When I translate things, I usually go from Spanish into English, so when I listened to (and obsessed a little) over Neil Patrick Harris at the Tonys, I thought that it’d be good practice for a quick English to Spanish translation exercise.
Lyrics in English taken from Playbill.com
I just began listening (truly listen) to Mayday’s discography pre the Born to Love days, finishing off titles/pinyin/title translations, when I ran into this song titled Masquerade (Male, Female, One Body) from their 2003 album, Time Machine (時光機). The thing is, the title of the song is Ci Xiong Tong Ti (雌雄同體), which is the term used to refer to “hermaphrodites” (which, by the way, isn’t longer a term accepted for people, who are now referred to as “intersex”). Perplexed, thinking that Google Translate was giving me a wonky translation, I checked the dictionary to double check.
On a quick google search, I found a pretty terrific (singable) translation of the song.
Rather than you understand me—I’d rather be a mystery
A puzzle you just cannot solve, of what’s false and real, it’ll play at your heartstrings
I’ll play you, or play your opposite form; partake in this game of love that you’ve borne.
via NoStarWords @ LJ + starriheavens
My mind was melted. I mean, it’s not VERY often you get playful duality in music, playing on gender-role conventions and completely avoiding the titillation that seethes from… well, everywhere now.
The Tokyo Shimbun (東京新聞) has developed an application for children to help them read their newspaper — difficult kanjis and all — by translating kanji into easy to read hiragana and other augmented reality features enhanced with animation and stuff.
I don’t think the Tokyo Shimbun realized that they’ve developed a tool for foreigners to read their newspaper. xD
Writing nonsensical dramatic lines that may or not be grammatically correct? xD
あなたが本当に大好きだから。そして。。。あなたを守るために、家族もを守るために、永遠にエイミ-ちゃんはここにあります。
or
お父さんー
お誕生日おめでとう！
私は元気、あなたも？
毎日いつも日本に楽しいかったです。
毎日も、お父さんと家族を思った。いろいろことが家族みたい。風、桜、鶴も、そのことがうちに思うっている。
Look what I found! It turns out that Yu’s photobook Kaiten TEBURU ha Mutsukashii, which had her followed by photographer Ivy Chen in Taiwan doing their Taiwan Cafe rounds, will be translated to traditional Chinese in a new release simply titled Taiwan’s Girl (台灣的女孩), to be out on December 27th this year. I doubt this will show up on any other online websites~
