I’ve been working and traveling so much these past three months that I’ve not had time to write about topics that interest me. Funnily enough, this topic came to me while on a train journey to Luzern, so I would not have thought of it if I had not been traveling. Disney’s Frozen from 2013 was widely acclaimed by both children and parents with its theme song Let it Go becoming part of popular culture.
On that train trip, I wanted to use the time to brush up on my German and French, so I thought it might be a good idea to listen to Let it Go in English, German, and French. Having not spoken French for a good many years, living in Geneva has helped me learn new vocabulary. Having a basic level of awareness in how language and culture are linked, I found the different translations intriguing. I believe there are multiple ways in how a song can be translated and Disney chose the one most culturally familiar to the recipient language group.
The first and most obvious difference to focus on is, perhaps, the title. While let it go and lass jetzt los mean the same thing in English and German, the French title is libérée délivrée, which means liberation and deliverance. Although the French version may seem to depart from the English and German versions, the lyrics of all three versions become very different beyond the title.
Like in a scientific experiment, we’ll take the English version as a “control group” to set a reference point for the other two translations. I’ve picked out four stanzas of text at the beginning, middle, and end of the song for a side-by-side comparison.
Let’s take a look at the first stanza. In the French version, instead of being the queen of the kingdom of isolation in the first stanza, she believes that the lonely kingdom is her place forever. In this translation she does not rule over her isolation but believes that isolation is where she belongs. In the German version, Elsa is sure of being the queen of the lonely kingdom without the slightest doubt that shows in the English version where the word seems appears.
In the following stanza, French Elsa struggles in vain against the winds that are too strong for her, being unable to overcome them. But in German, the storm is an internal force to be let out and she cannot try keep it inside of her anymore. French Elsa failed in the fight against the wind, but German Elsa is unable to suppress a storm.
In the verse after the first chorus Elsa wants to break free from the rules. French Elsa wants to experiment with her magic and unleash her full potential without regard for rules whereas German Elsa breaks free from her former self and finds motivation to move forwards. The French version is much more results oriented whereas the German version is more focused on a transformative narrative.
The most culturally telling difference of the song, I thought, was the last line. The cold never bothered English Elsa, while French Elsa thought the cold was the price of liberty, and German Elsa accepted the cold as a part of her. The English version ignores it, the French version romanticizes a sacrifice, and the German version internalizes change and gets on with it.
From the highlighted sections of lyrics, French Elsa is focused on the tough sacrifices that must be made to achieve the goal of personal liberty, German Elsa is about yielding control to an internal emotional force to become a different self and original English Elsa stands tall on her own ideals and realizes she can make her own rules.
Which Elsa are you?
