Batiscafo Katiuscas

This is Batiscafo Katiuscas, a song by the Mallorcan band Antònia Font, one of the biggest hit-makers in the Catalan language. First of all, do yourself a favor, and simply listen to all of it. (The video is not official. A nice amateur person on YouTube made it. The images roughly follow the lyrics.)

It is a kind of a Catalan “Space Oddity”. Here’s my attempt at translating the lyrics:

Batiscafo monoplaça, Es teu focus a s’abisme De ses aigües insondables Només tu les averigües.	Single-place bathyscaphe Your focus is on the abysm, Its profound waters, Only you investigate them.
Batiscafo socialista Redactant informe tràgic “Camarada maquinista A institut oceanogràfic.”	Socialist bathyscaphe Editing a tragic message “Comrade engineer To the oceanographic institute.”
Batiscafo solitari Dus un ruting planetari.	Solitary bathyscaphe You are carrying planetary routing.
“Retxes de sol atravessen blaus marins, Ses algues tornen verdes I brillen ses estrelles, que ja s’ha fet de nit I es plàncton s’il·lumina I cantes ses balenes a trenta mil quilòmetres d’aquí.	“Rays of sunshine penetrate the marine blues, The algae turn green, And the stars sparkle, it’s the night already And the plancton illuminates itself And the whales sing thirty thousand kilometres from here,
Retxes de sol atravessen blaus marins, Ses algues tornen verdes I brillen ses estrelles, que ja s’ha fet de nit I es plàncton s’il·lumina I canten ses sirenes aproximadament per no existir.”	Rays of sunshine penetrate the marine blues, The algae turn green, And the stars sparkle, it’s the night already And the plancton illuminates itself And the sirens sing approximately for not existing.”
Batiscafo socialista Redactant informe tràgic, Catedràtic Yuri Puscas A institut oceanogràfic.	Socialist bathyscaphe Editing a tragic message “Professor Yuri Puscas To the oceanographic institute.”
Batiscafo Katiuscas Fas un atles visionari.	Bathyscaphe Katiuscas You are making a visionary atlas.

Some curious notes:

• I don’t know where do the names Katiuscas and Yuri Puscas come from. My guess is that the author tried to make Soviet names. They came out more Lithuanian than Russian, but than can still be Soviet.
• You can easily notice the es articles, commonly used in Mallorca – es teu, s’abisme, ses aigües, etc. Antònia Font use them quite consistently in their songs. The Catalan band Glissando* performed a cover version of this song with el articles: el teu, l’abisme, les aigües.

• Another easily noticeable Mallorcan property is the pronunciation of aigües “waters” as aigos.
• The spelling retxes for “rays”, which appears in the CD booklet, is quite unusual. It’s pretty certain that the author refers to “rays”, but the standard spelling would be raig in singular and raigs or rajos in plural. The spelling retxes is probably a colloquial Mallorcan variation, but I couldn’t find in any dictionary.
• The author uses at least two Spanish words: “averiguar” to investigate” and “atravesar” to cross, penetrate”. For the second word the corresponding Catalan word is travessar without ‘a’, but it is nevertheless spelled in the Catalan manner with double-s. For the first word there’s no direct correspondence. There’s probably nothing too deep about it: Even though this band only performs in Catalan, it is not really purist, but simply uses words naturally as they come, “barbarisms” or not.
• I don’t quite know what “planetary routing” is. It may even be translated incorrectly. The original word is ruting, which sounds like an English loanword, but could refer to a lot of things.

Most importantly, it’s a great song. The odd intro has disparate notes that collect themselves into an arpeggio over a minute, and this arpeggio becomes the songs main hook. On the CD the intro is actually a separate track. The guitar climax in the second chorus, as simple as it is, is a wonderful rock moment.

Finally, I have a sweet personal memory of listening to this in a lesson in my 2010 Catalan summer course, right there in Mallorca – it was, in fact, part of the curriculum. Now that’s a good way to teach young people a foreign language: Rock’n’roll.

Canimas

I returned from the VIII Catalan Language University Campus 2009 and i have a lot of things to write about it and i hope that i’ll have the time, but here’s a little and very important thing. Miquel Àngel Tortell, one of the monitors – group guides, whom you can see at the photo at the article linked above – gave me an excellent CD of a Catalan indie rock artist, whose name is Eduard Canimas. The album is called Noh iha crisi (sic) and it is one of the best albums i heard this year in any language and probably the best Catalan i heard ever.