På mäster Olofs tid

English translation / Engelsk översättning / Traduzione inglese / Traduction anglaise / Englanninkielinen käännös :
Ceil Herman

Traduzione finlandese / Finnish translation / Traduction finnoise / Finsk översättning / Suomennos: Juha Rämö

Hi Ceil,

Can you please ask the Administrator to correct the title (not Måster but mäster). You'll find the E-mail address at the bottom of the start page.

Of course. Thanks for catching that!

I don’t see where it is Måster. It says Mäster above.

There was Måster, but the Admin must have corrected it without you asking. Anyway, it should actually be mäster instead of Mäster.

Hi!

Looks like Administration fixed that in the Swedish too. I think it is appropriate to capitalize Master Olof in the English translation, because it is a title.

By the way Admlnistration also fixed Sång till friheten which had been listed as Sången till friheten. So you might want to change your English title to Song rather than A Song. Very small point!

Thanks for all your hard work on behalf of Björn. Have you translated other Swedish songs to English?

Hi Ceil,

Most of my translations on this webpage are from English, German and Swedish into Finnish (English --> Finnish). These are the ones I've done from Swedish and Norwegian into English:

- De mördades fria republik
- Det gäller
- Folkens kamp är folkens hopp
- Fred på jord
- För alla namn vi inte får använda
- Hur länge ska vi vänta
- När småfåglar dör
- Säg mig du lilla kula
- Varför låter de
- Frihetens forpost (from Norwegian)
- Oppskrift for herrefolk (from Norwegian)
- Verden er vår (from Norwegian)

Dear Ceil,

Our website observes a number of simple rules for including / contributing new songs and/or translations.

1) Only English and German titles should be capitalized (Masters of War, Sagt mir wo die Blumen sind). Titles in other languages should be capitalized only where required (Les guerres de Napoléon, På mäster Olofs tid etc). Anyway, a song title should be always stated in the form it appears on its album.

2) Please never transcribe song titles and lyrics in alphabets other than Latin. A Russian song should be in Cyrillic, a Yiddish song in Hebrew &c. Transcriptions are shown only in footnotes.

3) Song lyrics (including choruses) should always be given in full form, without (Chorus) or (x2) or stuff like this. The song title should never be repeated in the lyrics box: one is enough.

4) Any new song should be preceded by a brief discography / authorship introduction according to the following pattern:


Translations:

1) Any translation should be introduced according to the following pattern:


(You may also state translation's date, and even hour)

2) Please never leave the song title untranslated. The translated title should be given in full capitals: IN MASTER OLOF'S TIME.

3) Footnotes are always welcome to explain difficult points &c. There's a special box for footnotes.

The website staff is always pleased to help you in case of doubt.

Thank you!

Dear AWS/CCG Staff,

Thank you very much for the instructions on posting new songs and translations. I think they are very useful not only to newcomers but also to people like myself who have been doing this for years.

I also think that it might be a good idea to put them on your main page as a hyperlink titled "Instructions to contributors".

There's one important thing that could also be addressed in those instructions. Anglo-American songwriters have their own way to write lyrics, i.e. with every new line starting with a capital letter and little or no punctuation. The result is that on lyrics pages song texts written in languages other than English have often been reproduced in this Anglo-American way. This, however, is not how lyrics are written in Swedish or Finnish or French or German or...

Here's for instance how "Medan bomberna faller" by Björn Afzelius looks like at genius.com. I'm 100 percent sure that Afzelius would never have written his lyrics in this way.

Dear Juha,

You are absolutely right. This is a very good idea and we'll put it in practice as soon as possible. Of course, the instructions will be translated into the site's languages (Italian, French, Finnish) and we kindly ask you for help as regards Finnish.

The way of writing and showing lyrics has always been a serious problem since the very first day of this website. The result is, of course, great lack of conformity: our website is approaching 30,000 songs and the "CCG/AWS Staff" (now CCG/AWS/SVL Staff, including Finnish), or "Admins", consists in 6 (six) people scattered here and there. This may be seen as a bit of a joke, because we sometimes have received messages or e-mails asking us where are the headquarters of our foundation or institution, if in London, Rome or New York. We are not kidding.

What we have always done, or tried to do, is editing song lyrics often submitted in barbarous forms: full capitals, no division between verses and lines, tons of "chorus", "x2", ":||", not to count misspellings, typos, bad grammar &c even in the most renowned lyrics sites. Now, what we can do is trying to do our best in the languages we more or less know, but we can do nothing, say, for Bengali or Chippewa lyrics, unless we meet a Bengali Juha Rämö.

There are still lots of pages not even including a single piece of information on the relevant song, and we are afraid this will be the task of our "Nachgeborene", if any.

Dear AWS/CCG Staff,

Of course, I'm glad to help you with the Finnish version of the instructions. And of course, I'm thrilled and most of all flattered that my tiny, curious, weird and difficult language has been granted a status on this webpage. On the other hand, I seem to be the only living soul from Finland contributing to this page and as such I don't need any Finnish instructions. Surely, I'd be more than glad if there were other contributors, a lot of them, from my country. I just don't have a clue how to make that happen. I know that I would find them lost and buried in social media (I wonder what's social about them), but that, my friends, is a gloomy, scary, dangerous world I simply refuse to have anything whatsoever to do with.

By the way, I have always realized that there is no Antiwarsongs Headquarters, but still I like to think of you as a bunch of enthusiastic people working passionately under one roof and shouting hellos, comments and ideas from one corner of the office to another. But surely you meet each other every now and then, don't you?

Dear Juha, I'd like to share with you an exclusive picture of one of the AWS offices, located in Little Island, Florence.

A huge thanks to Juha, Lorenzo, and Riccardo for your help. I think I am starting to get the hang of putting my tranlations on the website. Only the occasional typo! I feel so welcome on this site. I don’t think the AWS staff ever sleeps.

Big things grow from humble beginnings, Lorenzo.

Indeed, Ceil. It's a bunch of night owls who never sleep.