"You Look Wonderful Tonight" lyrics, with musings on how first-class artists can give a song a complete makeover

It's not that easy to get the Portuguese part of the lyrics on the Bublé/Lins version, but I tracked them down here; many thanks to poster "Buble and I."

It's late in the evening
She's wondering what clothes to wear
She puts on her make-up
And brushes her long blonde hair
And then she asks me, "Do I look all right?"
And I say, "Yes, you look wonderful tonight"

A noite é de festa
E ela veste o luar
Me arrasta e me testa
Se sente uma superstar
E entào pergunta
Se eu estou em paz
Eu digo, "Sim, I feel wonderful tonight"

There's a party tonight
And she's wearing the moonlight
She drags me along, then she leaves me behind
She feels like a superstar
And then she asks me
If I feel all right
I say, "Yes, I feel wonderful tonight"

I feel wonderful because I see
The love light in your eyes
And the wonder of it all
Is that you just don't realize how much I love you

I feel wonderful because I see
The love light in your eyes
And the wonder of it all
Is that you just don't realize how much I love you

De volta pra casa
Cansados de festejar
Me deita e me abraça
Me beija e nào quer falar
And then I tell her, as I turn out the light
"Darling, estavas linda até demais"
I say, "My darling, you look wonderful tonight"
I say, "My darling, you were wonderful tonight"

We get back home
Worn out from the party
She takes me to bed and embraces me
She kisses me and doesn't want to talk
And then I tell her, as I turn out the light
"Darling, you looked wonderful tonight"
I say, "My darling, you look wonderful tonight"
I say, "My darling, you were wonderful tonight"

UPDATE: Minor corrections made by self upon listening to the song with the lyrics in front of me and realizing a couple of the lines were out of order and not quite right. Also I took a shot at translating the Portuguese, which is probably laughable to anybody who is actually Brazilian. (Been a very long time since I was speaking amusingly clumsy Portuguese to our Brazilian exchange student Higro and to the delightful Papini family.)

By the way, I really like the line, "E ela veste o luar," which, if I'm not mistaken, means, "She's wearing the moonlight." If it doesn't mean that, then it should. In fact I hope it doesn't because that means I could use the line myself in a poem someday without being a plagiarist... Also, look at the subtle way Lins and Bublé play with the last line in its threefold repetition, especially with the tenses. "You looked wonderful...you look wonderful...you were wonderful."

I'm very dubious about my translation of the following two lines:

Me arrasta e me testa
Se sente uma superstar

I translated them:

She drags me along, then she leaves me behind
She feels like a superstar

I'm not sure that's right, but it's my best effort: arrastar means to drag somebody along in your wake, and while testar can mean to give somebody a quiz, its primary meaning is to go off and leave them. Basically, I think she's having one of those nights that a truly beautiful woman has every now and then when she realizes she's looking her best, and that everybody who looks at her is thinking, "Wow, she looks wonderful tonight," and that makes her even more vivacious and sociable than usual...and he just can't keep up with her. So she comes back to check on him, and he assures her that he's fine.

By the way, I mistranslated these lines to begin with because I mistakenly read arrestar rather than arrastar. And frankly, I think it's too bad that Lins used arrastar rather than arrestar. (Feel free to snicker at my presuming to correct a Brazilian jazz legend on his choice of Portuguese verbs in a song lyric, but I feel strongly about this one.) See, here's the image the lines evoked for me when I read it as arresta: they're at the party, and she's just gloriously beautiful, and she knows that she's looking her best, etc. But in the image that the (misread) line originally evoked for me, he's so overcome by how much she outshines all the other women there, that he just stops in his tracks and watches her in delighted adoration. And then she realizes he's not beside her anymore: "Hey, where did he go?" And she looks back and sees him standing back there where he stopped, looking at her with this oddly starstruck expression, and she comes back to him and asks, "Hey, are you okay?" -- and he says, "Oh, I feel great."

I realize that's not exactly what Lins meant...but too bad, because I love that image, and if Lins and Bublé could rewrite Clapton, then I see no reason that I can't rewrite Lins and Bublé. So when I sing along, I'll be singing:

Me arresta e me testa
Se sente uma superstar

By which I will mean:

She stops me dead in my tracks, she leaves me behind
She feels like a superstar

At any rate: personally, I think Bublé/Lins is lyrically a major upgrade from the original version, which is quite a bit less romantic and quite a bit more tongue-in-cheek. In the original version Clapton gets drunk and his lady starts worrying about him at the party ("Do you feel all right?" "Oh, yeah, I'm feelin' great"), and eventually she has to take his car keys and drive him home from the party and put him to bed -- without any implication, so far as I can tell, that she's planning to join him there anytime soon. It's amusingly self-mocking...but that's not at all what Bublé and Lins seem to me to be after. So the Bublé/Lins rewrite seems to me to involve a significant and deliberate shift in intention from the original. I'll go ahead and tack on the original lyrics here for ease of comparison:

It's late in the evening
She's wondering what clothes to wear
She puts on her make-up
And brushes her long blonde hair
And then she asks me, "Do I look all right?"
And I say, "Yes, you look wonderful tonight"

We go to a party
And everyone turns to see
This beautiful lady
That's walking around with me
[Bublé/Lins, in Peril's dubious translation:
There's a party tonight
And she's wearing the moonlight
She drags me along, then she leaves me behind
She feels like a superstar]
And then she asks me, "Do you feel all right?"
And I say, "Yes, I feel wonderful tonight"

I feel wonderful because I see
The love light in your eyes
And the wonder of it all
Is that you just don't realize how much I love you

It's time to go home now
And I've got an aching head
So I give her the car keys
And she helps me to bed
[Bublé/Lins, in Peril's dubious translation:
We get back home
Worn out from the party
She takes me to bed and embraces me
She kisses me and doesn't want to talk]
And then I tell her
As I turn out the light
I say, "My darling, you were wonderful tonight
Oh my darling, you were wonderful tonight"