“Le plat pays” (Jacques Brel) poetically praised in Afrikaans – notes on iconicity in the original and translated chanson texts The authors of this article translated the well-known chanson about Flanders, “Le plat pays”, into Afrikaans as part of an extensive and ongoing Jacques Brel translation project initiated in 2005. In this analysis of both the original and translated “Le plat pays” lyrics, the marked poetic qualities of Brel’s chanson are laid bare, as are some semantic differences – and the implications for the analysis thereof – between source (original) and target (translated) texts.