Ódýr (Cheap) - official translation/commentary

The song with the screaming! Another favorite here, contemplating modern existence and the concept of selling oneself.

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:

Árin renna frá þér eins og brauðmylsnum er hent í ruslatunnu

Þau safnast saman á haugum brostinna drauma

Þú lítur til baka og hugsar:

Af hverju seldi ég mig—

Af hverju seldi ég mig—

ekki fyrir meira?


Næturnar verða ekki mikið fleiri eftir þetta

Ævi þín er útbrunninn stubbur í hringiðandi öskubakka

Þú lítur til baka og hugsar:

Af hverju seldi ég mig—

Af hverju seldi ég mig—


Öskunni er stráð yfir kistuna og um leið man enginn hver þú varst

Ekkert fyrirfinnst jafn ómerkilegt og ævin sem var við að ljúka

Þú stóðst ekki fastar á þínu en svo an enginn kærir sig um minningu þína

Við tekur hyldýpi svartnættis og eilíf eymd í botnlausri algleymsku


[Screaming]


KLEMENS:

Ég fel mig undir laki

sem kuldinn hefur þakið

Nóttin starir þögul

Hún segir lygasögur

Tómið svífur að mér

Berleggjaður berst ég

Banasæng ég bý mér

Banasæng ég bý mér


MATTHÍAS:

Árin runnu frá þér eins og brauðmylsnum var stráð í ruslatunnu

Þau söfnuðust saman á haugum brostinna drauma

Hversu oft var það sem þú leist til baka og hugsaðir:

Af hverju seldi ég mig—

Af hverju seldi ég mig—

ekki fyrir meira?


Official English translation

MATTHÍAS:

The years slip from you like breadcrumbs tossed in the trash

They pile up on the heaps of broken dreams

You look back and think:

Why did I sell myself—

Why did I sell myself—

so cheap?


The nights you have left are numbered

Your life’s a burned-out stub in a whirling ashtray

You look back and think:

Why did I sell myself—

Why did I sell myself—


As your ashes hit your coffin, no one recalls who you were

Nothing’s as banal as a life about to end

You didn’t stick to your guns enough for anyone to care to remember you

What comes next is the pit of black night, and eternal misery in bottomless oblivion


[Screaming]


KLEMENS:

I hide beneath a sheet

that the cold has covered

The night stares silently

It tells tall tales

The void is approaching

Barelegged, I fight back

I make my dying bed

I make my dying bed


MATTHÍAS:

The years slipped from you like breadcrumbs strewn into the trash

They piled up on the heaps of broken dreams

How often did you look back and think:

Why did I sell myself—

Why did I sell myself—

so cheap?


Translation notes

I’ve got a nitpick with this translation: “Nothing’s as banal as a life about to end” should technically be “Nothing’s as banal as the life that just ended”, i.e. yours.

The more interesting thing I wanted to talk about, though, is the iconic line, “Why did I sell myself so cheap?” In the original Icelandic, this is “Af hverju seldi ég mig ekki fyrir meira?” The “ekki fyrir meira” bit means “not for more” - that is, the full sentence means “Why didn’t I sell myself for more?”

However, the whole idea with how this is written is the initial repetition of “Af hverju seldi ég mig—”, which just means “Why did I sell myself”, giving the impression that you’re asking yourself why you sold yourself at all, when it turns out when the sentence is completed that you’re actually asking why you didn’t do it for more. Unfortunately, in English, the “not” has to come earlier in the sentence - the latest you can push it is “Why did I not sell myself for more?” - which would’ve ruined that setup! Instead, the translation had to rephrase the same sentiment to keep how that setup plays out: “Why did I sell myself — so cheap?”

I think the original Icelandic has a bit more punch to it - it’s obviously a continuation of the previous sentence, so it’s instantly comprehensible what it’s doing, where the English is a bit more ambiguous, and the English version focuses on how little you got for selling yourself, where in the Icelandic the focus is on how you could have gotten more. But this is also how I would’ve translated this myself. The only viable alternative keeping the setup would’ve been “Why did I sell myself — for so little?”, but that doesn’t address the focus issue and just sounds less natural. On the other hand, this does mean the English gets to feature a title drop, whereas the word “ódýr” (which does mean cheap) never actually appears in the Icelandic lyrics.

“Ódýr” is the masculine and feminine form of the adjective cheap (as opposed to the neuter form, which would be “Ódýrt”, though technically the neuter plural is also “Ódýr”). Although every noun has an arbitrary grammatical gender in Icelandic, and thus you’d also say e.g. “ódýr bíll” for “a cheap car”, this does give the title the vague impression that it’s referring to a person, which is inevitably lost in translation.
