Monique, may I echo what Joe has written; your translations have been immeasurably helpful in heightening my appreciation of the songs in this most valuable collection.

Earlier on you asked for some constructive help with your initial translations: "I wish that you guys out there pointed where the previous ones are wrong, weird, awkward, incomprehensible....

I haven't found any fault with your translations so far, but I shall do my best to go through them again, and where I can do so, I may suggest some alternative readings which I'll tell you by PM. Many of the apparent akwardnesses are inherent in the original language, where some very idiomatic expressions are used. Much of the language is so compressed that it would take a whole paragraph to disentangle all of the meanings from a short two or three word phrase.

It is very useful that you should continue to provide basic literal translations, along with your helpful notes and glosses. It has been said elsewhere, and more elegantly than I can express it here, that the heart and soul of a poem is the bit that gets left out when it is translated. The more you, or anybody else, attempt to round off the weird and awkward bits to make them read better in English the more you stray from the original - but you know that already!

I will certainly try to help, when I can do so, and offer some suggestions with your translations from French. I can't help at all with Basque, Breton, Walloon, or Corsican, and Occitan is a struggle for my limited powers too! I wish Malcolm Douglas were still with us as he had a good working knowledge of French at degree level.

I'd love to see some good English language versions of some of these songs; and I'd love to sing a version of Le Roi Renaud or of Skolvan, but I think those are best left to other, separate discussions.

Thanks once again for all you have done so far.

Matthew