Quote Originally Posted by Anonymoose View Post
Yeah, the machine translation had a hell of a time choosing whether Bis leuchtendes Azur es niederringt was until Azure subdues it or until Azure it subdues, depending on where I broke the lines. I went with the latter, since it matches the other poems, but if someone who, like, you know, actually speaks German says otherwise, they're probably right.
As a German native speaker I can say for sure it is "until Azure subdues it (the Scarlet)" and not the other way round, but I wouldn't consider the difference too important, because all 3 other languages share a similar theme so it's entirely possible the German translators were just a bit more liberal with their translation.
I remember Thordan's last words being a big topic here on the lore forum before, and I was quite confused because they were really normal in German while the other languages had him questioning if the WoL was still human or something like that? So while the German translation is usually very close to the Japanese text, there are sometimes big differences in random places.

As for Velynea's translation: "Blitz" is not thunder. It's just the German word for a bright light that suddenly flashes, basically anything from the light when you snap a picture of someone, to the lightning outside, or just the way you'd describe someone suddenly turning on an artificial light. I know lightning is the element of Rhalgr, but that sentence is literally about a flame igniting, a sudden bright light, and "aufblitzen" is just the normal German word for that. So "flash" which Moose-sensei used was very fitting
It of course could still possibly hint towards lighting, as it shares the spark/flash/light imagery with the other languages.
The first and last line are only about the locations (beginning and end of the sun's drift) so...Anonymoose' translation software was more accurate. Eh whatever. I'll just post the corrected version here xD

Where the sun's drift begins
Scarlet flashes and turns into a blazing flame
Until the shining Azure subdues it
Azure from the end of the sun's drift.

I read somewhere that people speculate the Azure means Bluemage. Have these poems ever been about job announcements? I think I only remember them being about the story direction. So for now, I'll stick to my Azure = Ishgard belief, because of all the links they have to that color and word. The WoL = Azure theory is quite interesting too. After all, we ARE obviously going to be swept up in the whole mess. That said, it feels a little bit reaching, considering we have several light crystals, not just the blue one, and everyone's eather is whiteish-blue.