Sun Off Switch

I had my hair cut today, and I feel the need to share with the world the wonder of Ashton Studios in Lancaster! We always have ourselves preened there before gigs and photo shoots because Haley is a genius, and always makes my hair smell wondrous with her miracle wax.
I had my undercut very short this time, utilising clippers for the first time in centuries, which was somewhat scary – especially having finally watched This Is England the previous night. I was worried I might end up with a skinhead. (It's fine – I didn't!) I also got to talk to Victoria – who works upstairs – about an exciting idea for a new tattoo. And Kishen brought me Rooibos tea, having escaped Paternal tyranny down south.
You don't need to know any of this, but I'm writing it none the less. I took my shiny hair to Andy's to work on “band stuff”. We're going to Amphifest in Cologne in a couple of weeks, so we're putting together a new promo CD to hand out to the black clad European massive!
But, as we all know, the only thing people are truly interested in is badges. So naturally we decided to make some 19ninetynine badges, and I was suddenly inspired to make some badges in German! It made sense, the only problem was finding out what the German for “Put Out The Sun” actually was. Something “Der Sonne” surely, how difficult could it be?
According to an online translation it was: Stellen Sie Aus Der Sonne, however that translated back into English as “Place Out The Sun”, which was terribly literal and made no sense whatsoever.
I rang my German friend, she was out. I rang my other German friend and she was out also, so we asked people online and got “Sonnen Ausschalter” which meant “Sun Off Switch”! Which, when you think about it, is exactly the kind of ridiculous thing you're going to end up with when you attempt to translate a sentence which never made sense in the first place.
It became clear it was much more complicated than we had initially thought – because our reference to “God out out the sun today, and will never rise again” is just an abstract concept! You can't actually “put out” the sun... so should the translation try to portray a similar concept by saying something like “Extinguish the Sun” (Die Sonne Auslöschen)? Or just translate the original words even though the translation won't make sense? Because it's not a sentence, it's an album title! So surely you're not allowed to change it... Who makes the rules regarding these things?!
Luckily Jex also has a German friend who text us a translation, but then sent about five subsequent variations regarding tenses, genitives and nominatives... but referring back to the original lyric “God put out the sun...” surely a God is omnipotent, infinite and regardless of masculine, feminine and time....
So we settled upon a translation meaning “Eclipse The Sun”. But then I thought, that's not right! We could have called the album “Eclipse The Sun”, but was being artsy, abstract, poncey and pretentious, so surely the translation had to be something that implied eclipse, but sounded cool and hinted at something sinister? So we ended up with a version of “Eliminate the Sun”.
I hope it's good enough and not woefully inaccurate – but just so you know, we tried!!

I just checked my email: Hey! Cool haircut. It's 'löschen die Sonne'

Don't worry. We have loads of badges in English...

Chris x