Yours truly, being a penguin, loves the snowy winter landscape, so I actually wish for decently freezing temperatures in winter. (Not as cold as it gets like in Chicago though, burr!)
はい、とゆーことで行事の多い
１２月について軽く触れても
面白いかな～と１２月記事を
書いてみます！
So anyway, I thought I'd write about December in the U.S. since it's full of events!
寒くなってきます / It Gets Colder
まず起きること！
Firstly!
やっと少し冷え込んできますね！
その年によっては雪もちらほら！
It finally starts to get colder! And depending on that year, we might see a bit of snow, maybe.
And for anyone unfamiliar with what a nor'easter is, it's the name that's given to a huge storm system that goes into the north-eastern region of the U.S. I think. lol
If you're up somewhere like Boston, a nor'easter forecast would basically be a heads up for a snow day (although these days maybe it just becomes remote learning instead), but south of New York, we usually seem to be on the fringes of the storm and get just a little bit of snow, so we don't get snow days, just slushy roads, if that.
ちょっと積もっても結構すぐに
とけてしまうので
雪景色大好きなタカペンとしては
かなり寂しいです（笑）
And even if it snows, it usually melts away pretty quickly, so I really miss the snowy landscape.
一番大変なのはみぞれが降ったり
それが凍ったりですね
通勤が大変危険になります！
What's worse than snow is if it's a mixture of rain and snow, and it freezes over night. Makes for a right down dangerous commute in the morning!
クリスマスツリー・ライティング / Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony
In the U.S. in my area, the tree lighting ceremony seems to take the Sunday after the first week of December.
ちょっとしたお祭り騒ぎをするらしいですが
引きこもりなタカペンがその行事に
参加したことは
生まれてこのかた一度もないので
実際にどんな行事かは知りません！
I receive the town newsletter and other notifications about the ceremony, but I've never actually gone to one, so I have no idea what takes place at tree lighting. Sounds like fun, though. :)
マンハッタンにあるロッカフェラーの
ツリー・ライティングとかも
とても有名で、毎年
多くの観光客が訪れるようですが、
ライティング後に観に行ったことは
あれど、ライティングは見たことないです
And speaking of tree lighting, the one at the Rockefeller is pretty famous and I hear tourists flock to see it each year. I've gone to see the tree after the lighting, but never to the lighting itself.
と言うことで
全く書く内容がないようでした えへっ
So, really although I wanted to mention what happens in the first half of December in the U.S., there's really not much I can describe because I've never really experienced them myself! lol
でも１２月について全部書こうとしたら
とっても記事が長くなりそうだったので
前半と後半にわけてみました！
But if I tried to write about all that goes in December at one go, it'll likely become a pretty long entry, so I decided to divide it into two articles.
後半の記事、乞うご期待！
Please look forward to the second half!
いえ、嘘です
or not! :P
期待しなくて良いです！＞＜
Probably not much to the second half either. Yours truly is as lazy as can be. :P
では、短めですが今日はここまで！
お付き合いいただき、ありがとうございました！
So anyway, this entry feels shorter than usual, but this is it for today! Thanks for reading as always!
リベンジその①マンハッタンの夜景 / Retry Attempt 1 - Manhattan Night Scenery
なんとか、こう、
遠出しないで
これがマンハッタンの夜景だ！
と一目瞭然な写真を撮りたい、と
思ってるのですが…
Me, being the lazy person that I am, I'm trying my best to get a great shot of the Manhattan night scenery without having to stretch my legs too far in order to get that shot...
中々そう上手くはいきませんね（笑）
Which, of course, doesn't really work out that great. lol
１枚目の写真は、歩いて多分10分弱？
にある橋から撮りました
The first pic is one I took from a bridge that's about less than a 10 minute walk from my place.
通勤路で、いつも通る度に
ここから写真撮れたらきっと
良い「マンハッタンの夜景」が
撮れるに違いない！！！
It's a bridge that I cross over on my way back from work, and I always think to myself if only I could take a pic from the bridge, that'll be such an awesome Manhattan Night Scenery pic...!
or at least so I thought... until I actually went out and tried to take pictures. The scenery is great and the Manhattan lights are pretty to the naked eye, but unfortunately, it looks like the spot's too far away from the city. My smartphone camera isn't quite able to get a great shot of Manhattan. Instead, the warehouses in the foreground looks great all lit up... lol
これじゃダメだ！ と
次はほんのちょっぴり
マンハッタン側に近いところ
まで行ったのですが、こちらは
残念ながら、ただ単にぼやけて
あまりうまく撮れませんでした
So there's another spot that I know I can see Manhattan from which is a tiny bit closer to the city, so I walked there and tried to take some pics, but it was still too far away and too dark so that the pics just came out all blurry.
They're blurry and hard to see, so in case you can't tell, the pointy and lit up building is the Empire State Building.
いつかはもっと近いところで
「これがマンハッタンの夜景だ！」
とわかりやすい写真を
撮れたらと思います
One of these days I'm hopeful that I might go to a closer location where I can take pictures with my smartphone and it'll look like the Manhattan landscape.
でもタカペンは面倒くさがりなので
いつになるかはわかりません（笑）
But again, me being me, dunno if that day'll ever come. :P
リベンジその②種無しブドウ / Retry Attempt 2 - Seedless Grapes
そして4枚目の綺麗な黄緑の
ブドウさんは！！！
The last pic is the beautiful looking green grapes.
今度こそオーガニックではない
種なしのブドウを買いました！！
I went out and got myself NON-ogranic seedless grapes!!
Regarding my past stories of the seedless grapes, you can go read it here under "オクラとグレープ事変 / Okra and Grapes Incidents" section. It's the latter part of that section.
（その部分への直接リンクを作ろうと
したのですが、どうしても記事の
トップにしか行かないです＞＜；）
(I tried to create a direct link to the section where I talk about the grapes, but the html tag isn't working correctly and it only jumps to the top of the article...)
さて、そんなこんなで、なんとか
そのまま食べられる種なしブドウを！
と先週オーガニックではない
シードレス・グレープを買いました
So anyway, this was another attempt at trying to buy seedless grapes that didn't have seeds in them...!
結果
And the results...
種がない！ やったー！！
ヾ(o´∀｀o)ﾉﾜｧｰｨ♪
No seeds! Finally!!! HURRAH!!!
と思ったのも束の間
But that joy lasted only for an instant...
すっぱ・・・！！！
Bleh! How sour can you get!?
あと皮厚すぎでしょ！？
And the skin is way too thick!!!
orz
C'mooooooon...
と言うことで、種なしは
種なしだったのですが…
結局厚すぎる皮を食べることが
できなくて、そのまま美味しく
と言うわけにはいきませんでした
And so, at least there were no seeds in the seedless grapes, but because the skins were too thick to eat, I couldn't gobble them up like I wanted to.
結構すっぱかったですし（笑）
And they were a bit more sour than I expected. lol
うーん… 春先だったか、一度だけ
皮も薄くて、種もなくて、甘くて
ジューシーなブドウさんを
買ったことがあるのですが…
I think maybe last early spring or so, I bought the most delicious seedless green grapes which had no seeds, the skin was thin and tasty, and they were sweet, tangy, and just plain yummy.
次はいつお目にかかれるのやら
Wonder when I'll be able to get another bunch like those...
タカペンのブドウ探しの旅は
終わらないのでした☆
And so, my quest for yummy seedless green grapes looks like it's going to have to continue...!
アメリカお役立ち道具：お酢 / Something Very Useful: White Vinegar
For the bathroom, I use a cleaner with really strong chemical agents which is great at getting rid of mildew, but they seem to leave residues which combine with water residue and soap suds to make a pretty unpleasant caking in the bathtub.
むしろカビ取りの洗剤を
遣えば使う程
なんか洗剤の残り？
だか何か白いものが
こびりついてます
The more I use the mildew killer, the more white residue it seems to leave...
I read somewhere that a mixture of vinegar and baking soda paste works great at cleaning, so I tried with apple cider vinegar, but it didn't work at all. (Kind of just turned the caking a slight pink. lol)
リンゴ酢は体に良いからと
買ったは良いものの、すっぱすぎて
飲めなくて残ってたものです（笑）
The apple cide vinegar was in my fridge because I'd gotten it because it's supposedly healthy, but it was too sour for me to drink up.... :)
But I recently just randomly decided I wanted to give it a try again, and this time, I remembered that I actually had a bottle of white vinegar by the laundry washer, so I poured it into a spray bottle and sprayed the bathtub like there was no tomorrow. After letting the vinegar soak for a bit, I tried scrubbing with the susemi sponge.
There are many usages for the white vinegar. You can use them for cleaning and cooking, and you can even use them as a softener for your laundry, so I was braced to buy it at maybe around $16 or so, for the gallon sized vinegar, but when I actually went to buy it, it was like $3.29 or something.
In Japanese, there's a phrase that refers to the busy end of the year or December, "shiwasu" which literaly means "teachers run" to show how busy it is. I'm not a teacher, but December certainly is turning into a busy time for me with my phone breaking down and stuff. lol
So anyway, now that I've got a new phone, and it's mostly setup now, or so I hope, I can finally get around to my blogging!!
So without too much ado, let's jump into today's topic, which is about my Japanese to English lyrics translation of Berserk's ending theme, "Wish" by Mika Nakashima.
I'll be showing the lyrics in the following order:
Original lyrics in Japanese
Original lyrics in roma-ji
Translated English lyrics
So here we go! :)
まだ続くと思ってた道で
手を盤いでたはずなのに
突然はぐれてしまったその影を
探し続けてる
mada tsuzuku to omotteta michi de
te wo tsunaide ta hazu nano ni
totsuzen hagurete shimatta sono kage wo
sagashi tsuzuketeru
On a road that would still go on or so it had seemed
We had been holding hands, at least that’s what I’d thought
Suddenly I’m left behind, all alone, and so your presence
I find I’m searching for still
I kept on changing this part many more times than I expected to. lol
If I went with the literal translation, it would go something like this:
On a road that I thought would still go on
We were supposed to have been holding hands
I'm searching for the shadow of you who suddenly went away
The first two lines, I kept on switching around words and phrases to try to match the melody flow as well as try to maintain the order of the words and phrases.
The way the melody and the original lyrics go, both of the first two lines start out with "the road will still go on" and "we held hands" and then afterwards kind of put in a "but it wasn't so". So it would come as kind of a surprise to the listener when you get to the latter part of the line. I wanted to recreate the feel, so I kept on juggling the words and phrases around.
The third line, I also wanted to match the first word, which was "totsuzen (suddenly)" except that if I started the line with "suddenly" it was nearly impossible to continue with the meaning of the lyrics. In English, the "suddenly" would almost always have to come later in the sentence for this part to make sense.
After a lot of juggling, I think I managed to do an okay job here.
Literal translation would be "I can't help but raise my hopes up" which surprisingly had too many syllables to fit into the melody. (Usually it's the other way around!)
Plus, the line starts with the word "hope" so I wanted to put "hope" at the beginning of the line rather than at the end. So I ended up with what I have now.
何もかも残したまま
何処に行ってしまったの？
nani mo kamo nokoshita mama
dokoni itte shimatta no?
You have gone away, left everything behind
Where did you go? Where could you have gone?
Here, we have the same problem as we had with First Star Sonority.
Lemme translate these two lines into English:
Where did you go, leaving everything behind?
11 syllables in English. 22 syllables in Japanese.
Unless I want to sing each syllabe with two notes, which doesn't always work anyway even if I tried, I had to make up extra sounds, so that's why it looks like I'm repeating everything twice. lol
Otherwise, a pretty straightforward translation. :P
And here's the chorus, the most dramatic part of hte song. Loved it when I heard it, and I'd been singing this part while working even before I thought about translating the song.
This part, I went with the flow of the melody, the sound, and the feelings. The meaning kind of got left behind.
For one thing, literal translation once again does not have enough syllables to fill in the melody.
For another, what sounds good in the original language doesn't always sound good after literal translation.
So lots of embellishments. For the first two lines, they kind of just came to me, so I went with where my first feelings got me to. A sense of strong yearning and pain at not being able to reach the object of desire.
The last line, though. I kept on changing up until the very end. I was wavering between "But I don't want to take it in" and "But I'm not ready to accept". I liked how "accept" was sounding, and I felt that this was truer to the meaning of the original lyrics, but when I was singing it, it just didn't fit and "But I don't want to take it in" did, so I ended up going with what felt right on my tongue.
あなたが居ない世界の
私に意味を見つけ出せないまま
anata ga inai sekai no
watashi ni imi wo mitsuke dasenai mama
In a world that you’re not a part of
I find myself yet without a reason for me to be in this world
Don't even ask what this part means. If I look at it closely I don't think I understand it myself. lol
Suffice to say I needed phrases with intonations that would fit the melody and still somehow convey "I can't find a reason to exist in this world without you." (15 syllables and need to fit into 22 syllable melody with lots of funky ups and downs and rhythms, to boot!)
But it kind of sounds nice...! :)
最初に誰が傷付けたの
最後に誰か温めたの
あなたが1人で感じたその全てを
わかり合えたなら
saisho ni dare ga kizu tsuketa no
saigo ni dare ka atatameta no
anata ga hitori de kanjita sono subete wo
wakari aeta nara
In the beginning, who was it that brought the pain?
In the end was there someone who was given warmth?
Everything that you have gone through and felt all on your own
If we were to share even once
Here, I was trying to match the construction of the original lyrics. That's why I ended up putting in "someone" where the melody breaks up so it sounds like "some" and "one" although there's no such a word. lol
What's unfortunate was that although in Japanese, the first two lines have very similar constructions so that much of the lines match mimic each other, I wasn't able to recreate that in English because English just doesn't work that way...!
The third and fourth lines are pretty straight forward with just extra embellishments to make up the syllables.
This tiny part took a whole lot of hashing up and jumbling up the words and phrases to try to fit the meaning of the original lyrics into the melody.
Literal translation would be:
Will I never really be able to tell you thank you? (14 syllables)
And that had to fill up 21 syllables along with the really funky up and down melody....!
I think I might've spent like two nights in a row in the shower muttering this part over and over to try to puzzle the words together to fit into the melody. When I finally got them to fit, I was like, why wasn't I able to come up with this from the beginning, it sounds so natural! (Well except for the "give to you" part but I claim poetic license...!)
切なくて 想いを
寂しくて 閉じ込めた
伝えたいだけそれさえ
叶わないなら
setsunakute omoi wo
samishikute tojikometa
tsutaetai dake sore sae
kanawai nara
I’m in so much pain, my heartache
In my loneliness, I will keep it in
All I want to do is tell you and if that
Even can’t come to pass
And here we're back to the chorus. This part was a bit more difficult due to the word "setsunakute" which literal translation I'm unable to think of, even when I look it up in a dictionary.
Every language has words and concepts that are different from other languages, and I feel like there's a lot of Japanese emotions that don't quite have their exact counterparts in English, unfortunately.
So I had to improvise right off the bat with the first two lines.
The latter two lines was a battle of intonation and rhythm as well as sound
I initially had something along the lines of "if that can't come true" instead of "can't come to pass" and meaningwise, I think "can't come true" might've been better but I wanted the last note to end on an "a" sound. The original lyric ends with "a" so I wanted to match.
The "a" sounds so much narrower and more strained, which in this song fits well, whereas the "ooh" of the "true" sounds too full and relaxed. In much of the song, you're trying to convey longing, so most of the elongated parts have strained vowels. So in order to avoid having a relaxed vowel, I changed from "can't come true" to "can't come to pass."
あなたが孤独じゃないと
ただ祈るしか私にはできない
anata ga kodoku janai to
tada inoru shika watashi ni wa dekinai
That you won’t be alone and lonesome
I can only give my prayer, ‘cause there’s nothing else to do for me
Pretty straight forward literal translation here.
The only part I kind of took time on was the last " 'cause there's nothing else to do for me" because I wanted to do something more along the lines of "because that's all I can do" but again, the syllable got in the way. The syllable for "do" is way too relaxed, when you have the long e sound in the original version. So I had to end this part with something with a long e sound.
This part came pretty quickly to me. Not sure, but I just love the first line so much and that's why it came to me so naturally, maybe? lol
The second line though, I initially had "Your voice, the memories of you engraved" which fit pretty well. Just that when I was recording the part and listening to it, I realized that the first part of the melody felt choppy, I guess because in Japanese, that's the part where "engraved/etched" word goes.
As I did not want "your voice" to be sounding choppy, I flipped the word order around, and "etched in" sounded better than "engraved" so "etched in" it was. Nevermind that it feels like a tongue twister. lol
What was weird though was that for some reason, this second time around, the last line "But I don't want to take it in" sounded better with "But I'm not ready to accept." It just felt better singing it as "But I'm not ready to accept" than "But I don't want to take it in."
I debated on changing the lyrics here, but since my intent is to try to stick to the original lyrics as much as possible, I decided against changing the melody and chose the one that best fit both parts.
The truth only by my side, so that I may all the stronger be
So that I may all the stronger be
Last part and one that I had to work on a bit.
The first line was tricky.
The first line basically means "unbreakble" and in the original lyrics, this "unbreakable" can refer to the "truth" that later follows, or to the "stronger me" that "I" am trying to become.
So I had to try to translate the part in a way to recreate the effect.
Otherwise I think I might've done something like "A truth that couldn't be broken" and leave the "unbreakable" to apply only to the "truth" part.
Poems and lyrics are awesome because they can be interpreted so many ways and convey so many meanings, but when you're trying to translate, it can definitely feel like it's an impossible task...!
So this version of translated lyrics is my interpretation of the lyrics, and definitely not the end all version!
Oh, and almost forgot to cover the last and very important part of the song!
"So that I may be stronger"
I really seriously should consider avoiding songs with the word "strong" or "strength" in them! It sounds awesome in Japanese but in English, to me, they sound very weak....!! Plus, the words are almost always placed in a very emphasized part of the melody where when it's translated into English, it's pretty much impossible to fit the word "strength/strong" in that part of the melody...!!!
Yes, this is becoming my petpeeve, actually... lol
I tried so hard to see if I can somehow and naturally fit in "stronger" where the word "tsuyoku" was placed, but I wasn't able to. There just wasn't any way to. So I gave up and just went with what sounded natural in English and melody-wise.
So anyway, that's it for my excuses on translating this song!
Any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to let me know!
You can leave a comment on this blog or send me a DM on Twitter or Instagramm @takapenlyrics
If you'd like to give the English version a try and sing it, I've uploaded a karaoke version so you can follow along and try to sing it. There's no melody guide, so you'll have to know the melody by heart though. lol
Thursday's only beginning, so it's definitely the end of the week, and there's really not much that happened this week, so yours truly will mainly be talking about the weather. How drab. lol
つまり数日ブログさぼった為
書く内容が溜まってしまったための
ただのタイトル詐欺ですね☆
So although the title says "Looking Back" as if there's something of importance, there's really no meat to it. So it's basically click-bait. :P
それでもお付き合いいただければ嬉しいです♪
I'd appreciate it if you would still kindly stick around. :)
The weather wasn't so great this past weekend, unfortunately. So I kept on checking my weather app to check when it wasn't raining, or at least not enough to be a bother.
と
時間を見計らって
お買い物に出かけたのでした
And so, I timed it when I went to go out to do my grocery shopping.
お買い物の量が多いので
傘持つ余裕ないので必死です
There was a lot I had to buy and there was no way I'd be able to hold an umbrella, so I had to be careful.
I took the daytime pics in the little wooded section that I go to during my walks.
いつだったか前、
謎の木の実のお話しを
しましたが、その実が
なってるのが見えたので
写メっておきました
（３枚目ですね）
A few weeks ago, I mentioned some kind of tree nuts falling every autumn. I saw those nuts on the trees, so I took a pic of that as well. (The 3rd pic)
その時の記事はこちら
「オマケ」の部分に
木の実の写メをあげてます
The blog entry mentioning the tree nuts with a pic of one is below. It's under the last section, "Just One Thing."
The other day, I posted a pic with a question on Twitter.
大分前に韓国食品店で
使い棄ての、スポンジになる
ロール？っぽいのを
買ったんですよ
A while back, I'd gotten a disposable what looks to be a roll of flat sponge sheets.
お掃除に使える！ と思って
I was going to use this to clean.
平べったいけど
取り出せば膨らむやつだと
思ったんですね
I thought the sponge sheet would inflate once taken out.
なんか説明書きの絵に
ロール＞スポンジ
みたいなイラストがあったので
Everything was written in Korean so all I could do was hazard a guess based on the pics, and there was a pic that looked like the roll would turn into a sponge.
でも取り出したところ
ただのざらついた
ひらひらしたシート
だったんですよ
But once taken out, it was just a very rough flat sheet of something.
So I kind of panicked and tried asking on Twitter, hoping that someone who spoke Korean might take notice of the tweet and respond, but nada.
まぁ、そりゃ韓国語じゃなくて
英語学習の人たちしか
フォローしてないし
お角違いでしたね（笑）
Come to think of it, after all, I'm mainly following people who study English, not Korean, so that was like a DUH moment for me. lol
と言うことで、
すっかり忘れてたのですが
うちの職場で聞けばいいや
と会社で聞いてきました
So, after a good night's sleep, I recalled that I can just ask at my work place.
リモートワークになってから
他の部署の人と交流することが
なくなってしまったので
オフィスには他にも人がいると
言うことをすっかり忘れてました（笑）
Once the pandemic began and we started working remotely, I almost never interacted with people from other business groups, so I'd forgotten that there were also other people in the office other than my group. lol
At the physical office location that I work at, there are people that speak Korean, Chinese, Spanish, and Portuguese. The fhirst three languages are pretty major in the area where I live.
So I googled susemi once I got home in my the hopes that someone would say it's also good for scrubbing down the bath tub. Apparently, susemi is a Korean scrubber sponge.
そうか
And.
タワシで浴槽ごしごしは
よくないのかな・・・
It's a type of scrubber that's pretty rough, so probably not too good for the bath tub...
So I spent a lot of time looking up about embedding YouTube videos on Twitter this time around... and I also had to do the same for Facebook because only the link and a blank "YouTube" thumbnail would come up, and not the thumbnail from the video.
でも一番最初にあげた動画は
ちゃんとサムネが表示されてて
But the thumbnail was showing fine for the first translyrics video I did a couple of months ago.
一体なんなのーーーー
ググったところ、まぁまぁ
あることのようで
So I was like wth!? and went to look it up on google. Apparently, it's a relatively common issue and I was able to find some how-to videos.
解 / Resolution
ヘルプ動画などあったので
自分のメモ用にも
参考にした動画を
載せておきます
And below is the video that I used as a reference to fix the YouTube video thumbnail not showing in my Facebook post!
In the video, they talked about other platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn but my issue was only Facebook, so I'll just mention the solution for the Facebook issue.
Apparently, you can "debug" the thumbnail not showing on the Share Debugger for Facebook. Once you debug, you copy and paste the URL which has all the bells and whistles necessary to embed in Facebook post, apparently!
I had a lot of questions this time around when I was trying to post my YouTube video on Twitter and Instagram, so I did a lot of searching. Below, I will be listing the things I noticed on the two platforms.
I distinctly recall seeing embedded YouTube videos on Twitter timeline many years ago... of course I could be wrong, so I spent hours searching the web for answers on how to embed YouTube videos so they show as embedded videos on Twitter timelines. One site finally said that no matter what you do, the YouTube video will only show as a link in Twitter timeline, so that at least settled the question!
