i love it
ha ha ha..
if only i fluent in french.

well, translation :
"No, nothing at all
I do not regret anything at all (x2)
Either the good that has been done to me
or the evil
everything is equal to me
no, nothing at all, no...
everything is paid, swept away, forgotten
I don't care about the past!
With my memories I lit the fire
My pains, my pleasures,
I don't need them anymore
My love stories are swept away
with their tremolos (--> I don't know how to translate it : is it the same word in english???)
swept away for ever
I'm starting on new bases
no, nothing at all etc...
Because my life, my happiness, today everything begins with you!"
(sorry for the mistakes in english...)

i believe tremolos is troubles

No, nothing at all, I regret nothing at all
Not the good, nor the bad. It is all the same.
No, nothing at all, I have no regrets about anything.
It is paid, wiped away, forgotten.
I am not concerned with the past, with my memories.
I set fire to my pains and pleasures,
I don’t need them anymore.
I have wiped away my loves, and my troubles.
Swept them all away.
I am starting again from zero.

No, nothing at all, I have no regrets
Because from today, my life, my happiness, everything,
Starts with you!

i really like the part of "Balayés pour toujours
Je repars à zéro..." is sumthing like and i start all about zero whit U
i think is so lovely ^^

i read that this song was about or associated with the foreign legion defending the french colonies in Africa.

i reckon it could be about anything or anyone that you care deeply about.

so tremolos mean troubles. I recognized it because of my knowledge of music, I guess it is the same in Italian and French.

the meaning of the word "tremolo" isn't quite "troubles"as suggested by Mr. Wright;tremolos in French is exactly the same as in English - a tremolo is a wobble in sound. In the song it is an image used to describe the "ups and downs " of past loves.

NON, JE NE REGRETTE RIEN
Paroles: Michel Vaucaire, musique: Charles Dumont, enr. 10 novembre 1960

Non, rien de rien
No, nothing at all

Non, je ne regrette rien
No, I don't regret anything at all

Ni le bien qu'on m'a fait
Nor the good that was given me

ni le mal, Tout ça m'est bien égal
Nor the evil. They’re all the same


Non, rien de rien
No, nothing at all

Non, je ne regrette rien
I don't regret anything at all

C'est payé, balayé, oublié
It’s all paid for, wiped out, and forgotten

Je me fous du passé
And I don't care for what’s gone by


Avec mes souvenirs
With my memories

J'ai allumé le feu
I’ve lit a fire

Mes chagrins, mes plaisirs
My sorrows, my pleasures

Je n'ai plus besoin d'eux
I don’t need them anymore

Balayés mes amours
My romances wiped out

Avec leurs tremolos
With the tremblings they braught

Balayés pour toujours
Wiped out forever

Je repars à zéro
I set out once more from zero


Non, rien de rien
No, nothing at all

Non, je ne regrette rien
I don't regret anything at all

Ni le bien qu'on m'a fait
Nor the good that was given me

ni le mal, Tout ça m'est bien égal
Nor the evil. They’re all the same


Non, rien de rien
No, nothing at all

Non, je ne regrette rien
I don't regret anything at all

Car ma vie
Because my life

Car mes joies
Because my joys

Aujourd'hui
Today

Ça commence avec toi...
It all begins with you…

Note:

As has already been observed before me by English Geek in this thread, tremolo is a metaphorical use, even in the French original. Literally, it would refer to a rhythmic wavering of sound, where the sound goes up and down equally from the central/main note.
Reading this literal meaning into the context of the song, you'd figure it'd therefore mean ups and downs in the life/loves/whatever-else of the speaker - you know, trials, troubles and tribulations.

Now while translating one has to pay attention to two major elements: the meaning and the sound.

Now ups and downs really isn't aurally effective, so we may discard this right away.
Troubles (as many have translated it here), trials, tribulations all go close to the original sound, but the metaphorical meaning is lost, we reduce the French metaphor to its English literal paraphrase. The english speaking audience loses out on the whole pleasure of figuring out from the song's context what tremolo might mean. The whole beauty of the line operates around this metaphor, so breaking it down into its literal meaning can't work in my book.

Hence i went for tremblings, which is as close if not closer soundwise to the original. And while tremblings doesn't mean a musical tremolo, they both literally refer to vibrations from where you have to extract the meaning from the context of the song - you know, that these vibrations again refer to ups and downs in the speaker's life. So even the metaphor is more or less preserved.

Note#2:

There are a few other instances where I've found it absolutely necessary to deviate from popularly accepted translations. Again, I give my reasons below:

Je ne regrette rien: This has become an iconic phrase in popular culture, not only in its French original but also in English traditionally translated as I don't regret anything. There are a million Piaf posters and wall graffiti and stuff out there with these words with her face. The problem with this is that when it comes to extreme/superlative negatives like nothing, no more, never (rien, jamais) French employs double-negatives unlike English. A literal English translation of the line would be the American colloquialism I don't regret nothing, you use the negative twice. One could argue that for all such cases of extreme negatives, the French double negative stands for every instance practically where an English speaker would use a single negative. So why consider this specific case at all? I do that because I see this as an Edith Piaf song, and given the weight and savage clarity of how she takes care in articulating this line, I can't consider this as an ordinary instance of the double negative. She is digging deep into the grammar of her language, bringing out the potential weight of using a double negative, great actor/interpreter of words that she was. And we all remember this line from how she sang it, we can't hear this line as a normal French line, but only in her voice right? If so, in that case, this weight of the negative articulation has to be respected when you translate such an iconic phrase. Now one couldn't actually use the American colloquial alternative, for the French original isn't colloquial in tone. So I've settle for "I don't regret anything AT ALL" as the best option open.

Ni le bien qu'on m'a fait: I hadn't seen this recent biopic till this week. On seeing it, I noticed they'd translated this line as Nor the good times that I had. Now that's not even simplifying the meaning, its basically misreading the French syntax. The original line means, as it has been observed here, "the good that was done to me." Now the deal is I couldn't really accept this because, not only does it sound flat and colorless in English, it also gives the line an additional sense of someone or someones doing good to her. Do is a very active verb in English. The original line's sense is closer to the notion of the good that life gave her, that fate reserved for her, the good things that came her way. This is possibly why the translators of the film subtitles went to the other extreme of paraphrasing it as the good times she had. But I've tried to strike a middle ground with "The good that was given me" which gets rid of the active agency of the 'do' verb, while not losing track of the original grammar and syntax and meaning.

Balayés mes amours: The zense of 'amours' here is not 'loves' but rather 'lovestories'. It's not her loves that have been erased, rather their stories, their narratives (among all the other things that the song also mentions) that have been rejected by her memory and by her consciousness to effect a regeneration of her spirit (within the song, that is). Now 'love stories' is what Aurore had used in the very first translation offered on this page. However, I offer 'romances', again, not only because it works better in English, but also because it has the additional benefit of separating this from the all-consuming love that she offers at the very end of the song. I know many would object to this, since the original isn't 'romances' but 'amours'. And I admit that the reasons for my personal preference here is less watertight than the previous ones. There are arguments for both sides here. But in the end, my personal feeling was this choice outweighed the others, but it remains linguistically a less justified decision than the previous cases of deviation.

Car ma vie/Car mes joies/Aujourd'hui/Ça commence avec toi...:
Now the translations on this page use for the last line "Everything begins with you." The word everything is nowhere even alluded to in the song in that line. I guess the reason they bring it in is if you literally translate those 4 lines you end up with My life/My joys/Today/It begins with you. Which is what is used more commonly, but which is even more unacceptable for the simple reason that after saying life and joys, you end up with a single singular pronoun "It" to stand for all the life and joys. Now to correct that one could either make it a plural pronoun and say "They begin with you" which would deviate form the peculiar French character of bringing in that singular to stand for the sense of the absolute. And this sense of the absolute is very well brought out by "Everything" but my only problem with that is it involves replacing the original pronoun "It" altogether with something completely different and uncalled for by the original. So to preserve the characteristic use of the singular absolute I have chosen to settle for "It ALL begins with you."

And I guess that's it for this song folks :)

Oh and I also notice that a few typos have crept into these hurriedly typed-out missives. But I'm not adding to the burden of words by typing out individual errata, in the belief that none of the typos are so gross that you might not be able to figure out from the context what the intended error-free word was.

But apologies nonetheless :)

Some context:
While one can assume you know the life-story of Piaf, its basic trajectory at least, it seems relevant to mention that this was offered to her and subsequently famously adopted by her in late 1960. She continued to perform it regularly throughout the rest of her famous series of gigs at The Olympia (1959-63) that continued till her year of death 1963. Through this time, her health was in rapid decline, and she was also under public scrutiny (even disapproval) and simultaneous sympathy (not empathy, but the concern that goes with such a condition approaching any international icon) for her (what proved to be) fatal morphine addiction in addition to her longtime alcoholicism. If you listen to the song in this context, the words come to acquire a whole new dimension of meaning and it becomes her affirmation of her whole life, how she had spent her time on earth.

Random bit of an anecdote. Yesterday I watched a student monologue on the life of Piaf. At the end the actress sang a bit of this song. She was a good singer, but I could tell she was singing what she'd heard by listening to the record as a non french speaker and had never actually seen the thing written down. It was horrible. The acting was very good but the song was reduced to gibberish. "rien de rien" became something like "drienne drienne" Nasty. Sort of proves that people planning to sing in another language really have to consulte someone who can understand it on the meaning and pronounciation of the lyrics.

Does anyone know the infinitive verbs from which "fous" and "repars" are taken? (With sincere apologies to any native French speakers!)

someone mentioned that this song is a double negative, because of the je ne regrette rien, but in french, ne...rien around a verb means "nothing" so in fact its just a single negative. the "ne" is important to be gramatically correct, but sometimes it can be droped in speaking as slang.

yeah i was gonna say "avec" is "with"

Love love love this song.You dont need to understand a word of french for it to give you knots in your stomach

i had read somewhere that this song was sung by some people who were abt to be executed for being associated with the french spy org. or whatever it was called. they were basically aying " we dont regret what we did". i just read it, but im not sure about how true it is

Thanks, all, for the excellent line-by-line translations.

A few minor comments --

1) For me, Lucyk2 summs it up.

2) To johnnydie: The song you're thinking of might have been "La Chant des Partisans," but if I were French and had the spit and iron to sing while standing before a firing squad, I guess I'd have sung the French national anthem, "La Marseillaise." "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien" wasn't written until after WWII.

3) A literal line-by-line English translation of this song will never be singable, for a well known reason: French words almost always stress the final syllable and are suited to spondaic (da-DA-da-DA) and anapestic (da-da-DA-da-da-DA) meter; English words usually stress an earlier syllable and are most often suited to iambic (DA-da-DA-da) and trochaic (DA-da-da-DA-da-da) meter. So, a literal translation will throw the whole lyric out of shape. Fortunately, this song is art, and art, unlike craft, allows varied interpretations.
I think the important thing to capture is the inner meaning of the entire song: Are you a young girl who suddenly finds that schoolyard slights and schoolgirl crushes are no longer important now you've met your first love? Are you a woman who finds your past disappointments and hopes childish now that you've met your true love? Are you a man who hopes some woman, somewhere, sometime, will see you as her savior, her reason for being? In short, are you a hopeless romantic? Or are you an aging courtesan trading your old passions for the new one you desperately hope will keep you forever? "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien" speaks for all. To me, Piaff's hard-life voice, ringing out over the excited heartbeat of the brass, speaks loudest for the last, the street-wise, oft-desired, oft-rejected woman reaching for what may be her final chance for security and happiness -- and maybe for love.

I render it this way in English (play the song while you read, and see if the "translation" works):

No!
Not a thing!
No,
I don't regret a thing.

Did I rise?
Did I soar?
Did I fall?
It means nothing at all!

No!
Not a thing!
No,
I don't regret a thing.

All is paid,
Swept away,
Cast away.
I have no yesterday!

I have made a small fire
Of my old memories.
All past pain and desire
Drift away in the breeze.

Up in smoke, my old loves
With the tremors they caused.
Up in smoke, my old life;
I am done with what was!

No!
Not a thing!
No,
I don't regret a thing.

Did I rise?
Did I soar?
Did I fall?
It means nothing at all!

No!
Not a thing!
No,
I don't regret a thing.

All I know,
All I do,
All I am,
All begin now with you!

all of these translations and breakdowns have been really helpful to me. i think basically, even if the true meaning is varied slightly, it's really easy to just "get" such a beautiful song. like you can feel between the lines...and it floors me.

No, absolutely nothing
No, I regrette nothing
No the good that was done to me, nor the bad
It's all the same to me!
No, absolutely nothing
No, I don't regrette anything (i think the french lyrics were wrong here, it just said no, but it should say <> again)
It's paied, sweped away, forgotten, I don't care about it anymore!
With, my souvenirs, I light the fire
My saddness, my pleasures
I don't need them!

Sweep away the love
With their love songs, (a tremolos is a love song from the middle ages)
Sweep away everything
And I'll begin at zero (i'll start again, fresh)

No, absolutely nothing
No, I don't regret anything
No the good things that were done to me, nor the bad
It's all the same to me!
No, absolutely nothing
No, I don't regret anything
Because my life, because my joys
Today, begins with you! (by you, she's talking about god, because this some is basically a prayer. She dies five days after she sings this song and, at this point, knows that she is close to death. Thing song is a great symbol of her life and a means of tieing the ends together.)

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Here's a much more literal translation that's still fairly readable/understandable in English. There are three instances where I capitalize nouns/pronouns (One, It, That). As another poster mentioned, there does seem to be a "spritual" component (not necessarily "God") to the song, so I use the caps to set off those words that seem to refer to something "greater"/broader than what might be immediately apparent...

No, nothing of nothing.
No, I regret nothing.
Not the good that One did to me.
Not the bad. All that to me is pretty equal.

No, nothing of nothing.
No, I regret nothing.
It's paid, swept away, forgotten.
I rid myself of the past.

With my memories, I lit fire.
My sorrows, my pleasures, I have no more need of them.
Swept away the loves, with their ups-and-downs.
Swept away for always. I leave again at zero.

No, nothing of nothing.
No, I regret nothing.
Not the good that One did to me.
Not the bad. All that to me is pretty equal.
No, nothing of nothing.
No, I regret nothing.
Because my life, because my joys,
today...That begins with You.

2 Replies

This is my favourite french song it is beautifull meaningfull and sung with such vigor by Edith Piaf.I love it. I alawys listen to it when ever I am faced with difficulties.It has never fail to give me courage to overcome adverseries and difficulties.God bless the author of the song and the singer Edith Piaf.
Raymond Wunna.

Interesting to read each individual translation of the words sung buy Edith Piaf in her song: No, Regret.
Why confuse yourself with your 'own' idea of what she is singing and trying to translate into English?
Go to the Master! (in this case Edith herself).
Listen to her sing this song in English, as she wrote the song, should not be she the one who knows what words she wanted it to reflect in English or in French?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqHnoHeEm8s
Here are the words in English as sung by Edith Piaf on this YouTube recording of her.
Now lets get it right everyone.
NO, NO REGRET


NO, NO REGRET
NO, I WILLHAVE NO REGRET
ALL THE THINGS THAT WENT WRONG
FOR AT LAST I HAVE LEARNED TO BE STRONG

NO, NO REGRET
NO, I WILL HAVE NO REGRET
FOR THE GRIEF THAT WONT LAST
IT IS GONE, I'VE FORGOTTEN THE PAST

AND THE MEMORIES I HAD, I NO LONGER DESIRE
BOTH THE GOOD AND THE BAD
I'VE FLUNG INTO THE FIRE
AND I FEEL IN MY HEART
THAT THE SEED I'VE BEEN SOWN
IT IS SOMETHING QUITE NEW
IT'SLIKE NOTHING I'VE KNOWN

NO, NO REGRET
NO, I WILL HAVE NO REGRET
ALL THE THINGS THAT WENT WRONG
FOR AT LAST I HAVE LEARNED TO BE STRONG

NO. NO REGRET
NO, I WILL HAVE NO REGRET
FOR THIS SEED THAT IS NEW
IT IS THE LOVE THAT IS CRYING FOR YOU

Hi again,
Came across another web page with the exact English words sung by Edith for this song.
I only got two (2) words mis-heard in listening to her sing.
Here are the lyrics again, with the two words corrected and plus the 's' after Regret - when Edith sings it the 's' is not heard in her pronouncing the word in song..

No, No Regrets

No! No regrets
No! I will have no regrets
All the things
That went wrong
For at last I have learned to be strong

No! No regrets
No! I will have no regrets
For the grief doesn't last
It is gone
I've forgotten the past

And the memories I had
I no longer desire
Both the good and the bad
I have flung in a fire
And I feel in my heart
That the seed has been sown
It is something quite new
It's like nothing I've known

No! No regrets
No! I will have no regrets
All the things that went wrong
For at last I have learned to be strong

No! No regrets
No! I will have no regrets
For the seed that is new
It's the love that is growing for you

À la page des textes d'Edith Piaf
À la page des textes

ENJOY!!