#i saw that this interview is in the back of the book...fail momence...

[coquelicoq]

i had no idea there were english-language songs in these books! so i looked it up and found this interview with Ann Leckie:

[T]here are three real-life songs in Ancillary Justice. Two of them are (shockingly enough) shape note songs—“Clamanda” (Sacred Harp 42) and “Bunker Hill” (Missouri Harmony 19). They’re songs that, for one reason or another, I connect with these characters and events. The third is older than these two by a couple of centuries, but it shares their military theme. It’s “L’homme Armé,” and it seems like every late fifteenth-century composer and their pet monkey wrote a mass based on it. I exaggerate—I don’t think we have that many surviving Missas L’homme Armé by pet monkeys. But it was a popular song in its day.

i'm sure someone somewhere has already matched these songs with lyrics in Ancillary Justice, but a cursory search wasn't bringing it up, so i'm gonna do it here for my own reference. the song Breq sings in chapter 16 to calm herself right before leaving Justice of Toren forever

Oh, have you gone to the battlefield Armored and well armed? And shall dreadful events Force you to drop your weapons?

corresponds to this verse of "Clamanda":

Oh! Have you ventured to the field, Well armed with helmet, sword, and shield! And shall the world, with dread alarms, Compel you now to ground your arms?

while the song sung by the Valskaayan rebels that Breq recalls in chapter 14

Death will overtake us In whatever manner already fated Everyone falls to it And so long as I'm ready I don't fear it No matter what form it takes.

corresponds to a stanza of "The American Hero: A Sapphick Ode" (the source of the lyrics for "Bunker Hill"):

Death will invade us by the means appointed, And we must all bow to the King of Terrors; Nor am I anxious, if I am preparéd, What shape he comes in.

in chapter 21, Justice of Toren's sleeper agent override is a Valskaayan song:

You should be afraid of the person with weapons. You should be afraid. All around the cry goes out, put on armor made of iron. The person, the person, the person with weapons. You should be afraid of the person with weapons. You should be afraid.

which corresponds to "L'Homme Armé" (The Armed Man), written in Middle French:

L'homme armé doibt on doubter. On a fait partout crier Que chascun se viegne armer D'un haubregon de fer. L'homme armé doibt on doubter.

of course, Breq's translation of "homme" is "person" instead of "man". it would be interesting to see how that song was rendered in the French translation of Ancillary Justice.

As much as I adore conlangs, I really like how the Imperial Radch books handle language. The book is entirely in English but you're constantly aware that you're reading a "translation," both of the Radchaai language Breq speaks as default, and also the various other languages she encounters. We don't hear the words but we hear her fretting about terms of address (the beloathed gendering on Nilt) and concepts that do or don't translate (Awn switching out of Radchaai when she needs a language where "citizen," "civilized," and "Radchaai person" aren't all the same word) and noting people's registers and accents. The snatches of lyrics we hear don't scan or rhyme--even, and this is what sells it to me, the real-world songs with English lyrics, which get the same "literal translation" style as everything else--because we aren't hearing the actual words, we're hearing Breq's understanding of what they mean. I think it's a cool way to acknowledge linguistic complexity and some of the difficulties of multilingual/multicultural communication, which of course becomes a larger theme when we get to the plot with the Presgar Translators.