Yvonne Gallagher Jul 18, 2021:

@ Asker I read this as: The howlin' moon would cry: "I'd sleep the sun away" since it IS a follow-on line.
In other words an opposition is being set up between the moon and sun. Moon being emotions/female/unseen or barely seen with sun being strong/male/bright and clear.
NB that this is not an idiom though obviously based on "I'd sleep the day away" which would usually be said by night owls, lazy or tired people. Also note that wolves are associated with howling at the moon. Who or what are the wolves here? The bullies? But why would they be out in bright sunshine?

So, I think (as AT said earlier) you would have to ask the author exactly what he wanted to say and he'd probably answer, as most writers do, "Oh I leave that up to the reader/listener".
That's what happens in literary work, connections are made by readers or listeners that were not necessarily intended by the writer. So there is no "one size fits all" when it is not an established idiom with an established meaning.
BTW I read the links helpfully provided by Lucy

Oliver Simões (asker) Jul 15, 2021:

AllegroTrans I don't need help with the translation. I can do that myself. It's jus that I wasn't sure I understood the English line, that's why I resorted to this forum.

Oliver Simões (asker) Jul 15, 2021:

Good shot, Althea. Thank you. Your interpretation makes total sense. I would add that he realizes there's no point in running away from those bad experiences ("There was nothing to gain / by running the other way / I had to stand my ground"). I would guess that the Sun represents his awareness/mindfulness of those experiences, so what's the point of sleeping them away (sleeping to forget the bad stuff)? I'm leaning towards your interpretation. As much as I like the sun metaphor, I'm afraid I'll have to let it go (perhaps by replacing it with "problems") in the translation.

The final rendition might be something like this:
I would sleep so as to forget the problems.

Althea Draper Jul 15, 2021:

In the interview in this link, Bingham explains that the song was about when he was a child getting picked on at school and "that [was] part of it, experiencing that growing up, fighting a lot and having to defend myself. Then [it came from] experiencing friends and other people as you grow older and see[ing] that happening to other people."
So, it may be that "I’d sleep the sun away" means that he's trying to forget what happened during the daytime (getting bullied etc.) by sleeping, as he knows that when he's asleep these things can't harm him.

https://theboot.com/ryan-bingham-american-love-song-intervie...

AllegroTrans Jul 15, 2021:

Asker You say you have to put something in the translation but you haven't told us which language you are translating into and have posted your question as English monolingual. You could consider reposting this in the language pair that you need, but again I think you will only get guesses. What is the translation for?