
X - official translation/commentary

This is one of my personal favorite Hatari songs, especially as performed live with Klemens doing more backing vocals with Matthías’s parts. It’s often introduced with an opera singer singing the first verse, for whatever reason. The song viciously lashes out at the health care system and other aspects of modern existence.

This song is on the Neysluvara EP. The official English translations for these songs are all quite faithful and translated in the same spirit as I’ve been translating here - so rather than arbitrarily retranslating them, I’ll just be publishing the official lyrics and translation (though reformatted in my usual way) and then writing some notes on that translation, in the vein of what I usually do.

If you’d like to see other Hatari material transcribed/translated, feel free to drop an ask in my askbox!
Icelandic lyrics

MATTHÍAS:

X!

Ljóðið er dautt listform og vitið uppurið

Orðið er jarðsungið við stynjan hórkarla, mógúla og svikahrappa

Það kostar milljarð að fá krabbamein og líftóruna að losna við það


Þú horfðir á mig deyja

Þú horfðir á mig deyja

og deyja

og deyja

og deyja


Þornaðir ávextir glataðra væntinga halda skrílnum í algleymingi

Gjaldþrot hins andlega mergsýgur framtakið og kæfir það í biturleika

Saltinu úr grautnum er stráð í sárið og ég veslast upp og skrælna


Þú horfðir á mig deyja

og deyja

Þú horfðir á mig deyja

og deyja

og deyja

og deyja


Óþrjótandi gengisfallið ámáttkast í óbilandi meðalmennsku meðalmannapans

Lygarnar eru sem hnífur í blæðandi síðu aumingjans

Hann krýpur á hnjánum

Holskeflan er gröf

Saltinu úr grautnum er stráð í sárið og ég veslast upp og skrælna

Dreyri vellur - hann fellur í valinn


Þú horfðir á mig deyja

Þú horfðir á mig deyja

og deyja

og deyja

og deyja


KLEMENS:

Þú

Þú horfðir á mig deyja

Þú

Þú horfðir á mig deyja

Þú

Þú horfðir á mig deyja

Þú

Þú horfðir á mig deyja


Official English translation

MATTHÍAS:

X!

The poem is a dead art form and intelligence exhausted

The word is buried to the groans of adulterers, moguls and scammers

It costs a billion to develop cancer and the breath of life to be rid of it


You watched me die

You watched me die

and die

and die

and die


Shriveled fruits of vanished expectations keep the riffraff enraptured

Spiritual bankruptcy sucks the marrow from initiative and suffocates it in bitterness

Our daily bread is salt in our wounds and I wither and waste away


You watched me die

and die

You watched me die

and die

and die

and die


Ceaseless devaluation is made invincible in the unswerving mediocrity of the average ape

The lies are like knives in the bleeding side of the wretch

He falls to his knees

The breach is a grave

Our daily bread is salt in our wounds and I wither and waste away

Blood wells - he dies


You watched me die

You watched me die

and die

and die

and die


KLEMENS:

You

You watched me die

You

You watched me die

You

You watched me die

You

You watched me die


Notes

While most of this official translation is very direct, one bit sticks out: “Our daily bread is salt in our wounds”. What the original Icelandic line there actually says is “The salt from the porridge is sprinkled in the wound”. This is a reference to a phrase, “að eiga ekki/varla fyrir saltinu í grautnum” (“not/barely having enough for salt in the porridge”), meaning to not or only barely have enough money to feed yourself. What the line is getting at, then, is that you barely have anything and the little that you have is used to hurt you. English does not have an equivalent phrase referring to salt, it seems, so it goes for “daily bread” instead - which is a serviceable translation, but the bread being salt in the wounds is not nearly as punchy as actually grabbing the salt from another phrase involving salt. The original lyric is pretty clever and a really distinctive image, and the translation unfortunately can’t quite capture it.

In Icelandic, we call monkeys “api”, derived from the same root as “ape”, and apes “mannapi”, or “man-ape”. We also have the word “meðalmaður”, which means “average Joe”. Effectively, this means as you listen to the line, “meðalmannapans” (average ape) just sounds like “meðalmannsins” (a form of “meðalmaður”), until it ends in “-apans”, twisting it into a further insult. Incidentally, the word “meðalmennska” (mediocrity) is also derived from “meðalmaður”.

As I’ve mentioned before, the name “X” originates in Icelandic election lingo, with parties speaking of putting an X by their designated letter.
