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:
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.