"Amazing grace" in French?
  • Felicia
    Posts: 167
    Hello,

    I just received a phone call from my former organ teacher. She is looking for a translation of "Amazing grace" in French for a baptism coming up in August. The baptism is taking place in a small Episcopal church in a town about 35 or 40 miles from where she & I live. The family (or part of it) comes from France; hence, the request.

    Does anyone know of a source for this? Possibly a Canadian hymnal?
  • Andrew_Malton
    Posts: 1,258
    «Grâce étonnante, au son si doux»

    https://www.tout-monde.com/sites/amazing-grace.pdf

    Or «La grâce du ciel est descendue», https://youtu.be/cDRoKY6QEaI



    Thanked by 2CHGiffen Felicia
  • Felicia
    Posts: 167
    Andrew_Malton,

    Merci beaucoup!
    Thanked by 1ServiamScores
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,670
    Which is sometimes translated as "mercy bucket" in vernacular Amurkan.
    Thanked by 3CharlesW CHGiffen francis
  • ServiamScores
    Posts: 3,320
    That recording is some kind of… special. Ou bien: cette enregistrement est une espèce de speciale… (au moins, ça me fais sourire)
  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 3,674
    FWIW the first is a literal (enough) translation that’s not especially singable. The second is odd: Cajuns are largely Catholic, but I suppose that the Protestants got to them. Second, it is certainly not standard pronunciation for singing, setting aside my thoughts on the fluency and accuracy of Cajun speakers. The words are really butchered to fit the meter. This is not a great idea and I wish that someone was able to tell everyone involved this.
    Thanked by 2ServiamScores Felicia
  • Felicia
    Posts: 167
    It wasn't my idea. I was simply responding to a request.
  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 3,674
    Yeah, I know, but it’s a bad idea and clearly these people don’t know enough to do it in French or they’d have already said know.

    I guess I just take issue with “well it’s just a request that I’m trying to help with” when I’m more than qualified to say “yeah don’t help with this or otherwise tell them that this is a bad idea”.
  • Felicia
    Posts: 167
    If you know of a better translation, I'd be happy to pass it on.

    For all I know, the people involved may decide not to do it at all. I'm a "third party" here.

    I can inform my teacher that some posters here don't recommend either translation. I thought the first one was awkward myself. She and I both know some French, though I don't really know her level of fluency. I'm better at reading than speaking. In any case, it will be up to her and the family (in a different town, different denomination) what to do in this case.
  • Richard MixRichard Mix
    Posts: 2,998
    The first version certainly needs a shoehorn if not violence on a Cinderella stepsister scale, and the risible second is obviously with non-francophones. But it's amazing how many results Google brings up; this isn't so terrible at all:

    Grâce infinie, de notre Dieu,
    qui un jour m'a sauvé
    J'étais perdu errant J'allais errant de lieux en lieux,
    quand Il m'a retrouvé.

    Quand je connus l'amour de Dieu,
    grâce chassant ma peur,
    Oh, que ce jour fut glorieux,
    et très doux pour mon coeur!
    Thanked by 3ServiamScores Felicia CHGiffen
  • Felicia
    Posts: 167
    Thank you, Richard.

    I will forward this to my former teacher, along with a general sense of the comments above. She can then communicate with the family that made this request.
  • probe
    Posts: 191
    As the choir is Cajun, maybe that's just the Acadian way to pronounce French? Les Québécois have their own way, other overseas territories are probably distinctive too.
  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 3,674
    It’s Cajun and different because they are probably not native speakers and/or are cut off from other native speakers. Being descriptive doesn’t mean that you can’t have preferences: you should. The most glaring was that “e” between consonants was omitted, but it’s not omitted in poetry and in song, provided that it’s not before punctuation or at the end of a line.

    Canadian conventions of choral music are the same as in France other than (some) sound changes that are sort of inevitable across the ocean. In fact until the 1960s you used a French (not really Parisian) pronunciation on the news; nowadays they use an educated middle/upper-class pronunciation that is distinctively Québécois but not the same as the working-class accent made famous by fictional TV including dubs (like of The Simpsons in particular).

    In short it’s a mess and it isn’t like there is a shortage of Huguenot or other French/Francophone Protestant hymnody.
    Thanked by 1probe
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