thought the fascist aesthetics in the video were disturbing, people who thought singing about hate prevailing is a bad message, people who just think that kind of music is terrible noise, people who thought any artist participating in Söngvakeppnin on the year the contest was held in Israel was complicit in Israel's pinkwashing of its human rights abuses and it was rank hypocrisy of them to presume to participate in the name of calling attention to Palestine. One opinion article even accused them of appropriating BDSM culture (and then a member of the BDSM society wrote a counterarticle going actually we fucking love Hatari over here, stop getting offended on our behalf).

Broadly, though, they were supported! They did win the duel round. A lot of Icelanders really wanted to make some kind of statement on Palestine since RÚV wasn't withdrawing.

[those-pink-specs]

"...songs that I find bafflingly forgettable have qualified before."

I relate to this extremely.

What’s your opinion on Hera’s song for this year? If Iceland do decide to participate, could you see it qualifying or not?

I find it extremely generic and forgettable and had to pull it up again just now to remember what it even sounds like (I didn't watch Söngvakeppnin but had briefly listened to the other contestants a little while ago). I would not personally expect it to qualify, but songs I find bafflingly forgettable have qualified before.

[those-pink-specs]

Palestinian pop singer Bashar Murad is hoping to represent Iceland at the Eurovision Song Contest in May and bring “a Palestinian voice to the main stage”. [...] Murad is competing in the national final with a song co-written by Einar Stefansson of the Icelandic band Hatari, known for raising a banner showing Palestinian flags during the 2019 Eurovision Contest. [...] In Iceland’s domestic qualification, singers of any nationality can participate if they sing their song in the first semifinal in Icelandic. Murad, who was born in and lives in occupied East Jerusalem, said it was difficult to learn the song in Icelandic, but he found some similarities to Arabic. His entry, Wild West, tells the story of challenging boundaries and chasing dreams against all odds. “I wanted to illustrate how many obstacles as Palestinians we have to go through in order to be heard … we’re excluded from every mainstream platform,” he said. “Everyone has theories about my participation. And everyone is politicising my existence when I’m really just a human who had a dream and applied for this competition fair and square.” When asked if Murad wants Israel to participate in the competition, he said, “Of course, I don’t want my occupier to be there.” “But my main focus right now is to be able to bring, for the first time in history, a Palestinian voice to the main stage.”

Iceland’s domestic ESC qualification, Söngvakeppnin, will be decided today (2 Mar 2024).

[those-pink-specs]

BASHAR MURAD - INTIFADA ON THE DANCE FLOOR (Official Music Video)

[those-pink-specs]

Sigh.

What do you think about the söngvakeppnin results (and the post hera björk liked after the contest)

Very disappointed, of course. If it’s not Bashar I’m just boycotting the main contest. Ironically, a lot of the most ardent Palestine supporters in Iceland were boycotting Söngvakeppnin altogether, while every questionable racist undoubtedly banded together to vote Hera in the duel, so the boycotts may actually have hurt him.

I don’t know what post you’re talking about; you’re going to have to elaborate on the gossip.

[those-pink-specs]

Whelp ... no reason not to play the shit out of this banger of a song now, I guess.

All respect to Hera Björk and the free democratic choices of my island friends at the opposite end of the world.

But holy shit.

This was the complete package. Just waiting to be picked up and sent. Could have made history.

Ah well.

[those-pink-specs]

An Einar appreciation post.

Haven't done one of those for a while.

More when I'm done crying...

All from IG

[those-pink-specs]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Bashar Murad (@basharmuradofficial)

[those-pink-specs]

Brilliant.

Glad to know his perfect diction translates!

I've been meaning to ask, how do you find Bashar's pronunciation?

I see that it got a general 'well I understood it' from some Icelanders on YouTube (at least I hope they were Icelanders).

But what's your take?

(From Pink Specs, avoiding the main blog blues 😉)

I was honestly very impressed! If I’d just heard it having no idea who he was I’d have assumed he’d lived here for years - bit of an accent, inevitably, but he does better on some of the trickier sounds than many immigrants who genuinely have lived here for years and speak the language fluently, and several lines are basically just perfect and I would have zero notes. He does a bit better in the live Söngvakeppnin performance than the official audio, even. What a legend. I’m very proud of him (and Einar, who I gather was the one to help him learn the lyrics).

He definitely does not have the air of someone who doesn’t know the language at all just trying to imitate what they hear as an arbitrary sequence of sounds, like when I tried to sing English songs as a kid - he clearly knows the individual words and exactly what each one is meant to sound like.

[those-pink-specs]

Oh, my little gods in trees and rivers, I have missed this kind of post!

🖤🖤🖤

Bashar Murad - Vestrið villt (Wild Wild West) - translation and notes

Bashar Murad's Söngvakeppnin entry, "Wild Wild West", was performed in the second semifinal last Saturday with Matthías's Icelandic lyrics. They are a translation of the official English lyrics, but there are some interesting differences that would be fun to ramble about a little, so here's a backtranslation of the Icelandic lyrics into English and some notes!

Compare to the official English lyrics here.

Official Icelandic lyrics

Er enn á ferðinni á sömu bylgjunni Veit ei hvert skal haldið í leit að hamingjunni

Er grjót sem veltur fram get aldrei staðið kyrr Þegar þú verður bitur og vilt gera betur þarf að breyta til

Hendi mér upp á veginn svo syng ég þína skál Tómar hendur, tómir vasar en í hjarta mínu brennur bál

Ótaminn villingur allt frá því ‘93 og mig skortir allt fé – ég sver það breytist nú

(Því ég) ætla að fara í vestrið villt, þar sem illt og spillt Er besta fólkið Og þó ég geri mjög gott mót Fari fót fyrir fót Er ég aldrei hólpinn

Ég ætla að fara í vestrið villt, Þar sem mild og tryllt Eru kaup og skipti Ég segi já, ekkert mál, að veði legg mína sál Svo er bara að taka sénsinn

Ég er enn á ferðinni ekki kominn langt á veg Ég glamra á gítarinn, með leðurstígvélin, og slóð í sandinn dreg Klæddur fyrir hlutverkið, vona að þið hrífist með Tók mig þrjátíu ár að átta mig á – að vera bara ég

Ætla að fara í vestrið villt, þar sem illt og spillt Er besta fólkið Og þó ég geri mjög gott mót Fari fót fyrir fót Er ég aldrei hólpinn

Ætla að fara í vestrið villt, Þar sem mild og tryllt Eru kaup og skipti Ég segi já, ekkert mál, að veði legg mína sál Svo er bara að taka sénsinn

Ég er bara að taka sénsinn

Velkomin í vestrið villt… Velkomin í vestrið villt, Velkomin í vestrið villt, Þú færð einn séns til að hamra járnið Þarna er það – tækifærið

(Því ég) Ætla að fara í vestrið villt, þar sem illt og spillt Er besta fólkið Og þó ég geri mjög gott mót Fari fót fyrir fót Er ég aldrei hólpinn

Ætla að fara í vestrið villt, Þar sem mild og tryllt Eru kaup og skipti Ég segi já, ekkert mál, að veði legg mína sál Svo er bara að taka sénsinn Ég er bara að taka sénsinn

Velkomin í vestrið villt.

English backtranslation

I'm still on the road, on the same wavelength I don't know where I'm headed in search of happiness

I'm like a rolling stone, can't stay in one place When you get bitter and want to do better you have to make a change

Getting up on the road, then I'll sing a toast to you Empty hands, empty pockets but in my heart there's a burning flame

I'm an untamed wild thing ever since '93 and I've got no money - I swear that's changing now

('Cause I'm) Going to the west that's wild, where the best people are wicked and corrupt And even if I'm very successful Take one step at a time I'm never safe

I'm going to the west that's wild where trade and barter is mild and unhinged I say yes, no problem, put my soul on the line and then it's just taking that chance

I'm still on the road not very far along I strum my guitar with my leather boots, dragging a trail through the sand Dressed for the role, hope you're swept up with me Took me thirty years to figure out - just being me

I'm going to the west that's wild, where the best people are wicked and corrupt And even if I'm very successful Take one step at a time I'm never safe

I'm going to the west that's wild where trade and barter is mild and unhinged I say yes, no problem, put my soul on the line and then it's just taking that chance

I'm just taking that chance

Welcome to the west that's wild... Welcome to the west that's wild Welcome to the west that's wild You get one chance to strike while the iron is hot There it is - opportunity

('Cause I'm) Going to the west that's wild, where the best people are wicked and corrupt And even if I'm very successful Take one step at a time I'm never safe

I'm going to the west that's wild where trade and barter is mild and unhinged I say yes, no problem, put my soul on the line and then it's just taking that chance

Welcome to the west that's wild.

Translation notes

The first thing to remark upon here is the title and lyric vestrið villt. The actual common Icelandic term for the Wild West, which is also the normal, obvious way to translate it, is "Villta vestrið", which literally just means "the wild west".

So why is the song called "Vestrið villt" and not "Villta vestrið", exactly? Most obviously, "Villta vestrið" is four syllables where "wild, wild west" is three, and Matthías wanted the equivalent of "Welcome to the wild, wild west" to scan properly and sound good. Icelandic word order is often somewhat flexible, especially in poetry, and it'd be fairly normal to turn the phrase around to "Vestrið villta". But to make it three syllables he also leaves the definite ending off the adjective. That's a very unusual, poetic thing to do, though not by any means unknown - poems and lyrics do the same thing occasionally, but it has a definite unusual, antiquated sound to it. You would never refer to the Wild West like that in normal language.

Now, the primary motivation for translating it this way is almost certainly just the syllable count. It's a construction that is as a translation of "wild west" while preserving the rhythm of the song. But the overall effect that it gives, at least to me, is kind of interesting - it sort of decouples the lyric from the actual American Wild West, which ultimately has a different name, and instead puts those two words together in a way where you might be more likely to consider them separately. It's the west, and it's wild. And that actually feels kind of appropriate to the song! Bashar may be wearing a cowboy hat, but he isn't literally going to the Wild West - the story in the music video, after all, shows him going to Iceland. To capture this part of the feel of it, I rendered the lyric as "the west that's wild" - which coincidentally also scans appropriately in English - although that doesn't capture the unusual poetic nature of the phrasing.

There are little lines in the Icelandic translation that are sort of a bit more colorful than the English equivalent, which is fun. "I gotta hit the highway, yeah, here I go again" is rendered as "Hendi mér upp á veginn, svo syng ég þína skál", which I backtranslated as "Getting up on the road, then I'll sing a toast to you," with the toast being original to the Icelandic translation. (It also technically uses an expression that literally means throwing himself up onto the road, which has a bit more force to it than "I gotta".) "Got a can-do attitude and nothing to lose" becomes Bashar wagering his soul, which sounds a bit more dramatic.

The English version says that in the wild, wild west the only rest is for the wicked, a negation of the Biblical idiom "No rest for the wicked": in other words, in the wild, wild west, everyone is punished but the wicked. We don't really have an equivalent idiom in Icelandic, and Matthías went a different route that's fun in a different way, going for the internal rhyme of illt and spillt with the villt in vestrið villt. That rhythmic rhyme has a good and crunchy sound that I like a lot. The meaning winds up being a little different but having a similar air: in the west the the wicked and corrupt are the 'best people'. Similarly, later the English version speaks of the wild, wild west being the best place for business, but Matthías goes for the crunchy internal rhyme with villt again, this time with mild and tryllt. They're sort of antonyms and I'm not quite sure how to interpret trade and barter being both mild and unhinged, but the rhyme still sounds neat. Bashar has studded chaps and is playing spaghetti guitar, but Matthías's translation ditches the studded chaps (I would have no idea how to translate that either) and calling it a spaghetti guitar specifically in favor of the new appropriately Western imagery of dragging a trail through the sand.

Where in English, even if you do your best and you pass the test doesn't mean you'll make it, in Icelandic even if I'm very successful and take one step at a time I'm never safe, which makes the whole thing sound a bit more dangerous - emphasizing having to be careful and yet not being safe, rather than the difficulty of making it.

The English "Why the hell wouldn't I risk it?" becomes "Svo er bara að taka sénsinn", or "Then it's just taking that chance." Séns is slang, though older slang, and actually derives from the same root as chance, though I think it came here via the Nordic languages rather than English. Slightly different meaning but same general point about choosing to take that risk, different lines that I think are both fairly punchy in different ways.

There's one bit where I think the translation may be outright losing a bit of nuance. In English "I dressed up and I put it on, hoping I'd fit the scene / Took thirty damn years to figure out, I just gotta be me" sounds to me like he's describing having originally tried to dress up for a role and tried to fit in before he discovered he just had to be himself, but in the translation, "Klæddur fyrir hlutverkið, vona að þið hrífist með" is in the present tense, as if he's describing now being dressed up for a role and currently hoping to sweep this audience with him, more as if this current role is the 'being himself' he's figured out. But that's only if I'm understanding the nuance in the original English correctly, of course - I would imagine Matthías worked with Bashar directly on the translation and he approved of the phrasing.

[those-pink-specs]

Now I know why Bashar Murad has an old key hanging from his belt. Respect.

Please watch with subtitles.

[those-pink-specs]

The Collective lives!

Hatari at Iceland Airwaves, November 2nd 2023.

So excited for what Phase III has to offer. 🖤⛓️

[those-pink-specs]

Refuge (official English production of Griðastaður) - review

A while back, Matthías's play Griðastaður was staged in English at the New Nordics festival in London, in a professional translation by Philip Roughton. Being that I had previously translated the play myself, I was always interested in the proper professional translation, but I never got around to watching it until today (a friend recorded the stream when it happened). Various thoughts and rambling below!

First, let's talk about the title for a moment! Refuge and Sanctuary are both valid translations of Griðastaður; Philip Roughton went with the former and I went with the latter, which is handy for distinguishing the two translations. When I wrote my translation I don't think the word refuge actually came to mind for the title - but I did find sanctuary and its connotations of sacredness metaphorically appropriate to how it's used in the play, where IKEA isn't simply an arbitrary place to escape to but somewhere that feels very personally important to Lárus (he doesn't literally consider it sacred, of course, but sanctuary is often used in senses where it's not literally sacred). I definitely won't claim it's a better translation than Refuge, particularly since Matthías presumably gave his personal blessing to Refuge as the English title, but I think I do stand by why I went with Sanctuary myself.

Overall it's, of course, just a different translation of the same play. I was amused to hear some turns of phrase that Roughton had translated identically or more or less identically to what I'd come up with, and noted various places where he came up with something I really liked that's definitely better than what I did (the prisoners of war in the POW camps who keep taking care of themselves were "happy campers", which is amazing; "quite absolutely stone-cold dead" was good; loved "I'd look like a twat" about going back against the traffic through IKEA), and a couple spots where I still kind of prefer mine. I noticed there were lots of general inconsequential script changes, compared to the filmed Icelandic version on the Academy of the Arts website that I translated - the order of some sentences changed, little bits that got removed, references to things swapped out for references to other things. I don't know if these were tweaks Matthías made before the public Icelandic run, or after, or if some might be liberties taken by the translator, or if either Jörundur Ragnarsson or Martin Donaghy slightly mixed up lines somewhere - it doesn't really matter at all, but worth noting! I suspect Matthías made at least a lot of these tweaks, though.

Somewhat unusually, the character names are all localized - Lárus is Laurence, Guðrún is Loreen, his mom Stefanía is Stephanie - but the setting is not. They're still talking about the IKEA in Garðabær and about the Griljera stove that costs 160,000 krónur. I think that's a bit of an odd combination - if we're still set in Iceland, why do we have a Laurence and a Loreen? The Q&A afterwards indicated they'd gone back and forth a bit on whether the setting should be localized or not, which gives me the impression perhaps the translator originally fully localized it and then in the end the director made a call on swapping the setting back to Iceland while still keeping Philip Roughton's character names.

The one more noteworthy actual script change is that instead of talking about a Chinese guy, Laurence just talks about the Deodorant Man. He's not from any particular country, just vaguely from the opposite side of the planet, and Laurence doesn't try to imitate any kind of accent or dialect even for two sentences. I think that's definitely a good call, as a cultural translation and in general - Lárus being a little bit racist wasn't really contributing anything that mattered to the narrative, and I like the choice to make him Deodorant Man a lot; it identifies him better as the guy from that story and makes the identifying reason Laurence made him up into the important thing, which just fits. Deodorant Man unfortunately wouldn't exactly have flowed off the tongue in Icelandic where svitalyktareyðismaðurinn is nine whole syllables (maðurinn með svitalyktareyðinn sounds a bit better but is ten syllables), but in English that's absolutely the best thing to call him, A+ on that.

The direction is definitely a bit different from how Matthías directed it himself, and Martin Donaghy plays Laurence a bit differently from Jörundur Ragnarsson's Lárus. Lárus is more neatly dressed and has a more repressed, nervous, intensely awkward nerd vibe, where Martin's performance is more energetic and he feels like a more folksy, average sort of guy (apart from the bits where he's being a total weirdo, of course). It doesn't totally change how his character comes across like in the early draft version, but it does make the overall vibe feel a bit different - not in a bad way, mind! This will always be the case to some extent when different actors interpret the same character.

Refuge definitely plays the bit about the spiders like in the draft version, where the imaginary spiders attack as he's talking to Deodorant Man, and he acts out the whole action scene of trying to escape from the spiders (there's a silly James Bond reference in the staging), where Jörundur Ragnarsson played it completely differently, just standing and not really acting it out, more like a kid playing with action figures or an adult playing along with one. That bit is weird and comes across weirdly in the Icelandic version, and is probably more coherent and works better as it's staged here (but still a bit weird). Given here it's more similar to the draft version, I'm curious if it was largely down to Jörundur wanting to play it the way he did.

On the other hand, in other bits I feel like the Icelandic version and Jörundur Ragnarsson's performance were more effective. I kind of miss the fake PowerPoint, which added a bit of humour to that contemplation. And I liked how he played the employee who approaches Lárus in the staged bathroom, how much like a genuine employee he sounds in his polite prodding about whether there's anything he can help him with and how subtly awkward he is about Lárus throwing the bit about his mom at him, compared to the kind of flat speaker-voice in Refuge.

Perhaps most significantly, my favorite sequence of the play is the bit where Lárus gets the message about his mom's death, curls up on the shelves until after closing, then imagines the encounter with the security guard, then suddenly feels really hungry and goes on this manic little trip to the cafeteria where he gets worked up about food waste before he finally goes to the bathroom and calms down. In Matthías's original direction, and Jörundur's performance, I thought this whole sequence worked really well and was emotionally effective. We actually see him curl up inside a shelf, looking small and vulnerable as the lights dim. We hear him sniffle quietly for a few dark minutes as slow, mournful music plays, getting a sense of the six hours he spends there like that. Then he gets up slowly and talks about how quiet it is, that he's all alone in IKEA, flatly repeats the message about his mom (showing it/his impression of it is burned into his mind and he's still thinking about it), and then starts imagining the security guard coming to throw him out - where at first he's pleading and trying to explain himself but then takes it all out in a desperate violent power fantasy where he beats up the security guard, manically threatens him into calling him the king of IKEA, and then continues to beat him half to death... before having a silent, abrupt 'what the fuck' moment and immediately redirecting all that tortured energy into going down to the cafeteria and getting viciously angry about that instead before he finally manages to actually cool off in the bathroom. It's an intense emotional progression of grief redirected into helpless anger and rage and I love it a lot.

So, in part this is definitely just me disliking that they took the thing I liked and changed it, I know, I know. But in Refuge, he simply climbs behind a bit of the set and only pauses for maybe a second after saying he was there for six hours. There's no moment of broken vulnerability, no curling up like a child, no dimmed lights or music, just him standing there, moving on from saying he was up on the shelf for six hours to talking about the silence. Martin does a good job on the security guard bit, and I particularly like how well he does the body language of having his hands wrestled behind his back without anyone there, but during the assault he plays the security guard in a very exaggeratedly pathetic, squeaky-voiced kind of way which I feel like makes it all cartoonier and detracts from the fantasy brutality of it a bit - it is fair and absolutely a valid acting choice that makes sense when Lárus is imagining this power fantasy, but it's just not quite as effective to me.

And instead of proceeding straight from there to him abruptly realizing he's hungry and going down to the cafeteria, this production inserts a sequence where Laurence grabs a curtain, puts it on like a cape, takes a paper crown on a pillow, and crowns himself king of IKEA while Sigur Rós plays, before he declares he's hungry and goes to the cafeteria. Which is amusing and all, but it completely breaks the continuity there! Suddenly it isn't that he's still in that manic worked-up state where he imagined that security guard encounter; he's just mad about the food waste, I guess. Similarly, where Jörundur was clearly cooling down in the bathroom, catching his breath, going, "Okay. Okay," at himself, in this version he more just seems to go there to pee, takes one deep breath and appears more just relieved to empty his bladder than anything else.

And... when Lárus is in the bathtub, eating his chicken salad, he says, "What was that. What was that." In context, the way he delivers it, he's asking what that was - that whole bonkers emotional outburst about the imaginary security guard and the food. It's clearly that, because he repeats it a couple times to himself with blank exhaustion but no surprise. He's still cooling down from a breakdown, a little freaked out at himself. He goes on from there to remind himself that there's nobody there, that the security guard was imaginary.

Laurence, on the other hand, goes "What was that?!" in a startled way, like he's just heard something that freaked him out. Which is a valid reading of the script, you could even read his subsequent comment about there not being a soul around in relation to that, but I feel like it's just a bit of a less interesting, less nuanced reading of the script.

He's also got the curtain cape and paper crown on all the way until Loreen leads him out of IKEA, which makes the interpretation of Laurence feel more distinctly childlike, not in a vulnerable way but a naïve, simplistic way, perhaps. I do think that's sort of a fair interpretation; a bit different, but definitely a reflection of real qualities he has in the script (the spider sequence definitely feels like something a child would make up). I'm not sure I'd personally associate the king of IKEA bit, which was part of a violent grief-induced rage power fantasy, with those qualities in him, though.

Finally - the bit where he rants to his mom about how everyone dies has a pause before he tells her he loves her, which is an interesting change to me because in the Icelandic version it just sort of slips out finally at the tail end of this rant about how everyone dies so fuck it, while this version makes it seem more conscious and considered on his part (which also makes it a little weirder that he then goes on to say "No, of course I didn't say that").

All in all, though, it was a lot of fun to see a different interpretation of the play and an actual professional translation of it! Despite all the niggles above, I thought Martin Donaghy's performance was great overall - different, but not worse. Similarly, I take issue with some of the direction, but other direction choices were great! Matthías talked in the Q&A about how seeing things in a different context is always revealing, and I think he's right - different interpretations of works always reveal different facets of them to explore.