Jewish songs

[Teilnehmer]

Here is my attempt to translate Hava Nagila (‘Let us rejoice’), a famous Jewish folk song:


And this:

is not a direct translation of the song (which consists of 13 couplets, each introducing a concept of Judaism associated with the number of the couplet), but rather a parodic tokiponization based on Toki Pona’s reluctance to count above two and to deal with complex concepts.

I’m not very happy with my translations, so improvements are very welcome!

[janKipo]

Hava Nagila works nicely as a translation and as a song (I could scarcely keep from dancing). The only questions are 1) matters of punctuation, where it is not clear whether things are vocatives or subjects and the whole hortatory imperatives or ordinary imperatives. 2) the whole current confusion about ‘o’. Is, for example, ‘pilin pona’ something one can command? But surely it is something one can encourage and thus seems to get by somehow (not very clearly but emotionally OK). I’, not sure what ‘o kon pona’ “Breathe well” means.
The second piece runs into tp tradition, which uses ’sewi’ alone for “God”, the ‘jan’ having to many inappropriate connotations and ’sewi mi’ doesn’t extend to cover the rhythm well, Alos, the free-floating 'lon sewi’ (or ‘lon ma sewi’ and ‘lo ma’ really need to be tied to ’sewi mi’ with ‘pi’s but that messes things up, too. Still overall it is very effective. Thanks.

[Teilnehmer]

[Teilnehmer]

[janKipo]

Sorry, I took the ‘lon’s To be modifying ‘jan sewi mi’, a noun phrase, not the the vestigial verb phrase of which it was part. So it is my knowledge, not God, that is in earth and heaven?

[Teilnehmer]

[Teilnehmer]

Original lyrics: