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Home Classes LYRICS Essays Links About	LYRICS Check back often for a harvest of tango lyrics translated by Jake Spatz NB: If the verses are out of alignment, try clicking "Refresh" in your web browser. Cambalache     Pawnshop   Music & Lyrics: Enrique Santos Discépolo   Tr. Jake Spatz Recited 19 Apr. 2006, Divino Lounge   NOTE "Cambalache" is a song filled with scenes of life during the Depression (not just an American phenomenon), as well as particular references to Argentine culture. The translation here strives to be literal for the most part, but I have adapted the "roll-call" section of the third stanza, to give an American audience some taste of the original's pointed force. (An alternate translation, preserving the names used by Discepolo, follows the third stanza in italics.) Que el mundo fue y sera una porquería, ya lo sé... (en el quinientos seis y en el dos mil también!) Que siempre ha habido chorros, maquiavelos y estafaos, contentos y amargaos, valores y dublé... Pero que el siglo viente es un despliegue de maldá insolente, ya no hay quien lo niegue... Vivimos revolcaos en un merengue, y en un mismo lodo todos manoseaos... That the world has been and will always be a shame, I always knew... (and in 1492 and 2000 all the same!) For it's always had its sneaky thieves, suckers and Machiavels, well-offs and ne'er-do-wells, lady-killers and fakes... But that the 20th Century is a riot of malice for malice's sake— there's no one who'd deny it! We're all gummed up in the ooze of one meringue, in the selfsame sticky mess where everyone's abused... ¡Hoy resulta que es lo mismo ser derecho que traidor! ¡Ignorante, sabio o chorro, generoso o estafador! ¡Todo es igual! ¡Nada es mejor! ¡Lo mismo un burro que un gran professor! No hay aplazaos ni escalafón, los inmorales nos han igualao. Si uno vive en la impostura y otro roba en su ambición, ¡da lo mismo que sea cura, colchonero, rey de bastos, caradura o polizón! Turns out it's quite the same today to be righteous or a cad! An airhead, brain, or burglar, philanthropist or fraud! Everything's the same! There is no greater or lesser, whether you're just an ass or a world-renowned professor! There's no more flunking fools or leaps to the head of the class— we all go walking in step with cheaters who flout the rules. If one man lives by his forgeries and another steals his way to the top, it makes no difference if he's a priest, a mattress-dealer, the Ace of Clubs, a cutpurse or a cop! ¡Que falta de respeto, que atropello a la razón! ¡Cualquiera es un señor! ¡Cualquiera es un ladrón! Mezclao con el Stavisky va Don Bosco y "La Mignón," Don Chicho y Napoleón, Carnera y San Martín... Igual que en la vidriera irrespetuosa de los cambalaches se ha mezclao la vida, y herida por un sable sin remaches ves llorar la Biblia contra un calefón...         *  *  *  *                What a mob-rule way with reason, what a disgrace to decency! Every man jack's a gentleman! Every man jack's a thief! Arm in arm with Kenneth Lay go Lewinsky and Sharon, Old Abe and Al Capone, Rosa Parks and Derek Jeter... The same way, in the storefront of a pawnshop life appears as we live it— out of order and out of keeping— and, wounded by some sword that lost its rivets, you see a Bible weeping next to a water-heater...    Alternate rendering:    Arm in arm with Stavisky goes    Don Bosco and "The Tart,"    Don Chicho and Bonaparte,    Carnera and San Martín... ¡Siglo veinte, cambalache problemático e febril! ¡El que no llora no mama y el que no afana es un gil! ¡Dale nomás! ¡Dale que va! ¡Que allá en el horno nos vamo a encontrar! ¡No pienses más, sentate a un lao, que a nadie importa si naciste honrao! Es lo mismo el que labura noche y día como un buey, que el que vive de los otros, que el que mata, que el que cura o está fuera de la ley... O Twentieth Century—you fever-ridden pawnshop in revolt! If you don't cry out, you don't get no milk, and if you don't filch you're a dolt! Oh, give it all you've got! Go on now, don't be slow! We'll all be reunited in the furnace down below! Don't you think anymore, just sit on a side, or scram— you might've been born honest, but nobody gives a damn! It's the same for one who labors night and day like an ox to get a muzzle-full of straw, as for one who sponges off of others, or one who kills, or one who heals, or one who's living life outside the law... Table of Contents Questions? Comments? Email the Editor.
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