I’m back on the Spanish song translating business. xD I hope someone find these translations helpful. I have a feeling that the lyrics on this album are going to be slightly more difficult to translate than the ones on Entre la Arena y la Luna. We’ll have to see about that~~~
I decided to create another feature in here~ The Wannabe Distributor feature!!! Combining my love for film and design, I’m gonna pick films as if I could afford the rights to distribute them, and imagining I really am going to be showing these films at a theater near me, I’m going to pick suitable titles and “create” a campaign to promote it. LOL
My first pick! China’s little movie that could, Love Is Not Blind (失恋33天).
I thought that I would practice my Spanish to English translation skills by translating some songs — I’ve recently done partial translations of Marc Anthony [1], as well as Shakira and Gianmarco when I talked about What Were Good Lyrics. I’ve also done full translations for Polvos Azules: A Cinephile’s Paradise, and random songs of Los Nosequien y los Nosecuantos [1][2].
So I thought I would pick an oldie, the 1995 Gianmarco release — some say it’s a 1994 release, but my copy has a 1995 print — of Entre la Arena y la Luna (Between the Sand and the Moon). Obviously, I can’t post ALL lyrics on one go, so I’ll probably add them as I work on them. Gianmarco’s lyrics weren’t as complicated then — and they’re pretty short — so they should be fairly easy to translate.
Any Peruvian of my generation has to have grown up with, at least, one Los Nosequien y los Nosecuantos song. Maybe not Cuando tu Me Pegas [1], but certainly Magdalena [1], Los Patos y Las Patas [MV] — and obviously Las Torres.
Part political satire, part serious social commentary, part anthem, part pop hit, part party flare and full Peruvian rock — Las Torres, meaning The Towers (as in transmission towers), was a huge hit in its time and its the musical staple of the… maybe not defunct but definitely stale Los NSQ y Los NSC (for short).
Long gone are the days of the constant nights without lights due to the blowing up of transmission towers, the curfews, being a kid then was… not the bomb. Cable, internet were non-existent and any form of entertainment was limited to just the couple of channels… and you were lucky to have a working TV.
Have we ever asked ourselves what good were computers without internet?? LOL
Anyway, I digress — the wordplay in Las Torres is an obvious play on the famous Un Elefante se Balanceaba (An Elephant Swinging) [here’s a clip] which I guess you don’t have in English version of… but a close version would be the Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall song? In the Elephant Song, you would sing that “an elephant is swinging on top of a spider’s web, seeing as it lasted, it calls one elephant more” which makes the song endless.
Unlike Bjork’s concert [1], which I couldn’t photograph… to even have a faint memory of it. I did get the chance to shoot Miyavi with my good gear, without having to sneak it in… which is good, because this new lens is super huge.
There are things… going on, which made me discover a song xD
Then I got to watch loads of videos and clips, and then it moved me~ it all clicked. The best Peruvian is not (some people keep on claiming this) Peruvian at all. Now, isn’t that ironic, don’t you think?
It was about six months ago (I don’t know why it took so long to cause controversy) when this Latin American Snickers CM featuring ex-RBD Anahi hit the waves.
In it, Anahi is doing her usual extreme biking when she falls and starts complaining about it. Her male friends call her Carlos and tell her that whenever he’s hungry he’s “acting like a girl.” “That’s not what your girlfriend said,” as she eats the snicker.
Anahi turns into Carlos.
I was never able to swallow that commercial, and every time it was on tv — even though it should be tough to run into it without watching much tv — I ended up changing channels with an “UGH”
Los Nosequien y los Nosecuantos (literally translated to “The Whomever and the Whichevers”), often shortened as NSQyNSC or some variation of that, are famous for… being total clowns. They’ve got their bits of ska so often populating the good stuff of Peruvian Rock, ready for parties.
I was recently updating myself with their discography and found this song called Cuando Tu me Pegas (When You Hit Me)… which talks about DV… domestic violence, or a variation of that since it’s not explicit that the couple in question lives together… in a very inappropriate funny way.
Raul Romero, in the role of the woman… mocking “delicate” tone of voice and all talks about her relationship with a man who hits her, but she loves it. It probably goes in hand with that ever popular saying of “mas te pego, mas te quiero” (the more I hit you, the more I love you) or that thing called “amor serrano”.
Of course, DV is no laughing matter… and I’m sure I’m supposed to be feeling socially conscious about the song and its context… I just can’t help finding this hilarious though. It’s not the lyrics perse, but the execution and overall feeling of the song that makes you go WHUUUUT and then laugh at it.
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I’ve had experiences with the artists I’d like to see and chasing after them… until finally they come to me. LOL
It happened to me with Bjork, chasing her across Europe — missing her in Finland, Sweden… and later Madrid. Defeated back home, it wasn’t but a few weeks or a few months when Bjork announced she was going to be doing a show in Lima.
Something similar happened to me with the Backstreet Boys. After a failed Canadian visa for a friend’s wedding, I had already tickets for the BSB show in Vancouver that I ended up giving to my ex-roommate. I was pissed off at the embassy for denying me entry, and barely a month later, I head that BSB was going to play Lima.
For a while now, I had been lamenting not being able to attend many Asian concerts, and when Miyavi announced that he’d be playing in Chile, I thought I could go there. I hadn’t heard from the festival organizers, but today I got word that Miyavi was playing Lima as well.
