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Q: Brief Swahili Song Translation ( No Answer,   1 Comment )
Question  
Subject: Brief Swahili Song Translation
Category: Reference, Education and News > General Reference
Asked by: tracygee-ga
List Price: $10.00
Posted: 12 May 2006 18:03 PDT
Expires: 11 Jun 2006 18:03 PDT
Question ID: 728272
I am transcribing a TV program that contains a song sung first in
English, then taught to the children in Swahili.  I need the
translation for this brief bit:

In English the singer sings:

Ah, who has it?
Who has the token?
Who will recover it?
Or must repay it?

He then sings the Swahili, which I include here in my best phonetic English guess:

Jay Jay Koolay
Jay Koe-lay-see
Koe-lay-see-low-ga
Ah-ga Koo-low-ga
Oot Ah-hee-lay  (or Oot ah-Lee-lay, a bit unclear on the tape)
Oot Oot Ah-hee-lay
(repeats, etc.)

If it's any help, the person singing the song was a native Swahili
speaker.  A word-by-word translation using an online dictionary isn't
giving me anything close to the phonetics here--not that that's a big
surprise to me :)

I'm more concerned that the phonetics are close than that the
translation exactly matches the English.  I may have, for instance,
misunderstood him when he sang .. "has the token" in English, as it
was a bit hard to understand.  It doesn't make sense to me, but that's
what it sounded like.  I need to caption the words as he sings them in
Swahili on the screen.

Thanks for any assistance!
Answer  
There is no answer at this time.

Comments  
Subject: Re: Brief Swahili Song Translation
From: ukarimu-ga on 08 Jun 2006 15:29 PDT
 
I speak Kiswahili very well. I see no connection between the English
and your phontic spelling. Sentences begining with "Je" (Jay) indicate
the sentence is a question.

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