First off, here’s my situation. I’ve been studying japanese lately, but I still have doubts when it comes to comprehension, I’m still getting used to the complex sentences’ grammar that is quite rich and subtle.
There’s a song I studied, Ichiko Aoba’s ゆさぎ, which I enjoy very much. I saw that there was no french translation on Musicxmatch so I decided to translate it myself.
[Here’s a link to the song’s Musicxmatch page](https://www.musixmatch.com/fr/paroles/Ichiko-Aoba/%E3%82%86%E3%81%95%E3%81%8E)
But, while translating, I was comparing what I understood of the lyrics with the english translation. And I understood things differently sometimes and wanted to know if there was an interpretation margin, or simply a misunderstanding from either me or the english translator.
When translating the first verse that goes like this :
>貴方は知っているか
>
>この厚い雲の上には
>
>満天の星空と双子座が
>
>温かい闇を泳いでいること
The english translation of this verse evokes “Gemini clouds”, whereas here I don’t think that the grammar indicates Gemini as a qualification of the clouds. So I only evoke “Above the thick clouds”, mentionning the Gemini along with the starry sky later on.
Is this right or is there a subtlety I didn’t get?
​
Second is the most important difference I think, the lyrics go like this :
>いつか同じ場所から
>
>堕ちてきたのココロ
>
>うさぎの耳が孤独に触れ
>
>柚子色の泪になった
The english translator considered there were two different sentences in this verse, whereas I think that this is one big sentence. Here are the two translations.
English translation :
>Your heart felt to the Earth that day
>
>The same place where it had always been
>
>Your bunny-like ears reached my loneliness
>
>And became a lemon-yellow-colored tear
My translation attempt :
>When from the same place
>
>A broken heart’s rabbit’s ears
>
>Touched my loneliness
>
>And became yuzu colored tears
I know the meanings are quite different and that’s why I would appreciate some help in analyzing these lyrics. To know if I was right to doubt the english translation from what I understood, or if I got something wrong and it snowballed on the whole sentence. I’m not excluding the possibility that this is just a matter of interpretation, but from what my sensei Cure Dolly says japanese is really not that ambiguous, normally. It even is exactly like lego when she teaches it.
I know that this is a long post and that it will require some time to answer me about this topic. I thank you in advance, you who will help me.
手伝ってくればありがとうございます。
Edit : I think I found the problem with my translation in the second case. I considered the part that ends with “ココロ” as a subordinate whereas kokoro is a noun and as far as I know, two nouns cannot be sticked together… I would like confirmation of the error nonetheless, I may have accidentally translated it right.
1 comment
Firstly, I agree with you that Gemini clouds sound like a mistranslation and that the clouds and the constellation should not be linked.
Now as for the second verse, 孤独 is clearly acting as an adverb rather than the thing being “touched/contacted”, so I don’t like how either translation handled this. I also think your choice of translating “heart’s bunny ears” is a dubious one as it’s kind of awkward and leaves open the problem of what the bunny ears were touching.
Now, what I think is that the object of 触れ is the ココロ mentioned (think of it being marked with an implicit は). In that sense, I do agree that all 4 lines of the second verse are in fact related like you said.