# Nie ma bo, nie ma czego potrzeba!



## Lovelybeauty

Good evening,

I wonder if anyone could give me the translation of the following sentences from Chopin's song "Mgła mi do oczu zawiewa złona":

"Nie ma bo, nie ma czego potrzeba!Dawno mi tutaj nudno, niemiło:"

Sorry I do not have any knowledge of Polish language. I tried to search on the Net, one of the translation is as below but doesn't seem to match Google Translate:

"All that I long for is faded and gone.
 I wander here in anguish, lonely and sad."

Thanks in advance.


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## Thomas1

Hello Lovelybeauty,

On the website of Fryderyk Chopin Institute, I found out that the English version of Bohdan Zaleski's lyrics is credited to James Kirkup. His interpretation looks possible to me.

A more literal translation:
"Nie ma bo, nie ma czego potrzeba!Dawno mi tutaj nudno, niemiło:"
"There isn't because there isn't what is needed! For a long time I have been bored and uneasy:"

 Also I think that the punctuation might be faulty in the first sentence of the given fragment.


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## Lovelybeauty

Hi Thomas1,

Thanks for great translation and reference .


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## Ben Jamin

The text fragment is not a complete sentence, even if it begins with a capital letter (a custom to start a line of poem with a capital letter is confusing.
Actually, to begin the translation with the words "Nie ma! is tricky, because we lack the context of the preceding sentence. It is not necessarily correct to translate it as "there isn't", it can also be "he/she/it has not".


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## Lovelybeauty

Hi Ben,

I am posting the text surrounding the sentence, would you have any suggestion?

"Mgła mi do oczu zawiewa złona,W prawo i wlewo ćmi naokoło;
Dumka na ustach brząknie i skona!
Niemo, och! niemo, bo niewesoło.


Nie ma bo, nie ma czego potrzeba!
Dawno mi tutaj nudno, niemiło:
Ni mego słońca! ni mego nieba!
Ni mego czegoś! Czym serce żyło."

Thanks.


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## DW

Lovelybeauty said:


> [...]
> 
> "Mgła mi do oczu zawiewa złona,W prawo i wlewo ćmi naokoło;
> Dumka na ustach brząknie i skona!
> Niemo, och! niemo, bo niewesoło.
> 
> 
> Nie ma bo, nie ma czego potrzeba!
> Dawno mi tutaj nudno, niemiło:
> Ni mego słońca! ni mego nieba!
> Ni mego czegoś! Czym serce żyło."
> 
> [...]



Well, let me show you my own idea for translating this,

following the original punctuation,

_There is no, since there isn't what's needed!
I've been long feeling bored, not good:
There isn't my sun! My sky, either!
Neither is there my something! That my heart used to live and breath!_
.

Hope you'll like this.


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## Thomas1

The title of this song is 'Nie ma, czego trzeba' (here you will find the lyrics page 4 (pdf) -- this is a website of Fryderyk Chopin Institute). To my understanding, in both the title and the beginnig of the second stanza, 'Nie ma' means what I wrote in my previous post. So I'd stick to 'There isn't' or, alternatively, use 'There is no' to translate 'Nie ma'. (I'm wondering if 'Nie ma' may also introduce the content of the 3rd and 4th lines in the same stanza.)



Nie ma bo, nie ma czego potrzeba!
Dawno mi tutaj nudno, niemiło:
Ni mego słońca! ni mego nieba!
Ni mego czegoś! Czym serce żyło.There isn't, because there isn't what's needed!
For a long time here I've been bored and uneasy:
Neither my sun nor my heaven is here!
Nor my something! The reason my heart lived for.



This is just a provisonary translation to give you the idea of what the Polish text says.


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## Ben Jamin

Thomas1 said:


> The title of this song is 'Nie ma, czego trzeba' (here you will find the lyrics page 4 (pdf) -- this is a website of Fryderyk Chopin Institute). To my understanding, in both the title and the beginnig of the second stanza, 'Nie ma' means what I wrote in my previous post. So I'd stick to 'There isn't' or, alternatively, use 'There is no' to translate 'Nie ma'. (I'm wondering if 'Nie ma' may also introduce the content of the 3rd and 4th lines in the same stanza.)
> 
> 
> 
> Nie ma bo, nie ma czego potrzeba!
> Dawno mi tutaj nudno, niemiło:
> Ni mego słońca! ni mego nieba!
> Ni mego czegoś! Czym serce żyło.There isn't, because there isn't what's needed!
> For a long time here I've been bored and uneasy:
> Neither my sun nor my heaven is here!
> Nor my something! The reason my heart lived for.
> 
> 
> This is just a provisonary translation to give you the idea of what the Polish text says.


Sorry. This translation is almost a word for word translation, and it lacks meaning in English
I must point out, that "*there isn't*" is a clause that needs an object n English, and leaving it without an object makes the translation both ungrammatical and meaningsless. Also "ni mego nieba" should be translated as "nor my sky", not "nor my heaven". 
"Nor my something" has not much sense in English either.

I propose here another version:
There's nothing that I need here!
For a long time I have been bored and uncomfortable:
There is no sun and no sky!
There is nothing that could give life to my heart./There is nothing that could nourish my heart.


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## Thomas1

Ben Jamin said:


> Sorry. This translation is almost a word for word translation, and it lacks meaning in English
> I must point out, that "*there isn't*" is a clause that needs an object n English, and leaving it without an object makes the translation both ungrammatical and meaningsless. Also "ni mego nieba" should be translated as "nor my sky", not "nor my heaven".
> "Nor my something" has not much sense in English either.
> 
> I propose here another version:
> There's nothing that I need here!
> For a long time I have been bored and uncomfortable:
> There is no sun and no sky!
> There is nothing that could give life to my heart./There is nothing that could nourish my heart.


I don't understand your point. Did you read the last sentence of my previous post? I actually meant it to be so: _This is just a provis*i*onary translation to give you the idea of what the Polish text says._


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## Ben Jamin

Thomas1 said:


> I don't understand your point. Did you read the last sentence of my previous post? I actually meant it to be so: _This is just a provis*i*onary translation to give you the idea of what the Polish text says._


Yes, I had read it, but even a provisional translation should make sense, and don't break with the rules of the language you translate into. A person that is only interested in a vague idea of what the text is about may use Google translator.


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## Thomas1

Ben Jamin said:


> Yes, I had read it, but even a provisional translation should make sense, and don't break with the rules of the language you translate into. A person that is only interested in a vague idea of what the text is about may use Google translator.


Apparently, this was to little avail:


Lovelybeauty said:


> Good evening,
> 
> I wonder if anyone could give me the translation of the following sentences from Chopin's song "Mgła mi do oczu zawiewa złona":
> 
> "Nie ma bo, nie ma czego potrzeba!Dawno mi tutaj nudno, niemiło:"
> 
> *Sorry I do not have any knowledge of Polish language. I tried to search on the Net, one of the translation is as below but doesn't seem to match Google Translate*:
> 
> "All that I long for is faded and gone.
> I wander here in anguish, lonely and sad."
> 
> Thanks in advance.


*[My formatting.] 
*Can you translate a text in an  almost literal way without breaking the rules of the target language?  If you try to show how the structures of the source language work or  what the words mean, I can't imagine doing it other way. Such  translations needn't make much sense, and they hardly ever do, to my experience. Their aesthetic value is simply not important.


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## Lovelybeauty

Many thanks to all for your help.

Both literal/provisional and figurative/poetic translations are useful for someone with little knowledge of the original language like me. Without the literal translation, the doubt about the poetic one will keep torturing me. Machine translation is far below what Thomas1 gave me, which I find very helpful. The other, more elevated versions by Ben and the_DW seem to be consistent to Thomas1's version as well.

So now, I am much more confident about my understanding of this song. Again many thanks to all for bringing me closer to Chopin


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