Dry bread makes cheeks red
The boy lives in great distress
He screams until his lungs are sore
The hunger burns in the child's mouth
The second time its changed into (Translation word by word... Meaning parenthesized):
Dry bread makes cheeks red
But everybody sits in his own boat (German expression for "But everybody has to care about his own problems")
I'll show you whats wealth now
In a country which forgets about its children.
Apart from this the translation is almost perfect.
And for the person of the sandman:
The sandman is a person which is told to throw sand into childrens eyes and gets them their this way.
When the person wakes the sand gets rubbed out of the eyes.
Originally he was used as a bugbear to get children to sleep with horrible storys.
But today he is known as a more kind person who just gets children to sleep and is responsible for nice dreams.
This mythos even made it to a nice serial for little children in the german television. The "Sandmännchen" (diminutive of "Sandmann") is shown in the late evening and travels to some random children. There it "shows" them a story (by manipulating a televisor, a sea or something like that. Its something magical after all ;). This is to represent that the Sandmännchen brings us our dreams) and afterwards grabs into its bag where it stores its sand and throws it at the children which get very tired afterwards and start to sleep. The Sandmännchen checks wether they all are ok finally leaves the same way he appeared.
This most likely is the version the sandman of the song is supposed to be. The sandman gets asked to make the narrator to sleep so he doesnt has to watch all this pain anymore.
The song basicly is supposed to imply at first glance that there were lots of poor people after the world war 1 and during the economic crisis in the decades after it. People are supposed to belive they understand that the song implies how bad it was back then. But when you see the message about the poor children in 2009 you get to realize there still are Millions of poor people even in germany. The country where you live. A quite well developed country.
So unfortunately I do have to disagre with yayitsari: Its exactly about that kind of pooverty.
First of all I'd like to correct the translation:
Its not twice:
Dry bread makes cheeks red The boy lives in great distress He screams until his lungs are sore The hunger burns in the child's mouth
The second time its changed into (Translation word by word... Meaning parenthesized):
Dry bread makes cheeks red But everybody sits in his own boat (German expression for "But everybody has to care about his own problems") I'll show you whats wealth now In a country which forgets about its children.
Apart from this the translation is almost perfect.
And for the person of the sandman: The sandman is a person which is told to throw sand into childrens eyes and gets them their this way. When the person wakes the sand gets rubbed out of the eyes. Originally he was used as a bugbear to get children to sleep with horrible storys. But today he is known as a more kind person who just gets children to sleep and is responsible for nice dreams. This mythos even made it to a nice serial for little children in the german television. The "Sandmännchen" (diminutive of "Sandmann") is shown in the late evening and travels to some random children. There it "shows" them a story (by manipulating a televisor, a sea or something like that. Its something magical after all ;). This is to represent that the Sandmännchen brings us our dreams) and afterwards grabs into its bag where it stores its sand and throws it at the children which get very tired afterwards and start to sleep. The Sandmännchen checks wether they all are ok finally leaves the same way he appeared. This most likely is the version the sandman of the song is supposed to be. The sandman gets asked to make the narrator to sleep so he doesnt has to watch all this pain anymore.
The song basicly is supposed to imply at first glance that there were lots of poor people after the world war 1 and during the economic crisis in the decades after it. People are supposed to belive they understand that the song implies how bad it was back then. But when you see the message about the poor children in 2009 you get to realize there still are Millions of poor people even in germany. The country where you live. A quite well developed country. So unfortunately I do have to disagre with yayitsari: Its exactly about that kind of pooverty.
Joschy