Êtes-vous prêt?

A writer-friend of mine recently had her young adult novel picked up by an Italian publisher. Son très excitant!! One publishing challenge: each chapter is like an encyclopedia entry, and the whole book, naturally, ordered from A-Zed. Over a celebratory drink, we giggled a little and wondered out loud how an Italian translation could reconcile the English and maintain the alphabetical order. Wouldn't want to be in that junior editor's Zelli ostrich slip-ons. 

By a similar creative token, I've often wondered how singers/songwriters take a well-known English language song and well, you know, sing it in French. The rhymes would all be awry! The melody discordant! The audience confused! 
(trust me on that last one; at my son's most recent school assembly, the new O Canada "blend" of French and English had my brain, lips and tongue contorted in indescribable ways)

Enter bilingual chanteuse, Emilie-Claire Barlow, a sassy spark of an anglophone and recent guest on CBC's C'est la vie: (linguistically-riveting Interview with Emilie-Claire Barlow). She's released her first French-only "album" and while contorting her lips, also furrowed her brow and asked: 

Which lyric has more sass?

English: 

"One of these days these boots are going to walk all over you"

French: 

"I'm going to use these boots to leave you"

Well, Nancy? What do you think?



  BTW MUST LISTEN: Emilie-Claire's melodic, playful songs on Soundcloud  

p.s. I just found me a brand new box of matches...