• Thanks Oliver! I suspect you're right on all counts. I was aiming for something more cycling-themed than cycling-issue related, but it does come across as you've said.

    The Internationale is a song which seems ironically ill-suited to surviving translation. The directly translated French original is only marginally related to the Russian lyrics, and the Chinese is likewise only tenuously linked to its Russian forebear.

    The original English translation (which is also, ironically, rather different to the American version) is, as Billy Bragg surmised, virtually unsingable in terms of language, content and scansion. His version is much more realistic.

    Perhaps the fragmentation of the Internationale rather reflects the main obstacle of the Left.

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