Talk:Hine E Hine

New Zealand: Music / Māori Low‑importance

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Translation

At the moment, the article makes no comment on what "hine e hine" means. I put a translation request here, but it was removed with the comment "it is a name".

Nothing I've found indicates that it's a personal name. Looking at a few sources:

In the lyrics as given in the inlay of Pure, it's written "Hine, e hine!" and left untranslated where it gives the English translation of the lyrics. On the other hand, for Pokarekare Ana the English line corresponding to "E hine e" is "Oh girl". But the translations there don't seem to be literal, and I even suspect that some bits have been moved between lines in order to cater for the differences between English and Maori grammar.
The one reference that the article has at the moment has "Little girl, darling girl" but that looks to me like a free translation rather than an accurate one.
I can't get anything meaningful out of Google Translate. It appears that their Maori translator is at an early stage of development.

Maybe it's just an expression that can't be translated into English, whether literally or so as to reflect the semantics. But even this is the case, the article should at least address the question of what the song title means. — Smjg (talk) 21:13, 26 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

If it does infact have a meaning, it would not be something for editors to do, as you have already shown translation is subjective, so any translation we put to it would be OR. What you are looking for is a sourced translation from a 3rd party source--Jac16888 ^Talk 21:56, 26 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]