Erich Selheim has followed on from his German versions of Elvis's early albums with covers of songs from
Trust -
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClXbwR ... zxsJIxWrog
I complimented Erich Selheim on his earlier performances, how my lack of German meant I concentrated on & appreciated all the more the melodies & commented on my curiosity at how he managed to fit German versions of all those consonants into the tunes etc.
He answered -
Yes, I feel the same way about Elvis' songs; I've known them for decades, but re-recording the brilliant backing tracks makes me realise how many rhythmic and melodic details there are which I'd never really paid attention to.
Regarding my translations, I've tried to remain as literal as possible; but as you've guessed yourself, some compromises had to be made in order to keep the rhymes and the syllabic structure intact. As far as I could make them out, I even tried to use German puns where Elvis' original lyrics had English ones (though there would probably be precious few people in the world who'd appreciate this effort, as English-speaking listeners generally don't understand German, and German listeners generally don't speak enough English to understand Costello's wordplay). The biggest problem is: The English language has more one-syllable words than the German one, and thus you normally need less syllables to say something, so in translation it's often difficult to get the message across in the same space. "This Year's Girl", for example, would be translated into something like "Das Mädchen dieses Jahres" or "Das Mädchen des Jahres" - 3 syllables to 6 or 7. So I tried to find something shorter which would still catch some of the original's spirit: "Das Gesicht" ("The Face").