Hi all,
as a native speaker of Bulgarian and a not-so-fluent speaker of English, I’ll do my best to specify some things that have been allready very well outlined in general in the translations above.
first of all, the lyrics of Commodore rock are stuffed with references or direct quotations from the Bulgarian national anthem and other patriotic songs.
Mila rodino, ti si zemen rai "Sweet homeland, you’re heaven on earth" - this is the chorus of the National anthem.
Tih byal Dunav se valnuva, veselo shumi "The quiet white Danube is ruffling and splashing gaily" - This is the first line of a very popular song about a Bulgarian national hero (Christo Botev) who hijacked the Austrian ship "Radetski" during the so-called April revolt against the Ottoman empire in 1876 and landed with his people in South-West Bulgaria to aid the uprising. The ship was sailing on the Danube from Austria to Romania.
Eto Simeon pristiga, voevodi si zove "And here, Simeon is coming and he’s calling on his generals" - This is a part of a historical patriotic song composed durning the National Bulgarian revival in the 19th c. It tells about the siege of Constantinople in the beginning of the 10th c. by the Bulgarian tsar Simeon I. The name of the song is Kray Bosfora shum se vdiga, "There’s a big hubbub near Bosporus". The phrase Eto, Simeon pristiga "Here comes Simon" was ironically repeated many times by the time the Ladytron song came out: by that time (2001) the ex-king and namesake of Simeon I The Great who was called Simeon II returned to Bulgaria and won the elections with his own political party. He’s now a prime minister under the name Simeon Sakscoburggotski (his dynastic name: he’s from the kin of the Sax-Coburg-Gotha). A lot of reasonable people were quite shocked by that turn of the events but many were hypnotised by the royal blood and the great promises of the exiled ex-king. The "here comes Simeon" line in the Ladytron song is a bit ironic reminder of the political events of the moment. Especially in connexion with the next lines:
Haide vaksa, haide de, tryabva pak da se yade "Come on, [give me] shoe-polish, come on, one must eat again". The haide - haide de part is a common refrain in Bulgarian folk songs. Vaksa is the common word for "shoe-polish" in Bulgarian, a close relative of Engl. wax and Germ. Wachs.
Not that the situation was *that* bad in 2001. We sure had some very though times but these were mainly in the winters of 1990/91 and 1996/97. In 2001, at least the majority of the Bulgarian people didn’t stand before the question what to eat. So this is a poetic exaggeration of some kind.
The references I am ponting at are mixed and mashed up in the lyrics of Commodore rock, and not present in their original integrity.
as to "Discotraxx", the poem in it sounds a bit like a parody of a nursery rhyme from Communist times. Prez gorite, prez polyata, pod zvezdite, prez zhitata, "Over mountains, over fields, under the stars and through the corn", sounds very pompous and cliche at the same time for the Bulgarian audience. There is a line after that missing, it should read something like (as far as I remember): Na samolet, korab i mototsiklet "on a plain, on a ship, on a motorcycle", and this is the link to shte patuvat prez noshta, i risuvat prez denya, i shte spyat do obed, "they will travel at night and draw paintings at daytime, and will sleep till noon". Obed "noon, lunchtime" which rhymes with mototsiklet "motorcycle" is the most strong moment of parody, as the word is obed only in some Western dialects and obyad in the literary language. The "e"-pronunciation is somewhat despised in learned circles as a vulgarism and contrasts heavily with the pompous style of tne rest of tne poem.
as to the MZ (pronounced emm-zet), this is a brand of Chech motorcycles that were popular in Bulgaria during the Communist regime.
as a whole, the Ladytron lyrics in Bulgarian are conscientously deranged and chaotic for reasons of parody and irony, but Bulgarian speakers clearly mark in them the humour and the hints to times and events in recent Bulgarian history.
