Song:Moghedien
Moghedien is a song from the Season 3 soundtrack of The Wheel of Time television series.
Lyrics
Verse 1
Old Tongue
upendari, upendari, upendari,
ghar upendari
Official English
Webs, webs, webs,
venom and webs
Literal Translation
Same as official English.
Notes
Ghar is also used for "acid", so this usage here indicates a more general word for a noxious or dangerous substance.
Verse 2
Old Tongue
Official English
How sadistic to
play with your prey
Dancing in the light
unawares
Literal Translation
Most sadistic
(to) play (with your) prey
(as they are) dancing under light
unwatching
Notes
Dancing in the light is rendered with basho "under", rather than sa "in". This is part of a pattern of more literal spatial references in Old Tongue; sa is typically reserved for "within" in the sense of inside of the borders or boundaries of something. But "under light" is more literal, positioning the light as above (as it likely would be) and the prey underneath.
Navronnde is a new word, clearly influenced by vronne, av'ron, vron, etc. It seems most likely it is a modified form of vronne, "to watch". So, one assumes we would also have vronnde "to not watch", and then na- seems to operate here as a rare participle-izing prefix.
Verse 3
Old Tongue
jaebun gulos, gulos,
Official English
As you watch from the dark
They’re unsuspecting
Twisting in awful ways
Your threads
Are binding
As they –
Literal Translation
You watch from darkness
prey unsuspecting, unsuspecting
(you) make (them) twist awfully
(your) threads
(are) binding
(as they are) moving
Notes
Asa vronne der zamon, if translated most literally, is "from darkness watch you", with "from darkness" as the subject and "you" as the object. This is not dissimilar from
belo nin'balt jalou doko?
" where goes your heart's desire"
or
kazath nin'zavilat vakar gavane
" what moves your will says?"
from Andor, where OVS structure puts what is nominally the subject in the object position, but with a relatively coherent resulting literal translation. These structures are similar to subject-verb inversion in English, and more generally these all fall within the concept of linguistic inversion. "Where goes your heart's desire" has effectively the same meaning as "where does your heart desire to go?" Here, we have "from darkness watches you", which is a strange but relatively interpretable English sentence that would be understood to mean "you watch from darkness". So, we see the mechanics of OVS being used in more complex ways in these songs.