Korean girl group TWICE officially debuted in Japan on June 28 and made their first Music Station appearance last week. I had wanted to buy their debut CD as I’ve heard their songs in Korean and think it’s not bad. Also, as a form of support for members who left their country to strive in foreign land. On top of that, I expected their biggest hits to be on the same CD, so it would be a worthy purchase.
It’s been some time since I last bought a CD. The last one I bought was about 2-3 years ago, which was ELT’s Every Best Single special box edition kept in perfect condition because I only opened it no more than 10 times and only played the DVDs once. The singles were never removed from the case. But nobody seems interested to buy it when I put it up on Amazon for sale whenI needed some extra cash and selling something I don’t use is probably the best option. That has been my way of saving money. When I run low on cash for the month, instead of digging into my savings, I either try to get more job on the side, or I sell stuff I don’t use.
Before ELT, I bought Hide’s new album. An album of one new song that he wrote before his death and never had released. Producers created the song with computer stripping his voice from his other songs and joining them to create it. The rest of the album were his best hits. It was more like an album of his best hits plus one additional song, but they marketed it as an album of 1 new song plus 10-over best hits. Nonsensical.
The other CDs I’ve bought since moving to Japan were by independent bands and musicians, some of who are my friends.
So, the point is, I don’t buy CDs that much and eventually, I also didn’t buy TWICE’s debut Japanese album because they had 5 of their biggest hits translated to Japanese in the CD, which I think is a horrible idea. I’m not a huge K-pop fan and only really began listening to some recently. But among those that I’ve heard many years earlier when Girls Generation (SNSD) was the “in” thing, Japanese versions always sounded really horrible. While I missed TWICE’s performance on Music Station last week, I caught it on YouTube earlier and as expected, it sounded really bad. Japanese lyrics just somehow don’t go well with originally Korean language songs, especially when you’ve heard the original before.
I’m not sure if having them debut in Japan is a smart move, although from what I read in other non-related news, K-pop groups aren’t paid well due to the system of the Korean entertainment industry and only really start getting their share of money when they debut in Japan. I wonder how true that is.
The only thing I know is, I won’t be listening to any of their songs in Japanese.
This is a topic that I’m super interested in because I’m recording a lot of covers recently, and my main ‘selling point’ is I’m translating/fitting Japanese lyrics into foreign melodies. I’m also working on fitting English and Mandarin lyrics into Japanese melodies. Right now I’m working on the Japanese lyrics of one Korean song by f(x) and am going to record it soon. The main reason of doing this is because I realise there’s an audience out there: people actually want to listen to songs sung in Japanese.
Some things I’ve discovered as I’ve tried a hand at this: I think the songs might sound weird not (only?) because of the lyrics but because of the way it’s sung by the non-native speakers. For example, there’s this lyricist that I really like, Sara Sakurai, she did the Japanese lyrics for f(x)’s Four Walls and there’s a lot of wordplay so I thought it was really creative. No idea what the original really sounded like or what the words meant because I can’t Korean, but when I heard f(x) sing the song I thought it was a little funny-sounding, and then I started paying attention to the lyrics and I realised it was because they vocalised some of the syllables too differently from how someone really familiar with Japanese would.
Of course, sometimes it could really just be really bad lyrics. Haha.
One thing I’m remembering is how there have been some great Japanese melodies with really fitting Chinese/Cantonese lyrics (Jacky Cheung’s version of Tsunami! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxiGN1AUQBs) so I wonder if it’s just Korean to Japanese. Food for thought.
Edit: not Tsunami. I believe the correct song is ‘Manatsu no Kajitsu’.
I think there’s something about the way it’s done in Japanese that makes it really bad for me.
I loved Radwimps’ original 前前前世, and also think the English version, which was translated to the exact same meaning and still rhymes beautifully, was a great piece of art. I heard G.E.M’s Mandarin cover of Taeyang’s Eyes, Nose, Lip first, where she changed the entire concept and lyrics which I really liked. And while I did feel some discomfort listening to the original initially, it gradually grew on me and I began to appreciate both renditions of the same song. Likewise, the Jacky Cheung version of the Southern All Stars classic you raised has completely different lyrics and I enjoy both equally.
Japanese versions of Korean songs just somehow don’t fit so nicely because they try to retain the Korean sounds and English words the original songs use at points that don’t feel natural in Japanese. Trying to retain the meaning is one thing but the way Koreans use English in their songs is different than the way Japanese use it, so it ends up sounding very awkward. If anything, I’d rather they change the entire lyrics to mean something totally different; or at least don’t force retention of the English words no matter how significant they are in the original because that’s just not how Japanese songs work. I’m sure when done right, they can sound perfectly fine in their own right, except that I don’t feel they are being done right.
I didn’t know there was an English version of Zen-zen-zen-se, I’ll have to check that out. Also have never heard of G.E.M, even though I’ve heard of the song Eyes, Nose, Lips (just don’t know who it was sung by haha). I’m interested to listen to those, thanks for the heads up.
Yeahhhh that Jacky Cheung song. Man. Love it.
I think I know what you mean! I’ve only had very minimal brushes with Korean songs and their Japanese versions so I don’t have a big enough sample size to draw from and wonder if it feels awkward to me or not, but I’m with you when you say you’d rather them change all the lyrics to mean something else. Or just grasp the 雰囲気 of the original song and keep that instead of trying to fit every single meaning into every single line.
I attended this seminar once by a musical theatre director, and he was asked a question about the main difficulties re: translating musical numbers from English to Japanese. He said because of the nature of Japanese, usually only about a third or two-thirds (my memory is a bit fuzzy here, but I remember he said 三分の-something) of the meaning found in the English is retained in the Japanese. What they try to do is to match up the music and the vowel sounds, stuff like that. Most of us were shocked that that much meaning had to be foregone in translation. I think it’s still pretty amazing though. If you look at the lyrics for musicals, they still manage to tell the story without sacrificing the original storyline. Of course, some of the lines in the music parallel the original, but most of the time they favour the way it sounds in the target language more so than translating every single thing. That’s the way I want to approach my translations.
For you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9o22MRC2_SY
That’s a very interesting revelation. I’ve never given that a thought although now that you mentioned, musicals do always sound beautiful even though I don’t know how the same parts in different languages compare when placed side by side.