All went OK

During the after service discussion a couple of us talked a bit about something we had sung - the translation of "Shine, Jesus, shine". You who speak French consider the conjugaison in the following:

Seigneur, par la clarté de ton amour,
Chasse l'obscurité qui nous entoure.
Jésus, toi la lumière qui nous éclaires,
Vérité qui nous guides et qui nous libères,
Brille sur moi, brille sur moi.

OK. Should it be Toi qui nous éclaires or la lumière qui nous éclaire ? Either we drop the s or we introduce commas. Same thing with the next line.

However, when we discussed this we decided that the whole translation is a bit... Anyway. We are not going to change it.

To illustrate the difference this makes imagine a hymn that went :

"Father-like he tend and spare us,
Well our feeble frame he know,
in his hands he gently bear us,
rescue us from all our foes..."

It would be wrong. It would sound wrong. It would cry out to be corrected.

Comments

David said…
Personally, I'd say it would be agreeing with "la lumière" et "vérité" after the qui, so drop the 's'. Not sure though!

David
8:04 am
Alan said…
Yes, and when you have a swiss and a french teacher discussing what to do with it you just keep your head down ! Reminds me of my days in computer system-building sometimes.
8:27 am
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