Hi all,

I've recently started to translate or at least get a general meaning of the Japanese music I've been listening to. However, I've having some difficulty in regards to translating music versus say a simple article.

(I've got about a 1.5yrs under my belt in regards to JP, finished Tae Kim, Japanese Sentences Patterns for Effective Communication, All About Particles and currently going through aDoBJPGrammar as a side reference, with RtK reviews.)

Unlike a simple article I find music horrifically challenging.

Say for example (Song Name: clariS - Drop);

いつの日か 言えるかな
君に出会った嬉しさを全部
遅く咲いた花びらに乗せて

Do I study each line in isolation and somehow mash the lines together to pump out a meaning? Or do I take the chunks of lyrics and view them as below as one lengthy sentence?

いつの日か 言えるかな 君に出会った嬉しさを全部 遅く咲いた花びらに乗せて

I don't mind the challenge, but if someone could give some insight as how I could tackle this? Or any resources that could help aid in this process? I would really appreciate it!

*I just realized I posted this in the wrong section, if this could be moved - sorry!

Translating music is translating poetry. Without both a good grasp of the target language and a damned good command of your own it's never going to do the original work justice. That said, if you're just in it for the language practice, have at it. No advice on how, I struggle enough with poetry in my own language.

Translating music is harder in some ways than translating prose because you have to find the sentence breaks on your own.
いつの日か 言えるかな
君に出会った嬉しさを全部
遅く咲いた花びらに乗せて

In the first line, かな is the end of a sentence.

In the second line, you have a noun followed by a を -- so that's the object of the sentence, but you have to go to the next line to find the main verb of the sentence. (Which, in this case, is 乗せて).

I've seen a lot of pop songs translated really badly because the translator couldn't figure out how the grammar of the song fit together, where the sentences began and ended.

I think translating music is a lot harder than translating books, manga or anime because translating gets harder the less context you have to work with.

Without context, you have to understand perfectly what's written there and can't infer meaning from the surroundings. If you don't understand the grammar and the words used in every line extremely well, you will definitely miss layered meanings or get it wrong completely at times.

Translating lyrics can be hard but doesn’t have to be, so it’s kind of important to have songs that you can handle (or ones that someone already translated). I wouldn’t worry about getting complete meaning of lyrics either. Even if your understanding is superficial it’s ok – you can’t expect from a beginner (yourself) to fully appreciate the depth, meaning, nuance of foreign language lyrics.

When I was studying English, I tackled songs by Simon and Garfunkel and you can imagine how I was surprised when I got to:
“Hello lamp-post, what'cha knowin', I've come to watch your flowers growin'”

But just because of that line being so unusual, I still can remember it (or maybe that’s because I listened to that song many times since then…).

This isn't a language specific skill, so you can also get better at this by learning some English poetry and paying attention to it.

Consider this poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins:

"Spring and Fall"
(to a young child)

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for

Hopkins is actually kind enough to include a couple of periods, but I took them out to make parsing this more difficult. So, one difficulty of reading this poem is the same as what you experienced in the Japanese:
●When do the sentences end and begin, and what is connected to what?

Other good questions to ask might be:
●Are there any made up words or non-standard English in the poem? What might their origins be?
●Are there any place names? Is the place real or fictional, and what does the name suggest?
●What do phrases like "such sights," "Sorrow's springs," and "the blight man was born for" refer to?
●What is the meaning of the difficult phrase "Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed//What heart heard of, ghost guessed"?
●(A difficult one) How is he playing with the flow of language?

I'm fairly good at understanding poetry, and when I've read modern Japanese poems I've noticed how much my skills from English cross over and make things easier. So if you don't read any English poetry (or poetry in whatever your native language is), it might be a good thing to do. Personally, I got a lot better by knowing a good 100 or so Bob Dylan songs by heart--he's a super good poet in a way that took me many many years to realize (I first bought a Dylan album when I was 14--I'm 27 now).

Anyway, if you're interested, two of my favorite English poems are:
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
http://people.virginia.edu/~sfr/enam312/prufrock.html
(Or have Alfred read it:

)

Dolce Et Decorum Est
http://www.english.emory.edu/LostPoets/Dulce.html

All,

I really appreciate all of the different perspectives given here - common theme among the responses here "it's going to be damn hard, good luck" lol.

It just occurred to me that I usually just play JP music in the background while I'm studying, playing DOTA2 or something. So I might as well pick up or at least do some kind of a deep dive into trying to "understand" the environment around me, with JP music being one of my main "turn on in the background and leave it"

Parsing the lyrics is going to be the biggest obstacle (as stated), as I do agree that with many of the song translations (I've seen), have ridiculous if not outrageously wrong meanings in some cases.

Even though I'm a beginner there are just some things you "know" that are translated wrong. (I'm sure that some of you have gone back to some of the things you have liked in Japanese before even knowing the language, then one day revisited with some knowledge of the language and went "hey, that meaning is wrong!") After some decent exposure to anime, dramas, manga - this is probably what's happened to me.

I find Tzadeck's point on the poetry crossover a good interesting point to mention, as it pokes at how the brain functions with different styles of text. Even with the language being a foreign one.

In any case, you've all made some fairly good points on how to approach this.

Now I don't feel so bad failing at this.

I remember I used a text called Sound and Sense as a freshman in high school. Although I remember the author's tone was sometimes condescending, it was a good introduction to classical poetry and some Beat poetry too.

I'm not sure if there's any kind of introduction or explanation for more contemporary poetry, though. Then again, I doubt you'll come across lyrics resembling avant-garde poetry unless you listen to some really underground/experimental music or 椎名林檎 (Shiina Ringo).

I have used songs to study, especially as a beginner, by carefully translating and learning the lyrics (I SRSd them line by line). Looking back, it may have been too much effort for the return I got. And you get fed up with the songs, no matter how good they are.

However, there are other ways of using music to learn, aside from fully translating. What I plan on doing is go over the lyrics of the songs I have on my Ipod (I had them for a long time now, listening without paying attention), and just look for words I don't know (especially for words I can't read, even if I have an idea of what they mean from hearing them).

And then I'm gonna learn those specific words in a separate setting (depending on how it's gonna go, I'll either just do the ones that are in Core6k, or, if the majority aren't in there, then I'll either look for example sentences for them online, or use the line from the song).

I expect such words to be much easier to learn than random new vocab. And it seems, based on my experience, that vocab is pretty much the only benefit you can get out of song lyrics anyway. The unusual metaphors and irregular, sometimes incorrect phrases won't help you much, when you're struggling to understand the everyday language. So I might as well ignore everything but the individual words.