歌詞の翻訳 I

Way back in high school, before I understood a lot of Japanese, I would spend recesses in the Japanese classroom, looking up kanji. Although I was listening to Japanese music since about age eight, I had never known what they were about. But in high school, I was taught how to use a kanji dictionary, so finally, I was able to get at least a fuzzy understanding of what I was singing along to. However, my Japanese teacher was less than enthusiastic about my endeavours. She told me that translating song lyrics was actually really hard, and that it would be better to stick to texts.

I have never forgotten this piece of advice, and actually, I agree with it. The way songs are structured (particularly Japanese songs), sentences can be fragmented into pieces, with one sentence in two different lines, or two sentences in one line. Also, Japanese lyrics tend to mix different speech styles (mostly polite words with casual ones), which can make translation difficult. But most importantly, I'm not fluent in Japanese, so any translation I produce is bound to have errors or oddly worded structures. Knowing all of this, I still every now and then engage in a bit of translation. Because I have a strong interest in what I'm listening to (I like to know if it's a happy song or a sad song), I try just a little bit harder in understanding the words. And if I want to sing it at karaoke, I can go ahead and read the kanji onscreen, instead of reading the furigana. With all this in mind, I translated one of the songs I am just in love with right now, "近づきたくて with YU-A" from the album "K.J. with...". I've already blogged about why I loved this song, so I'm not going to go over that in depth right here. It'll probably find its way into the translation notes anyway. Just so you know, this is probably going to be long post, so I hope you dont have something to do right now.

Let's begin with the translated lyrics. I didnt try to make them fit the meter of the song, so dont take my lyrics with you to karaoke and expect them to fit. I tried to produce English as close to the original Japanese as much as possible, so some sentences are awkwardly long. Finally, I'm going to make two assumptions right now.
1. You have no interest in the music I like/listen to, so you don't need the Japanese lyrics/pronunciation guide.
2. If you are interested in the Japanese lyrics, you can read Japanese, or find a way to read Japanese. それなら、このリンクをクリックしてください。

では、let's begin! YU-A is the girl singer, and she's in pink. KJ is the guy, and in blue.

I Want to Get Closer to You with YU-A

*I want to get closer to, but I cant get closer to you
I just want to hear those two characters, [Love]
Hey, what do you think of me?
I'm, I'm
I'm still waiting now*

From your point of view, am I even now your boyfriend?
Am I a nice, older sempai? Am I a convenient conversation partner?
Even though you're just a girl friend, whenever we would meet,
Gradually, I started to care for you, and then I became someone that liked you
Without knowing I had those kinds of feelings, you would confide in me,
"Lately my boyfriend is like this, and if this keeps up, it looks like we'll break up"
And I would lend an ear, with a messed up state of mind,
I needed to confess to you, but I couldnt say it, not in front of you, with your head down

*repeat

It's the weekend, you're definitely out with your boyfriend
That day, I couldnt get the sight of your pre-breakup face out of my head
It was Saturday night, and the town was as festive as ever, but I was looking at the TV, not paying attention to what was on
By myself, worrying endlessly, at that time, I got your text
"Hey, can you meet me now?" I responded quickly, and flew from my house
Our meeting place was that family restaurant, I could see you sitting in a window seat
All tonight, I wanted to tell you my feelings, clearly and exactly
If not, let's end this relationship, I cant stand it, just being friends

*repeat

Someday, I wonder if we'll be able to share our feelings?
Even though I want to know you more, are we just friends?

I want to hear it
What are you to me? And more importantly, what am I to you?
What the hell
Is it the same as before, that we're just really good friends?
I won't run away
Say it clearly, even if it breaks the friendship we've had until now
I want to get over this
Any more than this, I cant hold back my feelings

Fine I'll just say it now, one word, "Love"...

*repeat

*repeat

Translation notes:

The sentence in the first verse, the one about the confession, was the hardest one for me to translate. In the original Japanese, it says: 切り出せずにいる告白のタイミング　ただうつむいてる君の前に It comes out as gibberish if I translate it literally (naturally), so I had to improvise. My interpretation of this part is that the girl tells the guy that she's going to break up with her boyfriend. If the girl you liked said that, wouldnt you want to tell her that you like her? But the guy cant say it, because she told him that with her head down. When the target is feeling like poo, you should probably not make your move.

The second verse (and in parts of the bridge-y part) have the words ハッキリ (hakkiri) and　ちゃんと (chanto) in them. Depending on how they're used, they can be hard to translate. ハッキリ means "Clearly", as in "Say it clearly" ハッキリ言おう (which is the original lyrics), so that's easy enough. But ちゃんと is a bit harder. Jisho.org defines it as "Perfectly, properly, exactly". But basically, what he's saying is that he needs to express his feelings for the girl, plain and simple. No misunderstandings.

I learned a few interesting words from translating this song. For example, 耳を傾ける means literally, "To incline one's ear", but figuratively means to lend an ear, similar to English. Also, 別れ際 (wakaregiwa), which means "On the verge of breaking up". This is kind of a grammar lesson, because according to my kanji dictionary (need to double check with the grammar one later), Verb +　際 means "on the verge of verb". I'll have to remember that for later use. Also 悶悶 (monmon), which means "Endlessly worrying". With 際, before I take a test, I can say 落ち際じゃけん、悶悶してるよ！ I'm about to fail, so I'm worrying like crazy!

I already knew this one, but I don't know how to use it like a Japanese person. The verb for "to see" and "to hear" are usually written 「見る miru」 and 「聞く kiku」. However, there are two other characters that mean the same in English, and also are read the same way: 「観る」 and 「聴く」. How do they differ? My understanding is, the latter two have a little more oomph in them. That is, when you hear your graduation song, perhaps, or your grandmother's favorite tune, you 聴く them. When you're looking at something real closely, taking note of every inch of it, you're ‘観るing it. If you use 聞く or 見る, you're just listening, or looking, nothing serious involved. How correct my explanation is, I don't know for sure. 聴く was explained to me by a Japanese teacher, but even then, she wasnt very specific (like is it only used in a literary sense, or is it okay to use in a text message?), and I'm extrapolating for 観る. In any case, this is one of the advantages of kanji: To visually indicate the emotiveness of a word. Isnt the Latin alphabet boring that way?

The number of songs I dont understand is still pretty huge, and the so is the number of songs with awesome lyrics. I have no problem finding another song to translate. And since I need to study for the Japanese placement exam for next term, there is a high possibilty that I will do this again. I have also been thinking of translating an English song I like into Japanese. I recently received the Japanese translation for a Korean song I like, and it got me thinking. I have never tried that before, so maybe it is time to start.