Tag: music

真心英雄 by 李宗盛 (The Sincere Hero by Jonathan Lee), sung by Jackie Chan, Wakin Chau, Anthony Wong, and Jonathan Lee. I liked this song a lot while listening to Jackie Chan’s discography, and the lyrics are easy enough to understand.

Again, the hope for this exercise is that I come up with something that is:

1. Singable within the original melody.
2. Grammatically and idiomatically passable in English.
3. As faithful as possible to the original imagery, varying only to satisfy the previous two conditions.

So here is my localization and thoughts:

[Verse 1]

• 在我心中　曾經有一個夢
  I have a dream that’s been in my heart
• 要用歌聲讓你忘了所有的痛
  To use song to make you forget your sorrows.
• 燦爛星空　誰是真的英雄
  Oh, starry sky, who are the real heroes?
• 平凡的人們給我最多感動
  Ordinary people inspire me the most.

[Verse 2]

• 再沒有恨　也沒有了痛
  To end all hate and know no more pain
• 但願人間處處都有愛的影蹤
  If only everyone was a beacon of love.
• 用我們的歌　換你真心笑容
  Let our song put a smile on your face
• 祝福你的人生從此與眾不同
  May your life never be the same from now on.

[Chorus 1]

• 把握生命裡的每一分鐘
  Seize every minute of our lives
• 全力以赴我們心中的夢
  All for the dreams in our hearts
• 不經歷風雨　怎麼見彩虹
  Without the rainstorms, where are the rainbows?
• 沒有人能隨隨便便成功
  No one randomly succeeds

[Chorus 2]

• 把握生命裡每一次感動
  Seize every inspiring moment in life
• 和心愛的朋友熱情相擁
  And the passion in every friendship
• 讓真心的話　和開心的淚
  Let sincere words and happy tears
• 在你我的心裏流動
  Flow freely in all of our hearts

[repeat verses]

[repeat chorus 2 three times]

Some overall thoughts:

• Some idioms are more fun to translate literally than idiomatically because the metaphorical imagery makes for prettier language.
• Rhythmically it’s always a challenge when the Chinese is able to pack so much meaning into fewer syllables due to the single characters carrying so much or when the Chinese uses a two-character phrase and English has a single syllable word for the matching concept. Having to figure out how to make up or to lose syllables makes the localization tough.

Here’s another song I’d like to translate and localize:

朋友 by 周華健 (Peng You by Emil Chau).  It was a pretty popular song from two decades ago and I remember that our Chinese American Cultural Association had all the kids sing it for graduation one year.

Again, the hope for this exercise is that I come up with something that is:

1. Singable within the original melody.
2. Grammatically and idiomatically passable in English.
3. As faithful as possible to the original imagery, varying only to satisfy the previous two conditions.

So here is my localization and thought process:

[Verse]

• 這些年 一個人 風也過 雨也走
  All these years, on my own, winds have passed, rains have gone.
  Not much to say here.  This translation is easy to match with what others have come up with.
• 有過淚 有過錯 還記得堅持什麼
  There were tears.  There were wrongs.  But I remember why we held on.
  The second half is where this starts getting looser.  I like how “hold on” half-rhymes with “wrong” and “why I hold on” is an evocative English idiom, though not exact to the Chinese.
• 真愛過 才會懂 會寂寞 會回首
  When you’ve loved, then you’ll know, you’ll look back, you’ll feel alone.
  I found that “alone” rhymed better with “know” and decided to swap the order of the looking back and the loneliness.
• 終有夢 終有你 在心中
  But there are dreams, there’s still you, in my heart.
  I wanted to capture the meaning of 終 implying the passing of time, and settled on using “still finding” to reflect that this is something that has been on the singer’s mind.

[chorus]

• 朋友 一生一起走 那些日子 不再有
  Friends are always by your side, in all those days that have gone by,
  I preferred the idiom of “days gone by” and it also half-rhymes with “side” from the first half.
• 一句話 一輩子 一生情 一杯酒
  one good word, one lifetime, with one heart and a cup of wine.
  This was the toughest line.  It repeats the idea of one lifetime and lifelong friends, but there just aren’t as many different English words for “life” so I decided to change the latter lyric for redundancy.
• 朋友 不曾孤單過 一聲朋友 你會懂
  Friends will never be alone, with a true friend, you will know:
  The idiom I pulled in here was the phrase “true friend.”
• 還有傷 還有痛 還要走 還有我
  There’s still sorrow, and pain to bear.  Though we’ll part, I’ll still be there.
  Literally, there are “wounds and pain” but “sorrow and pain” is the more common English idiom.  This was also the toughest line to keep the rhyme (I settled on “bear” and “there”); whereas the Chinese lyric ends the beat on “there’s still me” that accusative noun feels weird in English, so I went with the gentler “I’ll still be there.”

[repeat verse]

[repeat chorus]

Some overall thoughts:

• Admittedly this song is not that complex to begin with, but I find that most other translations I read are more literal translations and don’t feel like things I would actually say in English.  This was my biggest focus here.
• Also, because the song itself wasn’t as complex, I tried to also match the rhyme scheme where the first half of each line would rhyme with the second half; this made arranging the English rather challenging for some of the lines while trying to preserve the original meanings.
• One of the toughest things about this song was figuring out the implied speakers and audiences.  There are few pronouns and unlike English where verbs have first or second-person conjugations, in Chinese the verbs are always the same.  It takes some context to make your best judgment about how to translate that context.  (for example, making the decision that the end of the second line is spoken by an “I” directed to a “we”)

Translation can be a technical and literal task.  However, localization is an art.

As a Chinese-American who knows a bit of my ethnic language, but not enough to be fully comfortable in it, I often wonder if I can make great English versions of the various Chinese songs I come across. The goal is to make sure that the English version is:

1. Singable within the same melody.
2. Grammatically and linguistically acceptable.
3. Evokes the same emotions, if not the same imagery.

Today’s challenge is:  飛得更高 by 汪峰 (Fly Higher by Wang Feng)

Here is my localization and thought process:

[Verse 1]

• 生命就像 一條大河
  Life is just like a winding river:
  “winding river” is a stronger idiom in English than the literal translation “long” or “big” river.
• 時而寧靜 時而瘋狂
  at times it’s calm and quiet, at times it’s crazy.
  “quiet” by itself matches the syllable count, but doesn’t feel as complete as “calm and quiet.”
• 現實就像 一把枷鎖
  Reality is like one big shackle,
  To keep the rhythm of the Chinese measure words here that don’t exist in English, I’ve added “one big” to the imagery.
• 把我捆住 無法掙脫
  holding me down with no way to get out.
  “holding… down” is a looser translation here but fits better with the overall narrative of flight.
• 這謎樣的生活鋒利如刀
  This mysterious life is sharp like a razor.
  刀 just means knife, but razor is the stronger image in English when talking about injury.
• 一次次將我重傷
  time and again causing me pain.
  I couldn’t find a two syllable word/phrase to end this line that felt as concise as “pain.”
• 我知道我要的那種幸福
  But I know the happiness that I want
  I think this line translates very nicely as is.
• 就在那片更高的天空
  is in that wide open sky over there.
  I am actually still on the fence about whether “is right over there in the open sky” ends better with the final emphasis on “open sky.”

[chorus]

• 我要飛得更高 飛得更高
  I want to fly even higher, fly even higher.
  Literal translation.
• 狂風一樣舞蹈 掙脫懷抱
  I want to dance like the wind, breaking away.
  The second phrase is tough to translate as it’s a Chinese idiom; there’s more meaning there than I can pack into the English.
  “break away” is a bit of a cheeky callout to the Kelly Clarkson song of very similar imagery to this one.
• 我要飛得更高 飛得更高
  I want to fly even higher, fly even higher.
• 翅膀捲起風暴 心生呼嘯
  My wings kicking up a storm, my heart shouting out for joy.
  This is pure idiom localization. “rolling up a storm” and “heart whistling” don’t work as well literally.
• 飛得更高
  I want to fly even higher.

[Verse 2]

• 一直在飛 一直在找
  I keep on flying. I keep on searching.
  Literal translation.
• 可我發現 無法找到
  But you just can’t find what I’m looking for.
  The Chinese uses first-person this whole line, but to facilitate the transition to the indefinite second-person in the next line, I brought “you” into this line.
• 若真想要 是一次解放
  If you really want a taste of freedom,
  “taste of freedom” is an idiom localization choice, though the imagery differs slightly with the rest of the song.
• 要先剪碎 這誘惑的網
  you have to cut loose from the nets of temptation.
  This was a very difficult line; I like the imagery but the word “temptation” feels clunky here.
• 我要的一種生命更燦爛
  I want a life that’s more brilliant.
  Literal translation.
• 我要的一片天空更蔚藍
  I want a piece of the sky that’s more blue.
  Literal translation; I really like the imagery here.
• 我知道我要的那種幸福
  I know that the happiness that I want
• 就在那片更高的天空
  is in that wide open sky over there.

[repeat chorus]

Overall, some of the hardest challenges with this were:

• Keeping a similar syllable count: certain semantic phrases in Chinese are shorter than in English and vice versa.  Luckily, music can often be a bit forgiving, allowing for you to create an double eighth note rhythm to accommodate the extra syllables in what was a quarter note in the original language.
• Keeping to the important musical enunciation: as a counter to the previous point, there are certain musical high points or held moments that cannot be sacrificed without changing the rhythm and you HAVE to build around these.  For example, in the original Chinese, much of the emphasis falls on the two-character phrases that end each line; thus in English, I have to look for two-syllable words or two-syllable phrases with similar power and rhythm to preserve the overall structure of the song.
• Literal vs. idiomatic? This is part of the artistry as well.  Making decisions about where the artist’s original imagery is great and should be kept versus where a more idiomatic English construction would be more powerful is a very subjective decision that really boils down to the transcriber’s own opinions.