April 19, 2025
Uit "Elegy for Neal Cassidy" Door Alan Ginsberg
"Teder geest, dank je om me aan te raken met tedere handen. Toen je jong was, in en mooi lichaam."
-Allen Ginsberg, Elegie voor Neal Cassidy
"Tender spirit, thank you for touching me with a tender hands. When you were young, in a beautiful body."
-Allen Ginsberg, Elegy for Neal Cassidy
Correction Settings
Uit "Elegy for Neal Cassidy" Ddoor Alan Ginsberg
Uit "Elegy for Neal Cassidy" door Alan Ginsberg
Only names and the starts of sentences are capitalised in Dutch. Anything in quotation marks is part of the sentence so the word after them does not get a capital letter.
"Tedere geest, dankmet tedere handen raakte je om me aan te raken met tedere handen.en ik dank je daarvoor
"Tedere geest, met tedere handen raakte je me aan en ik dank je daarvoor
There's no Dutch equivalent to the way the present continuous is used here. The rest of the lines make it clear this was in the past, so "raak" becomes "raakte".
A less literal translation would be "dank je voor je tedere aanraking". This preserves the order of thanking first, but looses the explicit statement of hands which would sound unnatural here.
Toen je jong was, in een mooi lichaam." Toen je jong was, in een mooi lichaam."
Feedback
Well done! You picked a beautiful, but hard quote to translate.
April 21, 2025
Thanks for the feedback! Definitely hard to transmute the magic in poetry to another language, especially working with a low skill level. That was just the quote that popped into my head when I read the prompt and just thought I'd give it a try. I do have a question though. You said there's no Dutch equivalent to the way the present continuous tense is used in the quote, but living in Belgium, I often hear someone at the end of an event say to the host something to the effect of "Merci om me hier te hebben," and that feels like a very natural way to translate "Thanks for having me" so in my head it felt like a nice way to maintain the energy of "thank you for touching me..." Is that just a sort of Belgian street talk that you wouldn't see written? Or is there a nuanced difference that I'm overlooking? Thanks
April 27, 2025
Ah I'm from The Netherlands so that could well be a Flemish thing. You'd have to ask a Flemish speaker if that's street talk or if you could use that in writing. To me it sounds grammatically incorrect so that's thing to keep in mind if you're communicating people in The Netherlands.
|
Uit "Elegy for Neal Cassidy" Door Alan Ginsberg
Uit "Elegy for Neal Cassidy" Only names and the starts of sentences are capitalised in Dutch. Anything in quotation marks is part of the sentence so the word after them does not get a capital letter. |
|
"Teder geest, dank je om me aan te raken met tedere handen.
"Tedere geest, There's no Dutch equivalent to the way the present continuous is used here. The rest of the lines make it clear this was in the past, so "raak" becomes "raakte". A less literal translation would be "dank je voor je tedere aanraking". This preserves the order of thanking first, but looses the explicit statement of hands which would sound unnatural here. |
|
Toen je jong was, in en mooi lichaam." Toen je jong was, in een mooi lichaam." Toen je jong was, in een mooi lichaam." |
|
-Allen Ginsberg, Elegie voor Neal Cassidy |
You need LangCorrect Premium to access this feature.
Go Premium