Andor
Andor is a song from the Season 3 soundtrack of The Wheel of Time television series.
Lyrics
Verse 1
Old Tongue
Official English
Young lioness
groomed from birth
Where does your heart
Pull you to?
Literal Translation
Young lioness
groomed for rule
your heart desires
where to go?
Notes
Chagli and mishan are new words introduced here. The translation is relatively straightforward, but note that the official English does not 1 for 1 match a more literal translation.
One less-straightforward aspect is the use of nin'balt, a contraction of ninte'balt or ninto'balt.
The structure belo nin'balt jalou doko is fairly common in Old Tongue, where the question "where does your heart want to go?" is re-arranged to be "where goes your heart's desire?". Old Tongue often uses object-verb-subject word order, where here, the question is structured like:
(belo nin'balt) jalou doko; doko is the subject, (belo nin'balt) the object. So, "where goes (belo nin'balt)?". Then, belo nin'balt is "your heart desires". So, the question is structurally saying "where goes to your heart desires", i.e. "where goes your heart's desire?".
Verse 2
Official English
Charming smile,
Sapphire eyes,
What does your will
Say to do?
Literal translation
Smile charming,
eyes blue,
your will says
what move?
Notes
We again see the contracted second person possessive nin on nin'zavilat.
Structurally we see a similar pattern as the previous verse with "kazath nin'zavilat vakar gavane?". "What moves your will says?" or "What moves your will's command?". In other words, "what does your will say to move?".
Here we see vakar being used not only as the word for move in a literal sense, but also as a verb of general action, i.e. "do". Old Tongue tends to split sentences where English might use the word "do" into either using vakar or tasu, with tasu being used where there is more an implication of creation or distortion, and vakar being used where it's implying more of a general action.