Part 1 of… whatever this is. the blog series where we translate songs and get angry about how other people are doing it as a reprieve from longer-term personal translation projects (i swear there will be a proper post about kamase-yaku eventually, we just need to get to the end of the first volume).
Anyway.
on the docket today is さっさかサレンダー by Meddmia as the main project, as well as aspects of the translations of Shoujo A and Bling-Bang-Bang-Born used by Will Stetson. because if i never post about those anywhere i will Explode, and i’d rather not dedicate an entire post to that. plus, it’s rather relevant?
I actually like a lot of Meddmia’s work, and eventually plan to tackle a few others, but さっさかサレンダー is one that has been in a bad state in some defunct LibreOffice sheet somewhere for years now so it gets to go first. So, from the top, first batter, first inning!
Sassaka Surrender (title pending) is a song about a few things, much like last time’s Igaku. Sports, someone with a penchant for throwing in the towel frame one, and possibly some third secret thing. To be perfectly honest, it’s sort of eluded me for a while what sort of narrative to weave a translation around, because unlike how Igaku lends itself very well to unethical doctoring, this song is… Straightforward to a fault, while still remaining fairly vague about specifics. It’s the energy of what’s being said, rather than the words themselves a lot of the time. Maybe that’s why it appeals to me so much, as something that feels so hard to pin down at first.
First up on the list is the title. What is a Sassaka? The given English title by all accounts is “Instant Surrender”, but that doesn’t make enough sense.
Maybe Evangeline Morgan’s rubbing off on my more than I thought, but even without her direct influence on chasing down something that feels wrong as evidence, there’s something abnormal about choosing さっさか over the common forms of either さっさ or さっさと. So, basically, something’s up.
With a little digging, we get to a couple options, and the promising answer is an answer on a Yahoo!Japan board detailing what seems to be an etymology of the phrase, pinning it down to both speed and cheer (or generally being fast in an upbeat way). There’s other answers that say that it emphasizes speed even more than さっさと, so, anecdotal vs anecdotal, but either way, we have a jumping-off point for the vibes now. Cheerful words on the wind and speed, or something. Title still pending, but there’s at least an idea.
There’s one line in Will Stetson’s Bling-Bang-Bang-Born cover that hasn’t stopped bothering me since I heard it. And, just for the record, I think the cover besides that is…fine, if just that? I haven’t really dug into that song myself; I know Dogen has a very good video talking about how fascinating the lyricism is in the original and it’s just at a depth I don’t feel capable of right now, but I can still notice when something was missed.
There’s a line that goes, “Don’t need your seven pretty lights, I’m undefined”—the counterpart being “誰の七光も要らない”. Seven lights…doesn’t really mean anything, in the context of anything? So this really popped out, and this is something that could really have used even one other glance over it. I like to have Jisho.org open as a dictionary reference, and in rarer occasions use DeepL to check readings on particularly difficult sentences. Google completely fails to get the definition of this as a word, which Jisho and other sources have as “benefiting from the influence of a master or parent”. Even if this was a stylistic choice, there’s no visible justification from it in the series that I can possibly think of and it feels very out of place among the rest of the lyrics. And it doesn’t make any goddamn sense!
The weirdest part is, I’ve never seen anyone else comment about it. Maybe YT comments do bury criticism that much, but it’s impossible to dig well. I’d mostly just like to know if anyone else has ever asked that question, because it does make me feel mildly insane when so many others can move past it easily.
An estrangement that I feel so very often in translation. Does the consumer truly not care to this extent? Isn’t it interesting? Don’t you want to know?
Anyway, back to it. To keep things a bit shorter (thinner?) than last time, the first go through here will have a first*-draft with some spare thoughts and options, and then after some more ideating we’ll bring it together with a final version at the end.
One thing that we didn’t really touch on last time, though, I think, is that the first things written down always are made to fit the rhythm over making sense. Re-translating around an existing rhythm is easier to think about down the line than compressing or rearranging a line that flows well (in prose) but doesn’t fit (the meter). End-of-line rhyming is upheld as this divine standard in English, but it really doesn’t fit the bill in a lot of cases (and maybe that’s also partially what we’re partial to—wordplay within lines and across lines opens up the playing field a lot compared to the standard repertoire). A second pass is where we can clean up the overall flow of a verse or section, but we need to have the overall basis from which to form scaffolding first.
| JP | EN |
|---|---|
| はいラッキー 空振った ビビってる四番バッター | Oh, lucky, how lovely, I can see how the cleanup’s quaking, |
| 早まったみたいね その表情がイイね | God I love how it looks when it slips in by a margin! |
| どうやったってドロー 頑張ったって徒労 | All my outs are tie-ups, strain just leaves me dried up, |
| って キミもそうでしょ？ ね？ | heh, ain’t it the same way for you? too? |
| Hands up 既に降参 | ”Hands up?” They’ve been up frame 1, |
| だからお願いです見逃して頂戴よ | so if you have it in your heart, look away for once, just once more. |
| 無理だって言ってんの | There’s no way, it can’t be done, |
| そんな大層な人間じゃございませんの | I think you misunderstand me as a kind-hearted person. |
| (^ this part is unclear about who is speaking when. arises again later.) | |
| 昨日のことも覚えてないし | I couldn’t tell you what might have gone down yest’day (?); |
| 今日も一日ダラダラモード | now’s the hour for me to be a flounder, |
| 明日の自分におまかせですわ | it’s all left up to the me of tomorrow, |
| それでいいんですいいんです | that way’s just fine, yeah, fine, yeah. |
| ゆっくりじっくりやれば報われるんだからいいじゃない | Slow, steady, be ready for yours, we all get our prize so isn’t it just fine? |
| なんて言ってたらそいつはいきなり現れる | While lost in my mind then suddenly I catch sight of a step up to the plate, |
| あれはモンスター！世界が羨むモンスター！ | Why that’s a monster! Something the world gets jealous over! |
| 期待の超新星なんだそうです。 | Flaring with expectations, and already alight. |
| ってそれ、誰が言ったの？ | —now hey now, who said that? |
| あれはモンスター！ | Why that’s a monster! |
| モンスター。 | Monster. |
| モンスター… | Monster… |
| モンスター？ | Monster? |
| 大体それって何の意味があっ── | Just what am I to make of a title like— |
| え？あぁ、参りました。 | Huh? Oh, well, guess it’s my loss. |
I wonder if it’s possible to fit “Star”, as in, the english, into the phrasing of “Monster”. “超新星” means “supernova”—I see that it’s been translated as “superstar” but I don’t see that in readily available definitions? so i wonder where that comes from—and the 4-pointed star is a very very prevalent visual motif in this song.
- One could play it as “Mon-star”, or somesuch, but it isn’t exactly my vibe to jump to directly, so we’ll come back to it in a minute after everything has been laid out properly.
This one’s been in the works for several months, on top of the time gap between starting the original one and starting this attempt and the time gap between starting this one and finishing it. In the meantime, we’ve translated a research paper (we should devise a better way to link to that—it’s on the Translations page as the only thing as of writing) and a few handfuls of chapters of a webnovel.
かませ役♂, or (current running EN title) I Reincarnated as a Stepping Stone, is what we could call “a pet project” by a few metrics. It’s good translation practice, it’s fun, it’s interesting, it’s yuriful, it’s cheesy, it’s chuuni.
there’s a lot of interplay involved in translation, between the core idea of the different characters, the perceptions and the realities, the references and the speech patterns. it’s honestly quite incredible, and it’s making for a very very good sandbox to see how best to approach different things.
also, to the main point, it’s actually quite impossible to translate without delving a depth many might assume is “too far”—there’s always another layer to poke at, and skimming the shallows both feels and is doing both the text and the hypertext a disservice. to say nothing of how unethical it feels! nothing can be translated in the way a monoglot typically thinks, anyways!
There’s a post that bsky user punkitt made recently.
there is an inherent disconnection (difference, seen as disconnection) across languages (what is perceived as a language, a cultural monolith of not just its constituent dialects but also subcultures and slang, the monolith understanding being used to flatten and drive out that which is not “acceptable”, to hammer in dogwhistles and harmful rhetoric simply by their existence in one dictionary that too is removed from the cultural context, to say that things are not what they are because one’s understanding is deliberately kept mirror-deep,) despite similarities and the adjustment and realignment as a necessity for the process to mean anything at all, because there is an inherent difference across cultures; ; ; ; to translate without that effort is to not engage with the source text nor its surrounding context nor the piece as a hypertext and the fact that translation discourse is in the constant disarray it is is a tragedy for which we shall leave no survivors evermore.
| JP | EN |
|---|---|
| 典型的なアイデア | What a perfect, cute idea, |
| それでいいんだな それがいいんだな | that sounds like it’s just fine, that sounds like it’s just fine, |
| みんな好きでしょ？ | everyone likes that, right? |
| 仕方がないからって それでいいのかい？えぇ？ | Nothing else to do about that, so, I guess there can’t be a prob. lem? |
| なんも分かんないもん | In one, and out the oth er, |
| だから許してね この通り メンメンゴ | so if you could please pardon me, この通り, I’ll say soz☆ |
| 苛立っちまってんの？ | Am I get ting on your nerves? |
| そんじゃ存分に無駄な時間をどうぞ | Well then, I’ll leave you with all of the free time in the wo~rld |
| ど ど ど どうぞ どっどっど どうぞ | in in the wo |
| ど ど ど どうぞ どっどっど どうぞ | in in the wo |
| ちょっと急かさないでって | Quit stepping on my tail, is it?? |
| あっあっ、 | Why, why |
| あれはモンスター！ | why (that’s/you’re) a monster! |
| 世界を揺るがすモンスター！ | One that could bring to heel the whole world! |
| 意外と高身長なんだそうです。 | Taller than I expected, quite honestly. |
| ってそれ、だからなんだよ！ | Okay well, what’s that to do with me!? |
| あれはモンスター？ | Why that’s a monster! |
| モンスター。 | Monster. |
| モンスター… | Monster… |
| モンスターw | Monster (lol) |
| 一回帰ってよーく考え── | Let’s call time out and put our heads togeth— |
| あーもう勘弁して！ | Ah, damn, give me a break! |
one question that came up during this is: are bad translyrics a better translation for a song than properly translated lyrics that can’t be fit to the rhythm?
It’s a bit of an answerless question, but it’s very much worth thinking about. I think the point is sort of a third opposite to moot, the way people talk about love, hate, and apathy. It’s not something that has a good answer, because to claim that poor translation on rhythm is better includes saying that analyzing the meaning line-by-line is worse, and they’re truly just different. One happens to be possible to sing on the melody, but they’re both equally falling short of what they could be, and to judge that in any greater depth is a case-by-case thing.
- The main issue is that translation is something to be done in an entirety—there doesn’t seem, to us, to be any meaningful way of translating only a segment of something or doing it in part., to let go of the whole. This is one aspect and avenue by which the impulse toward omniscience will always win out, because it is truly impossible to encompass even a fraction of what is necessary to translate, because to translate involves imbibing and drawing connections between massive amounts of cultural and linguistic points in ways that seem likely absurd to someone who lives only in the tide pools of combating corporate language registers in contrast to their vulgar and their own realm.
- Truly, it is impressive that translation is treated as something alien, that language is treated as something that the brain is meant to have more and more difficulty learning and processing—that is a failure of not just institution, but culture, and of thought, and of action.s. It rides the expectation that language is a done deal and nothing that can be played with, that there is some sort of way to arrive at a sci-fi Universal Translator, the ultimate flattening of culture into something that is often regarded as necessary for representing diversity in the same way as fragments of constructed fictional languages are used to remind readers and listeners and viewers that there is indeed more to the world than what a piece of art or media can accomplish in one audio track, the tacit acceptance and direct upholding of the monolingual even in subtitles even in platforms even in patterns of thought.
- It is impressive that people would rather say that the truth of a passage, an excerpt, is the “exact words” in nearly the exact order that they were written in another language. That adapting slang to slang, dating a work, is inherently harmful, that there is some sort of objective truth that can be arrived at that somehow just so happens to derive no joy or whimsy of itself, that just so happens to align against real experiences, the experiences and ability of the queer to find representation within the normative, that just so happens to strip the personality and expression space from a passage the same way that it flattens the expression that already exists, because language is not even the same as itself, why would it be the same as another?
- two individuals can use the same words, the same letters, the same sounds, and have them land incredibly differently based on context, stress, and intention.
- the same person can use the same words, the same letters, the same sounds, and have that build emphasis, a recurrence, a structure, within something as simple as a single pair of sentences.
- perhaps all sentences and all have been said already (this is notably not true), but many would prefer that they even stop being shuffled around to better convey emotion, that one truth give way to another just because someone is being loud about it, that notes are not needed and nuance doesn’t exist, that doesn’t and does not are the same thing, that English has no way to represent speaking voices, that textual representation is a solved science.
- it feels like living through Flatland.
- It is impressive that people would rather say that the truth of a passage, an excerpt, is the “exact words” in nearly the exact order that they were written in another language. That adapting slang to slang, dating a work, is inherently harmful, that there is some sort of objective truth that can be arrived at that somehow just so happens to derive no joy or whimsy of itself, that just so happens to align against real experiences, the experiences and ability of the queer to find representation within the normative, that just so happens to strip the personality and expression space from a passage the same way that it flattens the expression that already exists, because language is not even the same as itself, why would it be the same as another?
- it feels like trying to appeal to the ones still stuck in the cave, like so many other things.
- Truly, it is impressive that translation is treated as something alien, that language is treated as something that the brain is meant to have more and more difficulty learning and processing—that is a failure of not just institution, but culture, and of thought, and of action.s. It rides the expectation that language is a done deal and nothing that can be played with, that there is some sort of way to arrive at a sci-fi Universal Translator, the ultimate flattening of culture into something that is often regarded as necessary for representing diversity in the same way as fragments of constructed fictional languages are used to remind readers and listeners and viewers that there is indeed more to the world than what a piece of art or media can accomplish in one audio track, the tacit acceptance and direct upholding of the monolingual even in subtitles even in platforms even in patterns of thought.
- It feels like there is a dimensionality to reality that makes you feel insane once you begin to notice just how many ways it is being treated as if it not only does not exist but cannot exist, to uphold something that is entirely bullshit and arbitrary. Everything is everything but how can you even begin to help someone else to realize that except by incidence? Words are not the words that they are except insofar as they are but so many give up before even arriving at the text that the idea of subtext, let alone context or hypertext is entirely aliened from them.
Though, bywhichever the case, there is less and less excuse the larger a channel is for sub-par or blatantly wrong translations. Differences in delusion, misalignment in preference, those are fine; if something completely slips by, then something’s off, and when nobody comments on it and the mistake is reused, the disdain spreads.
| JP | EN |
|---|---|
| 争いはしたくないし | I am never one to look to start a fight |
| 見下されるのはいやだし | but being the one stepped on just isn’t right! |
| 夢はでかいが見込みはない | Dreams? I’ve got a bunch, but prospects just show crunch; |
| 財布に何も入ってない！ | As for savings, well, I won’t be getting lunch! |
| 馬鹿げてる でもやっぱ | It’s ridiculous, but you know what, |
| その方がおもろいでしょ？ | Isn’t that just how the best tales always run? |
| 乗ってけ | Grab a seat, |
| 飛ばせジェットコースター！ | here we go, blasting off! |
| 世界を裏返そうか！ | Friend and foe alike can all piss off! |
| 時代の寵児ってのが私だってこと、 | I’ll show them all that the dar ling of the age and stage, |
| 見せてやんだよ！ | is none other than I! |
| あれはモンスター！ | Why that’s a monster! |
| そうだ！！ | Hell yeah!! |
| モンスター！！！ | Monster!!! |
| それがどうした！！！！ | And what should I care!!!! |
| 一回シバいてちゃんと黙らせ── | I’ll tie this up, the score their mouths and souls— |
| あっ、やっ、参りましたー。 | Ah, no, guess I’ll go home. |
A few things, before we wrap it all up.
| だから許してね この通り メンメンゴ | so if you could please pardon me, この通り, I’ll say soz☆ |
|---|
A necessary axis of translation is when to leave the original language “untouched”—honorifics, slang, [sic]s, elaboration, making visible the exact phrasing to prove a point against similar and different terms in the target language that would otherwise seem to overlap with it.
Last time, we highlighted briefly that Japanese←>English is often not 1:1, is sometimes one:1, can even easily be 一:1.
Japanese is something that we are this familiar with mostly by coincidence1: a family member was studying it in the living room for a business trip once, and it sounded nice, and it meshes with several other interests. I don’t know if we’ll ever actually visit Japan, nor if we want to more than other places. One day we’ll pick up another language, I’m sure. Add it to the collection, have some fun delving into its intricacies. It’s healthy to know a lot of things, and while it may not be healthy to want to know everything(s), well, perfection is so often the enemy of good.
Within this current and limited framework of language, which encompasses more than these two in shallow ways and derives both from fragmented memories of earlier life and deliberate if short perusals for specific purposes, it quickly becomes very silly to think that there is ever one way to translate, or that a translation can be correct in some meaningful way.
Most translation is wrong. In fact, it could (and has!) been said that all translation is bad translation. I don’t have any one thing I could point to as to why this is the case other than the fact that, as was touched on briefly earlier, language is not a monolith. Babel is not a tale of warning or a prophecy of what will happen should we attempt to challenge any god in particular—language will always diverge from itself given any amount of separation, in space and/or in time. It’s why I’m on the side of the descriptivists, rather than the prescriptivists. It’s why we’re anti-censorship. It’s why nostalgia is the weapon of the enemy just as a pure and clean slate devoid of dated language is. All language will always be dated, even if it is afraid of itself. So to attempt to translate it, to translate it, to engage with it, requires a mind that is open to infinity, the same way that language is already processed.
| 一回シバいてちゃんと黙らせ── | I’ll tie this up, the score and their mouths souls— |
|---|
For whatever reason, シバいて is written with kana, which puts it next to the god Shiva. Now, what is that ever reason? The delusion of grandeur putting our protagonist (or underdog, whichever the case may be) in the mindset of a god of destruction seems fit to me. This line is going to get a number of revisions before we get the final one, even compared to the other lines, but it’s one where the question becomes how much, and if, it is important to reflect all of that. This first crack at it isn’t bad, but it isn’t baseball enough, and, which is my main issue, it isn’t anything enough. The whole song needs to be a bit more coherent to arrive at something,
but we do have the scaffold now!
さっさか Surrender // Hurry-up Surrend-er
| JP | EN |
|---|---|
| はいラッキー 空振った ビビってる四番バッター | Oh, lucky, how lovely, I can see the cleanup’s knees buckling, |
| 早まったみたいね その表情がイイね | God I love that expression, how it whiffed by a margin! |
| どうやったってドロー 頑張ったって徒労 | (My) only out’s a tie-up, (but) strain just leaves me dried up, |
| って キミもそうでしょ？ ね？ | heh, ain’t it the same way for you? too? |
| Hands up 既に降参 | ”Hands up”? They’ve been up frame 1, |
| だからお願いです見逃して頂戴よ | so if you have it in your heart, could you let me dodge this outcome? |
| 無理だって言ってんの | There’s no way, it can’t be done, |
| そんな大層な人間じゃございませんの | I think you’ve misunderstood me as a kind-hearted person. |
| 昨日のことも覚えてないし | I couldn’t tell you what might have gone down yest’day; |
| 今日も一日ダラダラモード | now’s the hours pass with me at Full Lazy, |
| 明日の自分におまかせですわ | it’s all left up to the me of the next day, |
| それでいいんですいいんです | that way’s just fine, yeah, fine, yeah. |
| ゆっくりじっくりやれば報われるんだからいいじゃない | Slow, steady, be ready for yours, we all get our prize so isn’t it just fine? |
| なんて言ってたらそいつはいきなり現れる | While lost in my mind then suddenly I catch sight of a step up to the plate, |
| あれはモンスター！世界が羨むモンスター！ | Why that’s a monster! Something the world gets jealous over! |
| 期待の超新星なんだそうです。 | Flaring with stellar hopes, and already lighting dreams |
| ってそれ、誰が言ったの？ | —now hey, who said all that? |
| あれはモンスター！ | Why that’s a monster! |
| モンスター。 | Monster. |
| モンスター… | Monster… |
| モンスター？ | Monster? |
| 大体それって何の意味があっ── | Just what am I to make of a title like— |
| え？あぁ、参りました。 | Huh? Oh, well, guess it’s my loss. |
| 典型的なアイデア | What a perfect, cute idea, |
| それでいいんだな それがいいんだな | that sounds like it’s just fine, that sounds like it’s just fine, |
| みんな好きでしょ？ | everyone likes it, right? |
| 仕方がないからって それでいいのかい？えぇ？ | Nothing else to do about it, so, I guess there can’t be a prob. lem? |
| なんも分かんないもん | In one, and out the oth er, |
| だから許してね この通り メンメンゴ | (so) if you could please pardon me, この通り, I’ll say soz☆ |
| 苛立っちまってんの？ | Am I get ting on your nerves? |
| そんじゃ存分に無駄な時間をどうぞ | Well then, I’ll leave you with all of the free time in the wo~rld |
| ど ど ど どうぞ どっどっど どうぞ | in in the wo |
| ど ど ど どうぞ どっどっど どうぞ | in in the wo |
| ちょっと急かさないでって | Quit breathing down my neck, is it?? |
| あっあっ、 | Why, why |
| あれはモンスター！ | why you’re a monster! |
| 世界を揺るがすモンスター！ | One that could bring to heel the whole world! |
| 意外と高身長なんだそうです。 | Taller than I expected, quite honestly. |
| ってそれ、だからなんだよ！ | ‘kay well, what’s that to do with me!? |
| あれはモンスター？ | Why that’s a monster! |
| モンスター。 | Monster. |
| モンスター… | Monster… |
| モンスターw | Monster (lol) |
| 一回帰ってよーく考え── | Let’s call time out and just put our heads togeth— |
| あーもう勘弁して！ | Ah, damn, give me a break! |
| 争いはしたくないし | I am never one to look to start a fight |
| 見下されるのはいやだし | but being the one stepped on just isn’t right! |
| 夢はでかいが見込みはない | Dreams? I’ve got a bunch, but prospects just show crunch; |
| 財布に何も入ってない！ | as for savings, well, I won’t be getting lunch! |
| 馬鹿げてる でもやっぱ | It’s ridiculous, but you know what, |
| その方がおもろいでしょ？ | Isn’t that just how the best tales always run? |
| 乗ってけ | Buckle in, |
| 飛ばせジェットコースター！ | barrel on, full power! |
| 世界を裏返そうか！ | Pitching to claim the golden hour! |
| 時代の寵児ってのが私だってこと、 | I’ll show them all that the dar ling of the age and field, |
| 見せてやんだよ！ | is none other than I! |
| あれはモンスター！ | Why that’s a monster! |
| そうだ！！ | Hell yeah!! |
| モンスター！！！ | Monster!!! |
| それがどうした！！！！ | And what should I care!!!! |
| 一回シバいてちゃんと黙らせ── | I’ll tie this up, drive a stake right through their dreams— |
| あっ、やっ、参りましたー。 | Ah, no, guess just my own. |
All things considered, this one’s alright. I’ll probably feel like coming back to it in a couple years with some more experience.
There’s two title options, as you can see: leave さっさか as is, or do a double-hyphenation play to tie “surrender” and the one who surrends (generic acknowledgement that this isn’t how the word works, keep moving) together into the same thing as how “Hurry-up” can imply both that they are in a rush and rushing others.
Footnotes
-
insofar as the word coincidence is one that is acceptable to use—it’s not really something that i touch on often but i think i generally prefer incidence to coincidence within the realm of superstition, chance, and “luck” discussions. these things happened because of the circumstances, and to ascribe things entirely to chance would ignore even the possibility of a larger narrative or understanding that could be drawn from the recounting. as for how much of this is an aside and how much is relevant to the main point here… ↩