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Ma Mignonne

I'd like to take a short break to share a piece of poetry. It's yet another translation of the poem Ma Mignonne by the 16th century French poet, Clement Marot. Douglas R. Hofstadter himself presents a multitude of his own and others' translations of this poem in his 1999 book, Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language. The poem is here interpreted and translated in many ways as a bridging theme of the book. I took it upon myself to give it a modern "leetspeak" flavor.

Here are the base criteria that Hofstadter listed as essential for a "proper" translation of this poem:

1. The poem is 28 lines long.
2. Each line consists of three syllables.
3. Each line's main stress falls on its final syllable.
4. The poem is a string of rhyming couplets: AA, BB, CC,...
5. Midway, the tone changes from formal ("vous") to informal ("tu").
6. The poem's opening line is echoed precisely at the very bottom.
7. The poet puts his own name directly into his poem.

Here is the original (please pardon my crude lack of accents on proper letters):


Here is one of Hoftsadter's translations that meets the above-listed criteria. I present it here only so that my translation will make sense (since my translation may require some of its own translation back to normal English):


Before I present my piece, I'd like to point out that the translations presented in the book reflect a wide degree of, shall we say...familiarity...between Clement and the young girl (7 or 8 years old), Jeanne d' Albret de Navarre, whom the poem was written for.


I can't decide whether to or not to leave in a lot of the unnecessary, or should I say extreme, use of numbers. Given that leetspeak--or 1337speak--or whatever--isn't a serious dialect in the first place, I really don't think it matters.

So there you have it. Possibly the first ever "published" poem in leetspeak, unless you count this.

UPDATE January 29th, 2006:

Dear [ER] -- I don't know if I ever replied to your on-line version of "Ma Mignonne", which I happened to bump into in my in-queue today. Not being very "wired" myself, I wasn't able to completely understand it, but I found it quite entertaining and original. I apologize if I never got back to you earlier, but I hope that this message reaches you and amuses you, even if very tardily.
Best wishes -- Douglas Hofstadter.

posted by Phlegm at 4/27/2003