Firefly theme lyrics!

[Andorian Blues]

Last night I attempted to translate the lyrics to the Firefly theme (listen to it here, for those of us who haven't memorised it already ), and this is what I got for the first four lines:

bangwI' bonge'laH, puHwI' bonge'laH,
Daq vISIQlaHbe' 'e' SantlhaplaH (?)
a' jItlhabtaH vaj jISaHbe'
jIHvo' chal bonge'laHbe'!

literally:

you (pl) are able to take away my loved one, you (pl) are able to take away my land
you (pl) are able to take me (to?) a place that I cannot endure (?)
but I am still free so I do not care
you (pl) cannot take away the sky from me

The second line is the one I'm most unsure about, I've probably mangled it really terribly.

The original is able to be ambiguous about who is being talked to/about, whether the sentence is an imperative or not etc. I chose to translate it a bit more explicitly, losing some of that flavor, but maybe "clipped" Klingon would have been more appropriate to retain the informal feel of the original. You might also notice that I swapped things around for the third line, that was so I could get it to rhyme.

! I didn't want to do any more of it until I know how well I did so far, so feedback from more experienced Klingonists would be appreciated!

[qurgh_]

Sure, I'll give you some pointers.

bangwI' bonge'laH, puHwI' bonge'laH - I don't see any issues with this grammaticality, although the song had the sentences in the opposite order.

Daq vISIQlaHbe' 'e' SatlhaplaH (?) - The big problem here is that Sa- does not agree with 'e'. I don't think 'e' is the best fit here either, a -bogh phrase would work better. The English is "(you) take me to a location at which I am unable to stand". I've taken this stand to be literal, ie "lock me in a box" and not "force me to endure things that I cannot endure", but it's open to interpretation, but either way the phrase sentence needs to have 'e' removed and -bogh used instead.

a' jItlhabtaH vaj jISaHbe' - You probably want a , between jItlhabtaH and vaj, since vaj is not a conjunction.

jIHvo' chal bonge'laHbe'! - This is pretty much what I came up with, so no issues here either.

I'd probably go with something simpler though:

puHwIj yItlhap, - Take my land
bangwIj yItlhap, - Take my love
DaqDaq jIQamlaHbe'bogh HItlhap, - Take me to a place where I cannot stand
jISaHbe', jItlhabtaH, - I don't care, I am free
jIHvo' chal DatlhaplaHbe' - You can't take the sky away from me

To me the song seems to be one sung in anger. The singer is saying "Take this, take that, I don't care because I have the sky and you can't take that". The "you" is the establishment, and I treat that as singular. In my mind he's talking about a singular force that is trying to take everything away from him. I used tlhap and not nge' because I feel like "take away" implies that the person was given that item and the original owner is trying to take it away again. In the case of Firefly the planets were not owned or given by anyone and the establishment is trying to take it from the singer by force.

I also translated the rest of it, but I won't post it until you have finished yours.

[El Payaso Malo]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't bangwI' be just bang? -wI' is not a suffix one can attach to nouns, and bang already means "loved one."

Nevermind, I wasn't thinking when I posted that. I immediatley remembered that -wI' is possesive, and I smacked my head for making such an obvious mistake. But if one cannot be shamed, one cannot be honored.

[Andorian Blues]

thanks for the pointers! this wasn't a very serious attempt at a translation of a full text, and I probably won't revisit it straight away - so if you want to post your translation, go ahead 

[qurgh_]

Ok, here's my translation, feel free to comment or ask questions:

puHwIj yItlhap, - Take my land
bangwIj yItlhap, - Take my love
DaqDaq jIQamlaHbe'bogh HItlhap, - Take me to a place where I cannot stand
jISaHbe', jItlhabtaH, - I don't care, I am free
jIHvo' chal DatlhaplaHbe' - You can't take the sky from me

Daq qIjDaq HItlhap - Take my to the black place
tIja', jIcheghbe' - Tell them: I will not return
puH yImeQ 'ej bIQ'a' yIpub - Burn the land and boil the sea
jIHvo' chal DatlhaplaHbe' - You can't take the sky from me

pagh DaqDaq jIHlaHbogh tu'lu' - There is no place that I can be in
DaH Se'ren'I'tIy vISampu' - Now I have found Serenity
'ach jIHvo' chal DatlhaplaHbe' - but you can't take the sky from me

I'm assuming that the Serenity he's referring to in the song is the ship and not actual serenity, although that's the obvious play on words. There are a few in there that don't transfer.