This song from a German band (Toten Hosen) reminds me of U2 at their anthemic best

[highplainsdem]

32. LOL! Thanks for the tips on the translation, and I had to laugh reading about how amused

Last edited Mon Jun 6, 2022, 10:29 PM - Edit history (1)

your wife was.

As I mentioned elsewhere in this topic, the translations I've linked to aren't official. They weren't written or even approved by the band. The site I've linked to most often has multilingual music fans offering their best translations, and sometimes you'll see comments offering suggestions for changing part of the translation, and sometimes you'll even see more than one translation offered on different pages.

LOL again at "I think the Hosen can be counted on to know that swimming with electricity can be a shocking experience." I'm sure they know that.

When I looked at the verse about getting caught up in a wild crowd that's celebrating

Wir lassen uns treiben, tauchen unter, schwimmen mit dem Strom
Drehen unsere Kreise, kommen nicht mehr runter, sind schwerelos

We let ourselves drift, become submerged, swim in the electricity
Spin in our circles, cease to come down, are weightless

I read "electricity" in the sense of "excitement" -- being caught up in the excitement -- so it didn't immediately strike me as being wrong. But I agree with you that in the context of being "submerged" DTH had meant going with the current.

DTH have released some acoustic, unplugged, recordings, with "ohne strom" in the title.

I agree with you completely that the translator should have used "eternity" rather than "infinity" for "Unendlichkeit" in the context of the song.

And thanks for explaining about the Rheinterrassen. Coming from a rural part of the country where fields are sometimes terraced to slow erosion, I actually was picturing wide terraces, either in parkland along the Rhine, or maybe wide paved terraces that were still mostly empty (maybe meant partly for flood control, but basically an open area like Mallory Square in Key West, which fills up with tourists and street performers at sunset), and not the "area of packed cafés, bars and restaurants" you described (I'm looking at Google images of it now).