Hi,
First I would like to apologise if I posted in a wrong place.
I'm looking for a translation of the Owl and the P u s s y-cat by Edward Lear on behalf of my friend who is making a collection of this poem in as many languages as he can, just for fun. He's 97-year-old and this hobby gives him a great pleasure.
We try to find someone for more than a half year now, who could translate this poem into Scottish Gaelic and/or any dialect of Scots, without any success.
The Owl and the P u s s y-cat
I
The Owl and the P u s s y-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
'O lovely P u s s y! O P u s s y my love,
What a beautiful P u s s y you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful P u s s y you are!'
II
P u s s y said to the Owl, 'You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?'
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.
III
'Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?' Said the Piggy, 'I will.'
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.
We started about a year ago and we managed to get it in more than 40 languages so far, but no Scottish Gaelic or Scots.
It doesn't need to be a professional translation.
Here's a website that I started to set up to share all the translations that we've got so far. Some of them was made by poets but most of them just by friends or people who we run into in different places (waiters of the local restaurant, nurses from hospital, etc). They did the best they could and they just did it for fun and because they wanted to add their own language to this collection.
The Owl and the P u s s y-cat translation collection
Here is the list of the languages that we've got so far (16/04/2008):
Afrikaans, Albanian, Arabic, Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, Estonian, Finnish, French, Frisian, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Irish Gaelic, Korean, Kyrgyz, Lakota, Latin, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malagasy, Malay, Norvegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazilian), Prussian, Romanian, Russian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Welsh
If you could translate it into any dialect of Scots and/or Scottish Gaelic that would be a great help for us.
For exchange I always mention who did the translation at the end of the poem and if you wish it can be linked to your website or email address.
Thanks again for anyone who will help us.
-=Pimpoapo=-