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#1
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"immature" confusion :(
Okay, this has been bothering me for a really long time. In the opening lyrics, Ayu says:
bokura wa sonna ni mo ooku no koto nado nozondari wa shiteinani yo zutto Now, to me, this means "We don't desire all that much" but I read the great masa's translation which says it means "We've never wanted so much at any time". And since there is such a huge discrepency between what I thought is was and what masa says it is, can someone tell me why it means that? |
#2
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I don't even pretend to know much Japanese but from an English point of view, both phrases can mean the same. 'We've never wanted so much at any time' could also be 'We've never wanted that much at any time.' Desire and want can also have the same meaning. So with that, both phrases are the same but worded differently.
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#3
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Translations of lyrics are usually up to the translator. Just because masa says this, doesn't mean that every other translator will agree with him as well.
He might get the meaning of the lyrics across perfectly, but there will probably be someone else who translates them differently. And you may like their translation better, or you may like masa's translation better. I like masa's translations. I mean, they are readily available and they are pretty much correct. But, for some songs, I really like Nick's interpretations, (from the eneabba site). I don't know if they are exactly translations, he says interpretations, so, I'll leave it at that. The point is, is that, there are many different was to translate things from Japanese into English, and usually what they translator ends up choosing has to do with his personal style, and the flow of the rest of the lyrics. So, it's basically just what sounds better I think.
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#4
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It's true that each translator sees things differently, depending on their own linguistic background, lexicon, and poetic license. This is especially the case in Japanese where word-for-word translations are almost impossible (unlike, say, English and French, where words come from common sources, have common nuances, and are used in common ways).
I understand where he gets this translation, though. The issue lies in the "nozondari", which is a form we don't have in English. 僕らはそんなにも多くの事など望んだりはしていないよずっと bokura-wa sonna-ni-mo ooku-no koto-nado nozondari-wa shite inai yo zutto Us-Top like_that-Dat-also much-Gen thing-such_as hope_for+tari-Top do+te not_to_be "yo" throughout We have never really been hoping for all that much. The important part here is "nozondari wa shite inai". Nozondari comes from the verb nozomu. You drop the u, add the morpheme tari + the verb suru, and the m+tari become realized as ndari. The "-tari suru" adds the feel of "some of the time". 笑ったり泣いたりするような人 Warattari naitari suru you na hito The sort of person who laughs sometimes and cries sometimes. This can also be translated into English the following way (which, at least where I am from, seems to be more common).. 笑ったり泣いたりするような人 Warattari naitari suru you na hito The sort of person who'll [be] laugh[-ing] and [then] cry[-ing]. We use a sort of general future tense. What a person "will" do, as a general rule of their character. Or what you "would be" doing yesterday, in a given situation or at a given time. So we have nozondari + suru (the "suru", speaking in terms of prescriptive grammar, is a necessary part of the "-tari" construction). The "suru" is conjugated into "shite inai" to form the negative present continuous form (which is often used with the word "zutto" to give a sense of what you "have been doing this whole time"). (Don't pay attention to the "wa" -- it is important just because it is there, but it doesn't change the meaning greatly enough to bother explaining.) Does that kind of make sense? Masa's translation is correct. Of course, he is Japanese, so he is certain to understand what Ayu is saying from a Japanese perspective. It's just that putting the concept into an English speaker's perspective can be tricky sometimes. |
#5
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I see translation as the interpretation of poetry. The experiences we have had in our lifes interferes in the way we translate something. The essence is pretty much the same for everybody, but some details may change from person to person.
I say that because I translated Because of You once, and my japanese teacher was really surprised with the translation, because of the interpretation I had, which was quite different from hers. |
#6
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Thanks, everyone!
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