I’m translating a manga and ran into some difficult sentences related to music. I understand most of it, but I feel like I’m missing something.
“面白いコード進行。。。そこで上げてくんだ。。。つまずいてるみたいな鍵盤の音運び。あたしの曲に取り入れるなら。。。イントロからその音運びで始めて。。。驚かせるだけじゃない聴く人に浸透するようなサビに繋げる。歌手は不安定な曲調だから逆に”
By sentence (I’m being a bit liberal with translations):
“That’s an interesting chord progression”
“They shifted (the chord) up there”
“Their playing almost sounds like it’s tripping (???)” (At first, I thought it meant something closer to swing, but I’m unsure. I have only heard つまずく with bad connotations.)
“If I wanted to incorporate that into my music, then…”
“I would use it in the intro…”
“Not only would it surprise the listeners, but it would connect (the intro) to the chorus in a way that sounds seamless” (pretty liberal translation here)
“The singer’s tone (melody) is unstable, so it has the opposite effect of…”
I think I’ve got a general idea of what is being said here, but I feel like I’m missing a few things. Especially in the 3rd and last sentences. If I’m not mistaken, the sentiment is that the performer has some interesting chord progressions, but is making mistakes. Please correct me if I’m wrong, thanks.
1 comment
驚かせるだけじゃない聴く人に浸透するようなサビに繋げる
There’s nothing wrong with a liberal translation, but you have to proceed from the point of really understanding how the sentence is put together. So here it seems like we’re missing the meaning of 浸透する (“permeation (of thought, ideology, culture, etc.); infiltration (e.g. of ideas); spread; penetration (e.g. into a market); pervasion”)
I don’t blame you, because I don’t think we would really express it this way in English. A chorus that permeates listeners? A chorus that infiltrates listeners? That sounds genuinely bad, but maybe we could translate it at something like “A chorus that hooks listeners” or even “A chorus that gives listeners an earworm”?
I also feel like the connotation of だけじゃない is a little different from “Not only, but…”
I might translate it as “It wouldn’t just surprise listeners, it would transition to a chorus that really hooks them.”
音運び also seems to have a slightly specialized meaning (from what I have briefly Googled) – basically, the transition from one note to another. It sounds like those transitions are coming off as clumsy (or “tripping”). (And when you’re playing a keyboard instrument, it can be quite challenging to get your note transitions to be smooth and correctly timed!)