[Lyrics] - Shikao Suga - Aitai

Due to another video being taken down, here is  Shikao Suga latest single: Aitai. 

I tried to adapt the lyrics to the song this time while incorporating the theme of the song as much as I could.

Aitai adaptation

I really hate

Making me hold hands on a date

Funny thing is that I hate letting go

I’m a pain to be with, trust me, I know

Drives me mad

The only thing I hate more than the old

Is sitting here and watching my nails grow

Someone like me –

Can never ever be loved

But you

You’re my one in a million

The only one that has been

Able to put a kiss on my heart

But you

If you ever left me

I hope that my whole heart

Would freeze and turn as cold as ice

Hate kisses

I hate that moment when we touch

Hate thinkin’ of our privates and such

The blood and stuff is way too much

Just like me

I hate spider when they are still

But even noisy ones aren’t a thrill

Someone tell me –

Why is the world so cruel?

But you

You’re my one in a million

The only one that has been

Able to make me feel this way

But you

I only want you to know

About my pain

And all about my sadness

Only you

You’re my one in a million

The only one that has been

Able to put a kiss on my heart

But you

If you ever left me

I hope that my whole heart

Would freeze and turn as cold as ice

Aitai literal

I hate holding hands

But I hate letting go even more

I think it’s a pain too

Drives me mad

I hate the smell of grown ups

I even hate when my nails get long

Someone like me doesn’t have the qualifications to fall in love

Aitai

There’s no one else but you

No one else has be able to kiss my heart

Aitai

If you ever left me

I hope my heart becomes cold and freezes

I hate kissing, I hate the moment I’m touched

I hate my own genitals even more

Feels like blood would get on you

I hate spider, they are quiet like me

But don’t like noisy insects either

Hey, someone tell me why the world is so cruel

Aitai

There’s no one else but you

No one else has drown in these feelings

Aitai

I only want you to know

About my sadness and the same pain

Aitai

If you ever left me

I hope my heart becomes cold and freezes

大キライ　手を握られたりするのキライ
放っておかれるのもキライ
めんどくさいって　自分でも思う
狂うくらい　大人の臭いとかキライ
爪がのびてくのもキライ
こんなわたし　恋愛の資格もない

アイタイ
あなた以外　誰一人
心に直接　キスできた人なんていない
アイタイ

あなたがもし　去っていく日は
心ごと全部　冷たく凍結してほしいの
kissキライ　体触れる瞬間キライ
自分の性器　すごくキライ
あなたに血が付きそうで
自分みたい　じっとしてる蜘蛛 大キライ
うるさい虫も好きじゃない
ねえ　世界って　どうしてこう残酷なの？

アイタイ
あなた以外　誰一人
こんな気持ちに　溺れたことなんてない
アイタイ
だから　この悲しみと
同じ痛みを　あなただけ知ってほしいの

アイタイ
あなた以外　誰一人
心に直接　キスできた人なんていない
アイタイ
あなたがもし　去っていく日は
心ごと直接　冷たく凍結して欲しいの

Projects: College Essay

A project that was brought to me a while back was for a college essay.

The woman wanted to apply for a certain nursing school in the states and wasn't confident in her ability to express herself to the college in English. That's where I came in. This was not a particularly difficult project, but it did have its peculiarities.

Prose in Japanese is a bit different from what Americans are used to. The flow of intentions is almost the opposite. In English we tend to sandwich what we want to get across. I remember learning the "Hamburger Model" in many stages of my education. We tend to use this even when we want to give people advice, bad-news and applying for a job. For documents like letters of intentions or essays, we usually say:

1. What we want
2. Why we want it　・　Why we should have it
3. Why the reader should want us too (restatement of what we want want)

There are extra things to accompany that, but that's basically what it is. English speakers are generally comfortable reading and writing professional letters in that format.

However, in Japanese, one usually doesn't state their intentions until the very end. Perhaps due to the structure of Japanese (SOV), what is being conveyed isn't expressed until the end of the statement. "I apples want" as opposed to "I want apples." So even in an essay or speech, what the writer/speaker's intent isn't fully apparent until the very end. All of the information that they want the listener/reader to know made explicit, then they state what they want at the end of it. This also shows up in their humor. As an example, Japanese people say that they never start laughing until the very end of a joke or story.

At the risk of rambling, basically, I had to transform her essay into what English speakers are used to reading without ruining her intents. Translating it itself was not difficult, but I did have to dance around the structure of the would-be English version.

If I was to do it again, I would like to meet with the person and talk about exactly what they wanted to express it make it even better; even more personal. There is only so much you can do with only text, but I feel like I did a good job on it.

I heard from her a while later and head that she got into the college and the program of her choice.

Projects: Melty Blood

I started doing some of the character stories mostly due to wanting know what was going on myself. I would definitely say that I was not as experienced with translating or even Japanese at the time. It took a significant amount of time and guidance do these at first, but I was satisfied with the results. After translating them, I posted a recording from the PS2 version of Melty Blood and used annotations. As I got better at it, I was able to use more complex software for the subtitles, and it became less time consuming to simply translate the Japanese. I could focus more on the individuality of the characters.

Characters are hard to translate. You cannot just translate what is being said, you have to "translate the character."  You need a good idea of "who this person is" when you translate dialog. Dialog is not static. We all have individuality and experiences that change who we are. This of course influences how we talk in general and even how we talk to certain people. There are over 30 individual characters in Melty Blood, and most of them vary in how they talk and act when alone and with others. What is harder is translating characters that are well known in their respective communities. Melty Blood is based on a fairly popular visual novel, Tsukihime. I need to make sure that I also match the character's manner of dialog to the vision of what people already have and expect of them.

Calm down Matt

What I needed to keep in mind for most of these is, "how do people see this character already?" I can't have an established smooth talking, fancy characters talking like B-Boy from 5th street. It throws the reader off. Admittedly, this mistake is in a lot of my earlier work.

KnK reference to Sōren

On the subject of fancy, many character have highly embellished abstract speech models. I'll talk more about translating "complex/fantastic" works later, but the writers for Melty Blood, Type-Moon, often fall into this category. Japanese is a wonderful language for expressing feelings and imagery... and like a 2 frame mashable jab, they abuse the hell out it, for lack of better words. This poses a problem... how do I express these abstract visions in English? Thanks to this I feel I have a fair amount of experience with the kind of classic dialog found this type of media.

As for research, I needed to brush up on characters that I was not familiar with. I needed a good idea of their personality. I have a good idea about most characters, but I did need to have a look at some. For example, I needed to take a look at Kara no Kyōkai in order to understand some the references and Ryougi herself.

I think that these all went pretty well for the most part. I still cringe at some of my older work but I find them passable for the most part. I will definitely keep the personality and speaking habits of each character in mind should I do another one in the future. 

It's been a while since I've done a Melty Blood character story, but it's definitely on the list of things I would like to get to. My ultimate goal is a localized version, or at least fan translated version of MBAACC. We will see what happens from here though.

Projects

I have a nice PC setup now! 

To give more insight towards this "soul of a translator," I'm going to start posting about past projects and works. I'll talk about how they went, challenges, what kind of research I needed to do and my overall mindset from start to finish.

I doubt I can tell anyone "how" to translate, but I have high-standards for how translating, and a translator should be.

The ones in English will deal with Japanese to English translation. I'll also have English to Japanese translations, but the chances of those being in Japanese are higher.

I knew him well