"Manos Al Aire" by Nelly Furtado, English translation of lyrics

[cairaguas]

"Hands in the Air" (2009)
Album: Mi Plan (My Plan)
Style: Pop, about defenselessness, relationship trouble
Country: Canada, Portuguese background

Listen:

At YouTube here. Beautiful voice, but the song is sad. Don’t put your hands in the air in defeat! Nooo.

[Expand embedded video]

Click to view

By the way, I want to point out that Nelly Furtado was first famous in English media (

Comments

Nelly Furtado

[anonymous]

She has done at least 12 songs in Spanish on her album Mi Plan. I've also heard her in one song with Juanes.

Re: Nelly Furtado

[cairaguas]

This song was released as a lead single before that album came out. Before Mi Plan, she wasn't known for her Spanish music.

[anonymous]

Great translation.

Another inaccuracy is that she says 'alta voz' instead of 'voz alta.'

An 'altavoz' is actually a loudspeakers.

[cairaguas]

Thank you! I would say that her use of alta voz falls into artistic license and actually isn't wrong anyway. It is very common for singers or poets to invert word orders like this. Grammatically, it is still fine. I understood even when listening that she was saying the words alta voz separately, rather than the portmanteau of altavoz.

[anonymous]

Hi, just want to give you a few corrections. The song itself isn't from Canada. That doesn't make any sense. The song was produced in the studio by the record company probably in LA. Second, it's not strange for Nelly to produce a Spanish album. She has been speaking Portuguese since she was little and studied Spanish in her teens, if you look at interviews of her she explains all this. Third, she isn't putting her hands up in defeat, she's explaining that she still loves him and wants to work it out without fighting aka she doesn't have weapons - "no tengo armas". Also your translation is just a bit off.

[cairaguas]

The "country" tag is not about the song's recording studio. This blog is a teaching blog for Spanish learners, so it's to help people understand the background of the artist. Also, this was her first song in Spanish that became famous and marked her entrance into the Spanish music industry. It was released early, before the Mi Plan album came out. She was much more known for her English music before.

"Manos al aire" is like "hands up!" in English. It's to show that she doesn't want a fight, and that she wants to resolve stuff peacefully. The "no tengo armas" later in the lyrics justifies this as well. It would be incorrect to translate it as a statement of love, although I agree with you that other parts of the song do say that.

Can you be more constructive in your translation critique at the end? What sounds off to you? I can't change anything without specifics. Don't forget this is a teaching blog, so I'm not going to translate stanzas loosely/inaccurately to mix in lyrics already found in other, different stanzas.

[anonymous]

^ also in basically each of her other albums there has been a song to three in Spanish so the full Spanish album was pretty much inevitable and I dare say it, she kind of sounds better in the Spanish album Mi Plan then song of her English songs but I love them all regardless