Note: Another person wrote to me to say they also translate Carabao songs into English! Tom Vamvanij offers this excellent translation of “Telay Jai” (you can compare to mine), with some thoughtful advice for translating this and other songs. The song “Telay Jai” is available on the limited Gold Edition of Made in Thailand.”
“ทะเลใจ” “Sea of the Heart” by แอ๊ด คาราบาว Add Carabao, translated by Tom Vamvanij
Though I am now past the age of aspirations
And the days of aimlessness,
I have learned to live only that my body and my heart
May be at peace with one another.
As I lived through my days of loneliness,
The body belonged to me, but to whom the heart?
Life was but a struggle in those cruel days
When the body and the heart were miles apart.
On any given night, the heart succumbs to the body,
But in times of terror, the body succumbs to the heart.
Amidst the glitters of modernity,
It’s easy to lose one’s path.
*On any given night, the heart takes flight,
Carried off by fancy to the edge of the earth,
Like a little bird by the wind
Only to fall eventually to the sea of the heart.
Each life strives to reach its goals
Yet can’t find the heart in its own body.
Suffering comes out of a delirious heart,
Pin it down and therein lies happiness.
*On any given night, the heart takes flight,
Carried off by fancy to the edge of the earth,
Like a little bird by the wind
Only to fall eventually to the sea of the heart.
(2X)
Though I am now past the age of aspirations
And the days of aimlessness,
I have learned to live only that my body and my heart
May be at peace forever.
Below is his translation advice, in response to some questions I had asked:
The song is not difficult to understand when one keeps in mind its main theme, which is present throughout. That is, the dichotomy between the body and the heart, or the visceral and the spiritual. (“Jai” here comprises the senses of not only “heart”, but also “mind,” “will,” “spirit,” and “soul.”) We see how the two are often at odds and struggle for supremacy over each other. The song’s lesson, offered up front and repeated at the end, is to stop this unhappy struggle and live in such a way that the body and the heart are in harmony.
Translating poetry is inherently difficult. The faithful ones aren’t pretty and the pretty ones aren’t faithful, it is said. In my translation, I tried to stay as faithful as I could while maintaining more or less idiomatic English. You’ll find the original meaning in each verse, though not necessarily in each word. Literal inexactness is a small price to pay to avoid rendering awkward in translation what sound so beautiful in the original.
Tom