My Dear Ellie - Southern All Stars (Is translating songs a good way to learn Japanese?)

Turn on CC (Closed Captioning) for the english translation!!!

We’ve finally reached the 6th song in my Japanese song translating blog series, this is the last song I’m planning on translating for a while (documented to this extent). This time we’re going to translate いとしのエリー(Itoshi no Eri/My Dear Ellie) which came out in the year 1979 by the band Southern All Stars（サザンオールスターズ）. I partly picked this song because my mentor for this project, who was my Japanese professor from Wellesley, said that this was one of her favorite songs, and partly because it’s really catchy. I would catch myself humming parts of it in the library, in my room, in the shower, so I decided to go for it.

Interestingly, the lead singer of Southern All Stars is Keisuke Kuwata, who sang “Johnny the Surfer” which was the very first song in this series. The lyrics felt deceptively easy before I started translating it. My expectation was that this would be the simplest song to translate yet, but instead it has turned out to be the hardest in this series. Here’s just one of the many lines I had trouble with:

誘い涙の日が落ちる (Sasoi namida no hi ga ochiru)

This is how I initially parsed this phrase

誘い 涙の 日 が 落ちる

誘い (sasoi)	Invitation
涙の (namida no)	Tears’
日が (hi ga)	Day
落ちる (ochiru)	To Fall

So my initial attempt at translating this phrase was,

Invitation tears’ day will fall.

Which sounds like something you’d get on a fortune cookie, and I had no clue what it meant, so I did some creative guessing. My thought was that the keywords in this was “day,” “tears’,” and “to fall.” I then further postulated that “to fall” actually meant “to end.” Maybe the line was trying to convey the feeling that when the fated day comes, their relationship will end, so he’d be really sad. So here I am trying to figure out what the best way to make it sound good in English. And this is what I came up with.

So you should laugh more baby, carefreeness on my mind

Express yourself more baby, looking cool in your sight

Until the day you leave me,

Ellie my love so sweet

And that was my best guess. A few days later I had a scheduled meeting with my mentor to go over my translation. Anddddddd, I totally missed the mark. Not like completely off, since the sentiment is still kinda there, but like definitely not bullseye.

What she had pointed out to me was that I had parsed the sentence incorrectly.

誘い涙の日が落ちる (Sasoi namida no hi ga ochiru)

She offered a different parsing suggestion:

誘い涙 の 日が落ちる

誘い涙 の (sasoi namida no)	Tears of Sympathy’s
日が落ちる (hi ga ochiru)	Sunset

誘い涙 (sasoi namida) isn’t really a phased that’s used, but my sensei postulated that it was trying to be a fancier version of もらい泣き (morai naki), which literally translates to “tears that are received,” and refers to the kind of crying that you do when you see someone else crying or sad.

Also I was translating each word a little too granularly before, I had saw 日が落ちる as the “day will fall,” but 日 (hi) not only means day, but also means sun. “Sun will fall” translates to “sunset,” it all makes a lot of sense.

We talked a little bit about what

Tears of Sympathy’s Sunset,

could potentially mean, and I don’t really think we got anywhere. We both agreed that it was confusing. Later that night I did some investigating on the internet, and came upon someone asking the same exact question on Yahoo answers Japan: “Exactly what does 誘い涙の日が落ちる mean?” And the posters seemed to think that it was more like,

while the sun set, my tears also fall (涙が落ちながら日が落ちる),

which is kinda like a pun since both the sun and his tears fall. Though I suppose it’s meant to be poetic rather than funny.

So in the end the verse got translated to:

So you should laugh more baby, carefreeness on my mind

Express yourself more baby, looking cool in your sight

And as the sun sets, these tears they fall

Ellie my love so sweet

Reflection on the series as a whole

I was going to write a few more examples for how this song was difficult to translate, but it takes so much explaining to make it make sense for a non-Japanese audience, and I don’t want to lose your attention or waste your time. Since this is the last song that I’m translating for this series I thought that this would be a good chance to do some reflection.

So before I started working on this project, I had to write a project proposal for how I would go about doing this, and what were my learning objectives. My learning goals list was ordered from most important to still important (but less so).

1. Learn new vocabulary through songs
2. Learn new kanji from songs
3. Learn new readings from kanji from songs
4. Improve my familiarity with the language
5. Learn new grammar points
6. Improve my reading speed
7. Learn how to shoot and edit simple music videos
8. Get better at singing

I’m going to now re-rank them in order of how well I think I accomplished each goal:

1. Improve my familiarity with the language
2. Learn how to shoot and edit simple music videos
3. Get better at singing (at least on camera)
4. Improve my reading speed
5. Learn new vocabulary through songs
6. Learn new kanji from songs
7. Learn new readings from kanji from songs
8. Learn new grammar points

So you’ll probably quickly notice that the list is more or less flipped now. Learning a language is a decent amount of hard work, you’ll notice that anything that started with the word “learn” ranked kinda low on what I felt like I accomplished. There were definitely new words in every song that I didn’t know, and I did go look them up in a dictionary. But the thing is, translating it once doesn’t mean you know the word, and translating it twice probably doesn’t either. If you’re going for true learning what you need to be aiming for is exposure, the number of times you engage with a concept.

Because I was only translating six songs total, it was hard to get the amount of exposure needed to remember those words (short of just writing them on flashcards and committing them to memory, but where’s the fun in that?). But, the key to learning is exposure, so even though I was only translating a phrase once or twice, I would occasionally hear it again watching anime, or see it reading manga, and go “huh, that sounds familiar.”

So although you could argue that I didn’t learned as much as I would’ve had I been studying Japanese in a classroom setting, doing solo karaoke in my room with a ukulele definitely made it more fun. It was so much easier to motivate myself to translate a song that I was singing, than to “write a letter to Satoshi, your penpal in Hokkaido, your topic is ‘places around you’”. And honestly once you graduate college (which I will be doing soon), I feel like motivation to continue learning a language, is way harder but so much more valuable.

Missing - Kubota Toshinobu (What is R&B?)

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This is the 5th song in my translated japanese song series, Missing by Kubota Toshinobu (久保田利伸) which came out in the year 1986. I’m not entirely sure how I got to picking this song, but I got to it somehow while listening to youtube’s autoplay. I ended up deciding to translate this song simply because I really liked the melody.

It turns out that Missing is categorized as an R&B song. You’re probably completely unconvinced about since my ukulele rendition doesn’t really fall under the style. But, here’s what the original song sounded like if you want to be slightly more convinced.

I’ve always enjoyed listening to R&B. Living in the Bronx may have influenced this part of me. I remember being in a very particular school bus in either fifth or sixth grade, the bus driver always had Pussycat Dollz, Ne-Yo, and Usher playing on the radio.

You know when you know the feeling of a certain genre of music? I feel like I know what counts as R&B but never really had a formal definition. I looked on Youtube for videos that might break it down for me, but was pretty disappointed. So I turned to Wikipedia.

“Contemporary R&B, also known as simply R&B, is a music genre that combines elements of rhythm and blues, soul, funk, pop, hip hop and dance.

The genre features a distinctive record production style, drum machine-backed rhythms, an occasional saxophone-laced beat to give a jazz feel (mostly common in contemporary R&B songs prior to the year 1995) and a smooth, lush style of vocal arrangement.”

Yeah...I don’t know about you but I feel like this is a pretty vague definition that doesn’t really do anything for me. So I thought about what made something feel R&B to me:

1. It’s smooth sounding, the lyrics and phrases roll into each other, and words often linger
2. It has a relaxed beat in the background, and sometimes has some syncopation elements
3. There are single word runs in the song

Some artists that I would consider as R&B artists are Mariah Carey, Usher, Rihanna, and Frank Ocean.

And here are a few songs that I personally really like:

We belong together - Mariah Carey

Thinking ‘bout you - Frank Ocean

My Boo - Usher and Alicia Keys

So my question now is, does Missing count as a R&B song? Most of my encounters with Japanese music fall under J-pop, J-rock, and Enka. The idea that Japan went has it’s own R&B/hiphop era was not something that I really considered. Here’s the video of Toshinobu Kubota singing Missing if you didn’t click it the first time I linked it.

It has the same smooth quality that other R&B music has, and definitely has a relaxed background beat. It has a distinctly chimey sound, woodblocky sound, which is something I’m not used to in the R&B music of today.

To give it a benefit of a doubt, I looked up the music charts for U.S. R&B in 1986 (same year that Missing came out), and the top song was “Don’t say no Tonight” by Eugene Wilde:

Lo and behold, it fits my R&B checklist, but also has chimes and woodblocky sounds in the background. This makes me pretty confident that this is just what R&B sounded in the ‘80s, and the similarity between the two songs stylistically is almost uncanny. Seems like R&B music in Japan was pretty synchronized with the trends in the U.S.

I did some more digging around Missing, and it turns out that Boyz II Men (an R&B group based in Philadelphia)  actually made an english cover of the song… I was party wondering if they would cover it in Japanese but that sounded pretty absurd (despite the fact that a lot of asian artist cover English songs in English)

AAAAAAAnd it’s in English.

They got rid of the chimes and the woodblocky sounds, which instantly sends it to this millennium. But listen to the lyrics. The English lyrics are basically the original Japanese lyrics translated. The translator/song writer makes some discretions, but for the most part they keep the same motif. The thing is that the English version of the song, if you listen to the lyrics, is kinda bad, flows poorly, and evokes chuckles.

Their Cover: Though the feelings of lust I've felt, they seem to come and go I hear sounds that realize the pain, bittersweet melodies Colored by the tones of love, the sky provides to us Everlasting signs of faith, more than words can say

My Translation: I’ve had a lot of puppy love before, But it’s the first time that it’s hurt so much, And as the setting sun dyed the sky pink, I saw the dream that we talked about for forever.

Lyrics from: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/boyziimen/missing.html

One thing that I’ve talked about in my Johnny the Surfer blog is how in Japanese, sentences are frequently flipped. Partly because Japanese sentences are formed Subject-Noun-Verb, and partly because flipping sentences is just more normal in Japanese. You can see remnants of this flipped sentence structure all throughout the lyrics:

“I hear sounds that realize the pain, bittersweet melodies”

vs.

“I hear bittersweet melodies that realise the pain”

The English lyrics are really awkward, and maybe overly poetic. Japanese music in general just tends to love metaphors more than their American counterparts.

I’m not saying that my translation is any better than what they did, but I think this goes to show that it’s difficult to translate a song from one language to another. That well done localization of music (like in Disney movies) requires thoughtfulness, and an understanding of both cultures.

Thank You (Kansha) - RSP | Critical Language Scholarship Update

Turn on CC (Closed Captioning) for the english translation!!!

So like Alones from last week, this week’s cover and translation of RSP’s 感謝。(Kansha.) is another ending song from Bleach (the anime).  Kansha means “Thank You.” Japanese like many other languages has different ways of saying thank you.  The one that you’re probably most familiar with is ありがとうと or arigatou. Arigatou is a casual way to say thanks, you use it with friends, family, or people that you’re close to for occasions like when they help you with something, or you get a gift. There are various different prefixes and suffixes you can add to it to increase the level of formality, here’s a list from casual to formal (non-comprehensive).

ありがとう	arigatou
ありがとうございます	arigatou gozaimasu
どうも	domo
どうもありがとうございます	domo arigatou gozaimasu

Arigatou is a word from Japanese origin, kansha is written using kanji (Chinese characters) and is a loanword from Chinese. Words that are borrowed from Chinese are usually more formal, used less often, and seen more in literature, scientific papers, or fancy speeches. So unlike arigatou, you wouldn’t use kansha when someone hands you a piece of gum, it means something more like “I’m thankful.” So when you use the word kansha, it’s something you want to express bottom of your heart.

So the natural transition is for me to start talking about things I’m grateful for, like my family (just finished our road trip together as I’m typing this from LAX), my friends, and the awesome experiences I’ve had in life until now. There’s clearly a lot to be grateful for, but instead let me update you a little on my life.

Last Tuesday (on the 7th) I was notified by the U.S. Department of State that I was selected as an alternate for the 2017 Critical Language Scholarship Program in Japanese. For those who don’t know what the program is, it is “a fully funded summer overseas language and cultural immersion program for American undergraduate and graduate students” (I copied and pasted their description). The program is equivalent to a whole year’s worth of study, and for someone who’s primarily self-studying it means so much because I could finally level up speaking which is 100% what I struggle the most with.

The Wikipedia page tells you that “with an acceptance rate of less than 10%, the Critical Language Scholarship is one of the most competitive scholarships in the U.S. and the most prestigious language programs for U.S. citizens,” and Japanese is one of the languages with the most applicants. To be an alternate is an honor, but let me show you some of the behind the scenes.

The application process has five short form essays, which as a whole should paint a picture of how dedicated you are to learning the language, show how you are ready to adapt to and absorb a different culture, and why this language matters in your personal goals for your future. The deadline for this year was Nov 16th of 2016, and I started writing my drafts during that summer. During the school year I met with Gillian (our school’s writing expert) on four different occasions, some drafts were spent rewriting the entire essay, some were spent tuning every word in a sentence to make the most of the 300 word limit. I know five drafts and five essays might not seem much to you, but I spent hours on hours pouring myself into this both in time and in my emotional investment.

When I finished, I thought that there was no way that I couldn’t get it. I ran it by Aarti (our grad school & fellowships person) and she was ecstatic, her enthusiasm confirmed my feelings and I felt indestructible.

February rolls around and I get notified that I’m a semi-finalist, at this point the forums said that I had a 50-50 shot. I didn’t actively search for jobs or post-grad plans during this entire time. My plan was I was going to get the CLS, study Japanese for two months, and then do a short two month internship at Mitsubishi Electric which would buy me time to figure out my life. You’re probably mentally face palming right now, how could I feel so infallible that my plan was to win a ludicrously competitive scholarship?

For me, being an alternate feels worse than just getting rejected. I had gotten so far, the trophy in my reaches, only to be told “uhh…I’m not sure you can, but maybe? Shrug.”  I am the same as those who were stopped, my best was still not good enough, and looking out the backseat window I wonder, did I not sound like I wanted it enough? Could I’ve written a paragraph different? What did they have that I didn’t?

I still feel stuck in limbo, I keep checking my phone’s email hoping that I’ll see “CLS Status Notification,” hoping that I’ll get promoted. It wasn’t a clean cut, and it keeps me stuck and longing.

So yeah, I’m two months from graduating, and without a plan (not a game plan, but a life plan). I know that from today I’m going to hustle harder than I have been (it feels maybe a little preposterous to say “ever” have been), and hopefully by then, I’ll have something that I’m thankful for.  感謝。

Update (4/2)

Hey everyone, I wrote the above blog post approximately two weeks ago at the end of spring break, and hadn't got to publishing it. Now that I’ve gotten some distance from then, and my feelings have mellowed out a little more, I thought it wouldn’t be fair if I posted this without an update.

So I’m still not promoted to finalist status, which I’m not very surprised about. And since the end of spring break I’ve been trying to apply to a job a day, which has been a pretty rough process. The very first week back was definitely a low point with me questioning all my qualifications, but since then I’ve been talking to friends, and getting advice from people who’ve been there and done that, and it’s really boosted my moral.

I’m almost done finalizing my plans to work as a design intern at Mitsubishi Electric over the summer, I’ll be hanging around Kamakura for about ten weeks. I’m not too sure about what my plans are after that. But like the song, I want to thank everyone who has been supporting me in this anxious transition in life.