Hellos and welcome dear readers!
For your general information, I wanted to create an article to outline some of my goals when I am translating Japanese lyrics to English lyrics, so that you might have an idea why I translate the way I do.
* This entry is in English only as it is somewhat lengthy.
Meaning
One of my goals in translating from Japanese to English is to try to stick to the original lyrics as much as possible. I do not mean that I would be doing literal translations, which, first of all, would be fairly impractical to fit into the melody, and secondly it would sound way too stilted and unnatural.
While I do not intend to translate word for word, I do intend to try to stick to the original meaning and imagery as much as possible. If there are phrases that sound awkward translated word for word, but if I just change the the expression, it would convey the meaning of the original lyrics, then I would change the expression, but I would keep the original intent, or what I interpret as the original intent.
There may be times that someone versed in Japanese and English may not agree with my take, and that's fine. Lyrics are not as literal as, say, a biology textbook, so different interpretations are to be expected.
My attempts to translate Japanese songs into English is so that English speakers can try to get as close to the original meaning and feel of the song as possible, and if they want, to give the translated lyrics a try and sing. :)
Meaning: TL;DR
- no word-for-word translation, or literal translation
- keep original meaning/imagery
- convey the original feel of the song as much as possible
Word/Phrase Orders
English and Japanese have flipped grammatical phrase orders. If I translated literally, the word or phrase order would flip, which would result in placing different lyrics at different places of the melody.
For example:
ramen ga suki --> I love ramen
Here, the suki/love and ramen order is flipped.
The problem with that is that the original composer/lyricist might have intended to emphasize "suki" and so the melody line stands out at "suki." But when you translate it and keep the translated word order, "ramen" gets emphasized in the melody.
ramen ga suki
I love ramen
So in order to keep the word "suki/love" at the emphasized melody line, I might do something like this:
Ramen, I love
Not your everyday kind of wording, I agree. Sounds quite archaic, I'm sure, but at least "ramen" isn't emphasized.
Something short as this wouldn't be too much of an issue; however, longer phrases would cause a pretty big flip in the melody placement.
And while I realize pop music should be kept in the everyday language, since I want to convey the original musical tonality of the lyrics, I will be flipping word and phrase orders around in order to try to fit the melody as close to the original as possible.
And yes, I realize by trying to convey the tone of the original lyrics, I shouldn't be turning the lyrics into archaic gibberish, and I'm going to try not to do that either, but try to flip word orders without sounding like the song's ages old or something.
Of course, trying to do everything that I want to do isn't that feasible, so the keyword here is "try to." :)
Word/Phrase Orders: TL;DR
- English and Japanese words and phrases are flipped grammatically
- ex) ramen ga suki --> I love ramen
- I'll likely be flipping words and phrases around to try to match the original word/phrase orders
Rhyming
Not much to say about rhymes except to say, I'd like to rhyme the lyrics as much as possible, although when trying to stick to the original meaning and melody placements, rhyming is nearly impossible, so everything becomes a juggling act with the three aspects; meaning, word/phrase orders, and rhymes.
For lyrics where I just want to get the meaning across and not fiddle around too much, I'll likely be leaving off the rhymes.
Rhyming: TL;DR
- even if original lyrics don't rhyme, I'll try to rhyme the English lyrics
- if I'm more focused on the pure meaning of the original lyrics, I may leave off the rhymes
Lastly
And that's it! The above three aspects are what I'll be taking into consideration mainly, when I'm translating. As mentioned in the rhyming section, it'll be a balance of the three aspects.
These are all my personal preferences and guidlines for when I'm translating lyrics, so please don't really use them as a reference if you want to become an official translator. I've never had any official translation training, and I'm not so strict with my English grammars as I used to be when I was younger. :P
So anyway, there's a lot of anime songs out there that I really want to translate and upload. Hope to see you soon with my next video, whichever that may be!
Thanks for reading!
Taka, out!
