Hi everyone!

I love music. I listen to to every chance I get, but I've always been a little weary of learning through lyrics because it was difficult for me. I'm now at the point, however, where I'm thinking it might be best if I just dive head on into it and stop worrying so much- I'll pick up new words, grammar and other stuff I don't even know about. With that said, I started making an Anki deck dedicated to lyrics, but I'm finding some discrepancies in the English translations I'm finding online.

First off, sometimes I'm finding multiple translations of the same song (because we all know language can be interpreted differently), and, second, sometimes the lines are not matching up well when I put it into Anki and I have the feeling that the translations could be 'wrong'. An example would be:

JAPANESE:
迫り来る衝撃へと恐れずに飛び込む
真実が君にも流れ込む

TRANSLATION FOUND ONLINE:
It approaches the truth to jump into the coming impact
Without fearing it flows into you.

MY TRANSLATION:
The immediate shock leads to the fear of jumping in
The truth flows into you

I am by no means advanced in the language so I probably make mistakes as well, but it seems to me like the translation I found is just...off. Maybe, not wrong, but not the best either.

So, my question is: Would it be more beneficial for me to use these translations I find online and just re-arrange the lines or should I just make my own translations? I'm always afraid to do my own translations of things because I feel I'm making mistakes I'm unaware of...

Kay

This is kind of on a tangent, but I was always suspicious of learning a language through song lyrics. I'm not saying it isn't fun, but if English language song lyrics are any indication, grammatical rules go right out the window for the sake of fitting words into a rhythmic pattern, and that's not to mention the compromises inherent in getting words to rhyme (although this doesn't seem to be a concern with Japanese song lyrics).

I haven't yet seen this discussed, but what do you guys/gals think? Is this a viable way to improve your Japanese, or just an amusing thing to do on the side?

-Tom

SugaHOLiC Wrote:JAPANESE:
迫り来る衝撃へと恐れずに飛び込む
真実が君にも流れ込む

TRANSLATION FOUND ONLINE:
It approaches the truth to jump into the coming impact
Without fearing it flows into you.

MY TRANSLATION:
The immediate shock leads to the fear of jumping in
The truth flows into you

Seems like the translation for this depends on whether you interpret it as two sentences or one. If it's one sentence, the whole first line is modifying 真実 and it says something like:
The truth, plunging into the impending impact without fear, also flows into you.

If it's two sentence, which doesn't sound so good, it's something like:
It plunges into the impending impact without fear.
The truth also flows into you.

Just a hint on your translation: ず is a negative form, and ずに is something like 'without.' So 恐れずに means 'without fear.' The translation you found online seems awfully wrong too.

The given translation is closer than your attempt, but not right.
First, you have to ignore line breaks and guess where sentences end by context. Sometimes the phrasing in the actual song helps, sometimes not.
Anyway, without line breaks, look at it as one sentence, (I'm not looking at the whole song so this could be wrong, but, it seems all right)

迫り来る衝撃へと恐れずに飛び込む真実が君にも流れ込む

PhraseA: 迫り来る衝撃: The approaching impact
PhraseB: 恐れずに飛び込む真実: The reality of fearlessly leaping into

These kinds of phrases, the verbs are describing the noun, you can't break the meaning up the way you tried to do.

Anyway, the larger compound phrase 迫り来る衝撃へと恐れずに飛び込む真実 is the subject of the sentence, and you get, "The reality of fearlessly leaping into the coming impact streams into you."

(Assuming that the next line isn't another modified noun, negation, or conjunction that extends the sentence, in which case that would just be one clause in something even bigger... but it seems like a complete sentence as is.)

Song lyrics are one of the hardest things to translate because they are ambiguous, lack context, jump around in non-sequitors or poetic tangents, use archaic or romantic terms, etc.

A lot -can- be learned from song lyrics, but early on, mostly music can only serve as vocabulary reinforcement and you have to trust other people's translations. If you can't read a newspaper or a novel, then you're going to get -really- lost in song lyrics.

(You don't need to be able to read the world's most difficult literature, just to have enough to follow average adult writing in full native form with idiomatic expressions and all. After a certain point, there's a divergence between what it takes to understand poetry and music and what it takes to understand more complicated or subtle prose.)

If you love music and listen to it anyway, I definitely would encourage you to read the lyrics and study the vocabulary in them and check translations for a (rough) guide to meaning, but I wouldn't get hung up on creating the exact-right translation yourself.

Ah, interesting. I thought the previous sentence was modifying 真実 too, but I thought of the truth as metaphorically doing the diving. Chris's translation seems better, but I wonder if this is just syntactically ambiguous, or is there a reason mine wouldn't work?

It is syntactically ambiguous, but I wonder if the 'truth' or 'reality' can 'fearlessly leap'? It seems more likely to me that 君 is leaping and understanding the truth of what that leap means.

The one or two sentences is also ambiguous, but it feels to me like a strongly stated sentiment as one sentence and a pair of nonsequitors as two sentences.

Thanks everyone for your comments! I especially appreciate SomeCallMeChris's comment. I don't think I'm to the point where I can handle full lyrics translations, so maybe just sticking to vocabulary with a random sentence thrown in here and there (as long as I understand it 100&) might be more effective for me right now.

I've been listening to Japanese music since waaaaaaaaaay before I started studying seriously, so I already love it and love multiple bands/artists and such, so I would really like to make it a part of my daily study, but I feel I might not be that advanced just yet.

Kay

I believe that songs are an excellent material for language study. There are couple of reasons for that. Firstly, songs are indeed native material. They are not another Core deck - the vocab and the patterns there are authentic. Secondly, language study requires constant repetition in order to ingrain in your brain common collocations, correct usages, sentence structures – songs provide painless (if not enjoyable) repetition, and they give you those other elements (collocations, usages, structures) as well.

Having said that, if you are at the beginner, early intermediate level, Japanese songs are going to present a bit of a problem. At those levels, you didn’t see enough native texts to be able to decipher meaning of the Japanese lyrics on your own. If you can find reliable translations of songs you enjoy, however, then by all means go for it. You will learn a lot and your study will be much more satisfying.

As for me, I regularly listen to 森田童子 whose lyrics (some of them, that is) are translated by her fan. If you like that kind of music you are set if not, keep on looking – it’s definitely worth it.

Some songs have lyrics that are just like regular everyday talking. For example, トイレの神様 (you can find on YouTube easily) starts and continues along like this:

小3の頃からなぜだか
おばあちゃんと暮らしてた。
実家の隣だったけど
おばあちゃんと暮らしてた。

毎日お手伝いをして
五目並べもした。
でもトイレ掃除だけ苦手な私に
おばあちゃんがこう言った。

I think songs with lyrics like these that use speech-like sentence structures could be a much bigger help early on than lyrics like what you posted. So if you notice that a song you like has everyday themes or mimics regular speech, take note and maybe you can pay special attention to that song as a learning tool.

[Zgarbas]

I like 吉田拓郎 a lot, and his lyrics make good practice since he doesn't overdo it with the flowery phrases. There are also translations available for his well-known songs (じゅん、夏休み and a few others）. Highly recommended both musically and as study material =).

That being said, I think it'd be a good idea to look up some lyrics for bands in English before attempting any translations or study, if only to see if it's nonsensical or not. Some songs really are just non sequitur galore with no actual logics behind them. Anime songs especially tend to be like that =/.

Zgarbas Wrote:I like 吉田拓郎 a lot, and his lyrics make good practice since he doesn't overdo it with the flowery phrases. There are also translations available...

Like that one: 落陽, right?
http://www.kasi-time.com/item-4875.html

しぼったばかりの夕陽の赤が
水平線からもれている
苫小牧発・仙台行きフェリー
あのじいさんときたら
わざわざ見送ってくれたよ
おまけにテープをひろってね
女の子みたいにさ
みやげにもらったサイコロふたつ
手の中でふれば
また振り出しに戻る旅に
陽が沈んでゆく

女や酒よりサイコロ好きで
すってんてんのあのじいさん
あんたこそが正直者さ
この国ときたら
賭けるものなどないさ
だからこうして漂うだけ
みやげにもらったサイコロふたつ
手の中でふれば
また振り出しに戻る旅に
陽が沈んでゆく

サイコロころがしあり金なくし
フーテン暮しのあのじいさん
どこかで会おう生きていてくれ
ろくでなしの男たち
身を持ちくずしちまった
男の話を聞かせてよ
サイコロころがして
みやげにもらったサイコロふたつ
手の中でふれば
また振り出しに戻る旅に
陽が沈んでゆく
戻る旅に陽が沈んでゆく

Learning through songs is definitely a fun and interesting way to learn Japanese. It also helps to read through other translations on the web to see the interpretations of various patterns that might not be clear to you. Many songs contain flowery lyrics that should not be taken literally and there are some that kind of bend some grammar rules for artistry's sake.
I remember the very first song I attempted to translate: GACKT's Last Song

Lyrics for a lot of Japanese bands I've listened to range from vapid to nonsensical. It doesn't stop me from enjoying the songs, it just makes them useless for anything but picking up vocabulary.

There is one band though that I've been obsessed with for over a year happens to also to have very literate lyrics. Check out this song by AMAZARASHI:
Lyrics: http://j-lyric.net/cd/zB0043C3EHW/t432230.html
Video:

(not the official PV AFAIK)

I try to stay away from translations though. The extra layer of interpretation almost never does any good for you or the song. Also a lot of them are just horribly bad or wrong.