There have been a very wide variety of translations of the anthem. In 2002, Kuznar notes that the nature of these translations has varied widely. Many have been closely literal translations with variations solely to account for rhyme and meter but others have been done to encode different ideology perspectives and or to
update contents to adapt the lyrics to relevant more contemporary issues. The first English version has been attributed to the author Eugène Pottier himself, produced apparently after he fled the fall of the Paris Commune in June 1871 for temporary exile in Britain (until 1873, when he went on to the United States). The first US translation was by Charles Hope Kerr who heard it in De Geyter's setting in Lille in 1894 and published it as a pamphlet that year: it was later reproduced in
Songs of the IWW, first published in 1909 and has been reprinted by Kerr's publishing house into the 21st century. The first of many Italian versions signed by E. Bergeret, identified as
Ettore Marroni, in 1901. The Dutch communist poet
Henriette Roland Holst translated it into Dutch, with "Ontwaakt, verworpenen der aarde" ('Wake up, all who are cast away') at about the same time. By the time of the
1910 International Socialist Congress in Copenhagen, versions had appeared in 18 different languages, including a Danish one by A. C. Meyer, which was sung at the end of a cantata by 500 singers.
Russian version used in the Soviet Union The Russian version was initially translated by
Arkady Kots in 1902 and printed in London in
Zhizn, a Russian émigré magazine. The first Russian version had only three
stanzas, based on stanzas 1, 2, and 6 of the original, and the refrain. After the
Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the text was slightly re-worded to get rid of "now useless" future tenses – particularly the refrain was reworded (the future tense was replaced by the present, and the first person plural possessive pronoun was introduced). In 1918 the chief editor of
Izvestia,
Yuri Steklov, appealed to Russian writers to translate the other three stanzas, which did eventually happen. The Russian Internationale has been translated into many indigenous languages of Russia, including
Tatar,
Bashkir,
Chuvash,
Chukchi,
Udmurt and
Yakut. Arise, ones who are branded by the curse, All the world's starving and enslaved! Our outraged minds are boiling, Ready to lead us into a deadly fight. We will destroy this world of violence Down to the foundations, and then We will build our new world, He who was nothing will become everything! 𝄆 This is our final and decisive battle; With the Internationale humanity will rise up! 𝄇 No one will grant us deliverance, Not God, nor Tsar, nor hero. We will win our liberation, With our very own hands. To throw down oppression with a skilled hand, To take back what is ours — Fire up the furnace and hammer boldly, while the iron is still hot! You've sucked enough of our blood, you vampires, With prison, taxes and poverty! You have all the power, all the blessings of the world, And our rights are but an empty sound! We'll make our own lives in a different way — And here is our battle cry: All the power to the people of labour! And away with all the parasites! Contemptible you are in your wealth, You kings of coal and steel! You had your thrones, parasites, At our backs erected. All the factories, all the chambers — All were made by our hands. It's time! We demand the return Of that which was stolen from us. Enough of the will of kings Stupefying us into the haze of war! War to the tyrants! Peace to the people! Go on strike, sons of the army! And if the tyrants tell us To fall heroically in battle for them — Then, murderers, we will point The muzzles of our cannons at you! Only we, the workers of the worldwide Great army of labour, Have the right to own the land, But the parasites — never! And if the great thunder rolls Over the pack of dogs and executioners, For us, the sun will forever Shine on with its fiery beams.
Soviet cinema and theatre Dmitry Shostakovich used "The Internationale" twice for the soundtrack to the 1936 Soviet film
Girl Friends, once performed by a military-style band when a group of women are preparing for war, and a second time as a solo performance on a
theremin.
Nikolai Evreinov's 1920
The Storming of the Winter Palace used both "The Internationale" and "La Marseillaise" symbolically in opposition to each other, with the former sung by the "Red platform" proletariat side and the latter sung by the "White platform" government side, the former starting weakly and in disarray but gradually becoming organised and drowning out the latter.
Toscanini and Hymn of the Nations The change of the Soviet Union's national anthem from "The Internationale" to the "State Anthem of the USSR" was a factor in the production of the 1944 film
Hymn of the Nations, which made use of an orchestration of "The Internationale" that
Arturo Toscanini had already done the year before for a 1943
NBC radio broadcast commemorating the twenty-sixth anniversary of the
October Revolution. It was incorporated into Verdi's
Inno delle nazioni alongside the national anthems of the United Kingdom (already in the original) and the United States (incorporated by Toscanini for a prior radio broadcast of the
Inno in January of that year) to signify the side of the Allies during the
Second World War. Toscanini's son Walter remarked that an Italian audience for the film would see the significance of Arturo being willing to play these anthems and unwilling to play
Giovinezza and the
Marcia Reale because of his anti-Fascist political views.
Alexandr Hackenschmied, the film's director, expressed his view that the song was "ormai archeologico" (nearly archaeological), but this was a countered in a letter by Walter Toscanini to
Giuseppe Antonio Borgese, rejecting the objections of Borgese, Hackenschmied, and indeed the
Office of War Information. At the time, Walter stated that he believed that "The Internationale" had widespread relevance across Europe, and in 1966 he recounted in correspondence that the OWI had "panicked" when it had learned of the Soviet Union's plans, but Arturo had issued an ultimatum that if "The Internationale", "l'inno di tutte le glebe ed i lavoratori di tutto il mondo" (the anthem of the working classes of the whole world) was not included, that if the already done orchestration and performance were not used as-is, then they should forget about distributing the film entirely. The inclusion of "The Internationale" in the Toscaninis' minds was not simply for the sake of a Soviet Union audience, but because of its relevance to all countries of the world. Although Walter did not consider "The Internationale" to be "good music", he considered it to be (as he stated to the OWI) "more than the hymn of a nation or a party" and "an idea of brotherhood". It would have been expensive to re-record a new performance of the
Inno without "The Internationale", and thus it remained in the film as originally released. Some time during the
McCarthy Era, however, it was edited out of re-released copies, and remained so until a 1988
Library of Congress release on video, which restored "The Internationale" to the film.
Winston Churchill and National Anthems of the Allies A similar situation had occurred earlier in the war with the
BBC's popular weekly Sunday evening radio broadcast, preceding the Nine O'Clock News, titled
National Anthems of the Allies, whose playlist was all of the national anthems of the countries allied with the United Kingdom, the list growing with each country that Germany invaded. After the Germans began their invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 (
Operation Barbarossa), it was fully expected that "The Internationale", as the anthem of the Soviet Union, would be included in the playlist that day, but to people's surprise it was not, neither that week nor the week after.
Winston Churchill, a staunch opponent of communism, had immediately sent word to the BBC via
Anthony Eden that "The PM has issued an instruction to the
Ministry of Information that the Internationale is
on no account to be played by the B.B.C." (emphasis in the original). Newspapers such as the
Daily Express and
Daily Mail were sharply critical of the
Foreign Office, and questions were asked in the
House of Commons. The ambassador
Ivan Maisky recorded in his diary a conversation with
Duff Cooper on 11 July 1941 where Cooper asked him if the music played after
Vyacheslav Molotov's speech on 22 June would be acceptable to the Soviet Union, and he replied that it would not be. (The music was Tchaikovsky's
1812 Overture.) On the evening of 13 July, the BBC instead played, in Maisky's words, "a very beautiful but little-known Soviet song", which he described as demonstrating "the British Government's cowardice and foolishness". Rather than risk offending the Soviet Union by continuing to pointedly refuse to play its national anthem in a radio programme entitled
National Anthems, the BBC discontinued the programme. Six months later, on 22 January 1942, Churchill relented and lifted the prohibition. This relaxation enabled "The Internationale" to be used in wartime broadcasts and films, and at public occasions, thereafter. The BBC's 1943
Salute to the Red Army had a mass performance of "The Internationale" at the
Royal Albert Hall by the choir of the
Royal Choral Society, the
BBC Symphony Orchestra, the
London Philharmonic Orchestra, and military bands, in front of the
flag of the Soviet Union and following a speech by Anthony Eden. The day before, which was
Red Army Day, troops and the audience had sung "The Internationale" to the
Lord Mayor of Bristol. The 1944 film
Tawny Pipit depicted schoolchildren in the fictional village of Lipton Lea welcoming the character Olga Boclova (based upon
Ludmilla Pavlichenko) to their town by singing "The Internationale".
China Qu Qiubai revised the translation of the lyrics into Chinese after having attended the Fourth Conference of
Comintern in November 1921 and having not been able to join in the spontaneous singing by attendees there of "The Internationale" in their various home languages with their own Chinese rendition because the Chinese attendees did not have a good one. He proceeded, according to the political memoirs of his contemporaries, in 1923 to re-translate the lyrics from the original French at the organ in his cousin's home in Beijing, publishing them in
New Youth, a journal of which he was the editor-in-chief. The Internationale was played at the closing ceremony of the
3rd National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 1923. Since the Congress, it became standard for The Internationale to be played in the closing ceremonies of each National Congress held by the CCP. This has become part of the cultural narrative of Qu's life, including in a 2001 television dramatisation of events,
The Sun Rises from the East, where Qu is depicted as explaining to
Cai Hesen that the former did not translate the song's title because he wished to make the Chinese version, which used a phonetic rendering of the French name using Chinese words "yingtenaixiongnaier", accessible to a multi-lingual non-Chinese-speaking audience. The television dramatisation included excerpts from the film
Lenin in October, a popular film in China during the time of Mao with scenes that were set to "The Internationale".
Lenin in October was one of several films from Soviet cinema translated into Chinese in the 1950s that led to the widespread popularity of "The Internationale" in the early years of the PRC. Others include
Lenin in 1918, a 1939 film which came to China in 1951, with "The Internationale" abruptly terminated at the point in the film that Lenin is shot by an assassin; and the 1952
The Unforgettable 1919 which came to China that same year and used "The Internationale" for a mass rally scene involving
Joseph Stalin. Chinese films about martyrs to the CCP cause would begin to incorporate the song into pivotal scenes later in the 1950s, this use peaking in the 1960s with inclusion into such films as the 1965
Living Forever in Burning Flames depicting the execution of
Jiang Jie. In the 1956 film
Mother, the character Lao Deng, a local revolutionary leader, is depicted singing "The Internationale" on the way to his execution, and in the 1960
A Revolutionary Family, the son of the protagonist (in chorus with his fellow prisoners) also sings "The Internationale" on the way to his execution. It would become a
leitmotif of Chinese Revolutionary (model) cinema. Political memoirs of
Li Dazhao's daughter Li Xinghua recount his explaining the lyrics of the song to her, he having encountered it on his travels with Qu in 1923 and during his visit to Moscow the following year. He also encouraged people to sing it during socialist activism training sessions in 1925 and 1926. As with Qu, the song forms part of the cultural narrative of his life, it being the widely accepted account of his execution in 1927 that he sang the song in the last moments of his life. As with Qu and Li, the song is found in many places in political histories of CCP leaders and martyrs to its cause, symbolising their socialist ideals, including
Zhu De,
Zhou Enlai, and
Deng Xiaoping. It has also seen continued, and sometimes contradictory, uses over the decades as politics in China have changed, such as (for one example)
Chen Yun's use in the 1960s to justify a new agricultural land allocation policy. It has maintained its status as a de facto CCP anthem, and its continued relevance over the decades can be seen in its inclusion in all three of the 1964
The East Is Red, the 1984
The Song of the Chinese Revolution, and the 2009
The Road to Prosperity. While the song has a wide influence as an adjunct of official ideology, it has also been used in counter-cultural movements, such as the demonstrators in the
1989 Tiananmen Square protests singing it during their final retreat.
Barbara Mittler maintains that this dual use of "The Internationale" by the government and by people demonstrating against it disproves any hypothesis that "a certain type of music 'depicts' a certain social environment". "The Internationale" continues to be popular with 21st century Chinese audiences, as exemplified by its reception by audience when sung at the second curtain call of the "Shocking" concert of Liu Han,
Liao Changyong, and
Mo Hualun. Qu was hired as a translator for students at the
Communist University of the Toilers of the East in Moscow, where he met
Xiao San in 1922, who had newly arrived from France. There, Xiao was drawn into the performing arts as a vehicle for revolutionary messages and, in conjunction with other students, translated "The Internationale" and several Soviet songs from the original French and Russian into Chinese, separately from Qu's work in Beijing in 1923. Xiao re-worked his translation in 1939, adding to it an explanatory history. Ironically, the translation in the television dramatisation
The Sun Rises from the East that is recited by the character of Qu, is not in reality Qu's translation at all, but is the 1949 official approved translation based upon Xiao's, that is additionally credited to
Zheng Zhenduo. The 2004 film
My Years in France, a biographical film of Deng Xiaoping, re-framed this history into a dramatic scene, set in 1920s Paris before Xiao leaves for Moscow, in which Zhou Enlai,
Liu Qingyang,
Zhang Shenfu, and others climb to the top of
Notre Dame to sing "The Internationale" to the accompaniment of
its bell Emmanuel, and the character of Xiao resolves at that point, instead, to translate the song into Chinese. In addition to the Mandarin version, "The Internationale" also has
Cantonese and
Taiwanese Hokkien versions, occasionally used by communists or leftists in Hong Kong and Taiwan. The word "Internationale" is not translated in either version. There is also a
Uyghur version, a
Salar version, a
Tibetan version, a
Hmong version, a
Chakhar Mongolian version, a
Yi version, and a
Zhuang version translated from the Mandarin Chinese version, used for ethnic minorities in China.
Other languages Afrikaans translation In the first half of the twentieth century, communists, unionists and activists of all races in South Africa sang the
Internationale until the Communist Party and even loosely linked associations were suppressed from 1950
. Although no Afrikaans translation from the early period has been published, Afrikaans-speaking unionists worked in significant numbers in the garment industry in the 1920s and 1930s, and were introduced to international socialism by the union secretary
Solly Sachs. The Afrikaans translation that is available today, in the wake of the SACP's return to South Africa in 1990, is a distinctly post-apartheid version (2009) by the singer-sociologist Liela Groenewald. In this video, Liela Groenewald is accompanied by the brown South African musician Mervin Williams; their collaboration reflects the post-apartheid acknowledgement of Afrikaans as the language of a majority of brown (and a few black) in addition to white South Africans. English-speakers have sung a version of the British translation; for information on the
Zulu version, see the paragraph on Zulu below.
Armenian translations "The Internationale" has been translated into both standards of the
Armenian language,
Eastern and
Western. The most famous Eastern Armenian translation, published in Moscow in 1928, was made by the revolutionary poet
Yeghishe Charents, with musical arrangement by
Romanos Melikian.
Bengali translation "The Internationale" was first translated to Bengali by the rebel poet
Kazi Nazrul Islam. Nazrul, who was greatly inspired by the tenets of Socialism and its relevance to India under British colonial occupation, authored numerous poems in Bengali highlighting socio-political issues, including gender and economic inequities, and social justice overall. Around 1927, Nazrul was approached by
Muzaffar Ahmad, one of the Founders of the
Communist Party of India, requesting that he translate the celebrated song into Bengali. While it maintains the essential theme of the original (via the English version), Nazrul inserted salient social issues into it within the Indian context. It was also translated by
Hemanga Biswas and
Mohit Banerji, that was subsequently adopted by
West Bengal's
Left Front.
English translations The traditional British version of "The Internationale" is usually sung in three verses, while the American version, written by
Charles Hope Kerr with five verses, is usually sung in two. The American version is sometimes sung with the phrase "the internationale", "the international soviet", or "the international union" in place of "the international working class". In English renditions, "Internationale" is sometimes sung as rather than the French pronunciation of . In modern usage, the American version also often uses "their" instead of "his" in "Let each stand in his place", and "free" instead of "be" in "Shall be the Human race".
Pete Seeger asked
Billy Bragg to sing "The Internationale" with him at the Vancouver Folk Festival in 1989. Bragg thought the traditional English lyrics were archaic and unsingable (the Scottish musician
Dick Gaughan and the former
Labour MP
Tony Benn disagreed), and composed a new set of lyrics. The recording was released on his album
The Internationale along with reworkings of other socialist songs. The English translation of a selection of Pottier's songs and speeches,
Beyond the Internationale: Revolutionary Writings, includes, in addition to the traditional British version and Kerr's American version, a 1922 version endorsed by the Socialist Labor Party, as well as Bragg's adaptation and one by the
Workers Party of Jamaica.
Filipino translation There were three
Filipino versions of the song. The first was composed by
Juan Feleo of the
Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas-1930 under the title "Pandaigdigang Awit ng Manggagawa" ('The International Worker's Anthem') which was translated from the English version. The second version was a retranslation of the first two stanzas on the basis of the French original by the
Communist Party of the Philippines. The third version, which introduced the third stanza, was derived from both Chinese and French versions and translated by
Jose Maria Sison, the CPP's founding chairman.
German translations The best-known and still widespread German-language adaptation was created by
Emil Luckhardt in 1896, in response to a commission from
Wilhelm Liebknecht, member of the
Socialist Party of Germany and one of the leaders of the
Second International after Liebknecht heard the French original in Lille in 1894. Luckhardt translated the first, second, and sixth verses as well as the chorus from the French. Created in the context of the Second International, Luckhardt's text reflects the late 19th-century optimism of the Second International anticipating an imminent revolution. Apart from Luckhardt's version, there are at least seven other German text variants—each relating to specific historical situations or ideologically divergent socialist, communist and anarchist alignments. In addition to the Luckhardt version mentioned above, there is a version penned by Franz Diederich (1908), and another written by the poet
Erich Mühsam in 1919,
Sigmar Mehring's version (1908) appeared after his 1915 death in a collection of songs of the Paris Commune edited in 1924 by his son
Walter Mehring. In 1937, at which time German socialists and communists were scattered in exile,
Erich Weinert, wrote a new version for the
Thälmann Brigade fighting for the Republicans during the
Spanish Civil War, Weinert's version became the standard in
East Germany, where it was reprinted in a 1971 edition containing English, Russian, German and the original French, in commemoration of the centennial of the Paris Commune.
Korean translations "The Internationale" is used in both Koreas, though it is more commonly used in the
North. The DPRK uses "The Internationale" in propaganda and music,
Party Congresses, and even
sports events. In
South Korea, "The Internationale" has been used by labour unions and protestors, but remains less celebrated. A different set of lyrics, loosely based on the German version, is used in South Korea, while the North Korean version is based on the Soviet Russian version of "The Internationale". In addition, the refrain of the South Korean version is longer and does not repeat.
Persian translations For the first time,
Abolqasem Lahouti, an Iranian poet and songwriter, translated and standardised "The Internationale" into
Persian. It was used as the official anthem of the short-lived
Persian Socialist Soviet Republic and one of the main anthems of the communist
Tudeh Party of Iran. In addition, after he settled in the Soviet Union, he translated his work into
Tajik.
Portuguese translations Originally translated to
Portuguese by
Neno Vasco in 1909 from the French version, a similar version was wildly disseminated during the general strike of 1917 by
anarchists and
anarcho-syndicalists. A slightly modified version is used various left-wing and far-left parties in Brazil.
Spanish translations There are several Spanish versions, with distinct variations but without any attribution to single authors. The earliest is still sung by the Spanish Communist Party but it was apparently produced around 1910, before the split between Socialist and Communist parties across Europe around 1920. This version is also supported by the ruling Communist Party in Cuba. The Mexican version, in contrast, is based on earlier versions of "The Internationale", suggesting that it dates to the
Mexican Revolution. In Latin America, "The Internationale" has also been translated into different indigenous languages, including
Aymara,
Guaraní,
Nahuatl, and
Quechua.
Swahili translation In
Kenya, "The Internationale" was translated into
Swahili by the
Communist Party Marxist - Kenya. It was declared the group's anthem during the second national congress in November 2024. Known as
Wimbo wa Kimataifa, the Internationale, was translated by the then-party chairman,
Mwandawiro Mghanga and performed by the party's band and released in a bundled album, together with other revolutionary songs and poems.
Vietnamese version The Vietnamese version of "The Internationale" was first translated by
Ho Chi Minh under the pseudonym "Nguyễn Ái Quốc". Later translations were made by
Trần Phú and
Lê Hồng Phong, whose version became the standard adopted by the
Communist Party of Vietnam.
Yiddish translation A
Yiddish translation of "The Internationale" first appeared in the collection
Yidishe folks-lider ('Yiddish Folk Songs') edited by
Moshe Beregovski and
Itzik Feffer. It was published in
Kyiv, capital of what was then the
Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, in 1938. Judging from metaphors that the Yiddish shares with the Russian version—both have "mind" or "spirit" boiling rather than
la raison tonne or "reason thunders" in the French—and the translators' location in the Soviet Union, it is likely that they were working from the Russian rather than the original French.
Zulu translation A version of "The Internationale" in
Zulu, The translation may have been penned or authorised by
Moses Kotane, who was secretary-general of the SACP from 1939 until his death in exile in 1978. Although heard often on public occasions in the 1990s, such as at the state funeral for
Joe Slovo, long-time SACP leader and minister of housing in Nelson Mandela's cabinet, in 1995, it has receded from public airing as the party has lost influence in South Africa.
Audio files File:"The Internationale" audio, sung at the Socialism 2013 Conference in Chicago.ogg|The
American English version File:The Internationale English Version - The International song.ogg|The original
British English version File:The Internationale(English)(Lyrics).ogg|
Billy Bragg's
British English version File:Интернационалът - The Internationale (Bulgarian).flac|The
Bulgarian and Bulgarian Engilsh version File:Internationale-es.ogg|The
Cuban Spanish version File:De Internationale (oudste opname 1925).ogg|The
Dutch version File:La Internacio en Esperanto (audio only).ogg|The
Esperanto version File:The Internationale (French Version).flac|The
French version File:Internationale-ka.ogg|The
Georgian version File:Internationale-de.ogg|The
German version File:The Internationale - Hungarian.oga|The
Hungarian version File:Internationale-it.ogg|The
Italian and italianomerican version File:Internationale-ind.ogg|The
Indonesian version File:Internationale-lt.ogg|The
Lithuanian version File:Internationale-lv.ogg|The
Latvian version File:Internationale-cmn (英特纳雄耐尔).ogg|The
Mandarin version File:The Internationale (Mongolian).ogg|The
Mongolian version File:Internationale-ne (अन्तर्राष्ट्रिय).oga|The
Nepali version File:Canciones de las Luminosas Trincheras de Combate.oga|the
Peruvian Spanish version File:인터내셔널가 (1988년 노찾사 책 버전) - 가수 백자 -민중가요.mp3|The
South Korean version File:The Internationale (Tangut).ogg|The
Tangut version File:Internationale-uk.ogg|The
Ukrainian version File:Internationale-Vi.ogg|The
Vietnamese version
Lyrics files File:Internaționala (The Internationale, Romanian translation).pdf|The
Romanian version File:Internacionala, slovenski, 1944.jpg|The
Slovenian version ==Allusions in other works==