Forum - View topicBad English in Anime Theme Songs?
|
Goto page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Next |
| Author | Message | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
totalgeek
Posts: 307 Location: Raleigh, NC |
|
|||
|
Something has bothered me recently. I've noticed that some anime theme songs (opening or ending) have English phrases mixed into the Japanese. Often, these phrases show a very poor understanding of English grammar. For example, the end theme of Scryed has the phrase "I believe in drastic my soul." What the heck does that even mean? What is it supposed to mean? Perhaps if the phrase was "I drastically believe in my soul" or maybe "I believe in my drastic soul" it would have made a LITTLE more sense, but it would have still been somewhat wrong.
I can only speak a small bit of French, so if I wrote a song I'd never consider injecting French phrases into my song for fear of looking like an idiot by someone who CAN speak French. So, what is up with the Japanese songwriters? Last edited by totalgeek on Mon Aug 08, 2005 9:44 am; edited 1 time in total |
||||
|
||||
Gauss
 Posts: 519 Location: Finland |
|
|||
You never know, perhaps Drastic is the name of the soul? That would at least make it correct English. 
As for why they insist on inserting English words and phrases? Because to Japanese it sounds cool. Kinda like Americans add a sprinkling of Spanish in their slang. *tries to remember some incident of Engrish* Ah, yes. The ending song of Mamotte Shugogetten had the phrase "I Feel so Love Again". On the other hand I could swear she's actually singing "I Feel so Lone Again", so perhaps the fault lies with sloppy transcribing? Or printing error in the lyrics? |
||||
|
||||
|
Akemi_Idaku
|
|
|||
|
I think it's possible for bad translations to occur when translating from any language into another. I would look at it as being just a simple translation error even though the song was released to a wider audience.
"Beck" features some songs with better english translations since most of them are entirely in english. |
||||
galactic_lady
 Posts: 38 Location: cyberspace |
|
|||
|
I don't mind the bad grammar. Even American songwriters use it. What bothers me is when it's so poorly ennunciated that I cannot understand what they said without a lyric sheet or the subtitles turned on. Often times I don't even realize that there were English words in there until I see them in writing. And there are MANY songs like that, Saiyuki, Heatguy J, etc. That's why I give props to Yoko Kanno for getting American singers to do some of those songs. But even on the Bebop soundtrack there's a song in French being sung by a Japanese girl, and I know French but I honestly thought it was in Japanese for the first dozen times I listened to it. I had to replay it about 40 times before I had peiced together enough phrases to get some sort of idea what was being said. It's the accent that messes it up, that's all. It's hard enough for American's to speak French properly and we have L's in our alphabet, but for a Japanese person? It was gibberish.
|
||||
|
||||
|
.Sy
Posts: 1266 |
|
|||
|
||||
|
||||
Glory Questor
 Posts: 456 |
|
|||
|
I'm surprised no one's mentioned "Fry Me to the Moon" yet.
(I didn't come up with that one ... that was Tiffany Grant's reference to Evangelion's "Fly Me to the Moon" in all three of her Eva Platinum commentaries. In retrospect, though, she's right on the money with that phrase, since only one of the performances from the whole Eva series is in clear English and the rest are in rather average Engrish.) Last edited by Glory Questor on Sun Aug 07, 2005 7:39 pm; edited 1 time in total |
||||
|
||||
|
totalgeek
Posts: 307 Location: Raleigh, NC |
|
|||
Oddly, when I originally heard the FMA opening "Ready Steady Go" I first thought it was all in English, until I realized that beyond the phrase "Ready Steady Go" I couldn't understand a word! I thought the line right after that was "Who can turn back at (sounded like ku-kay, which I thought might have been an event that was significant in the storyline or something)". 
|
||||
|
||||
omnistry
 Posts: 1019 |
|
|||
I thought it was "Who could turn night into day" when I first heard it. 
|
||||
|
||||
|
galactic_lady
Posts: 38 Location: cyberspace |
|
|||
|
Wow, you guys are good, the only english I could pick out of there was the "please trust me" at the very end, I thought the rest was Japanese.
atleast, I think that's what they said. |
||||
|
||||
Angel Of Death
 Posts: 176 Location: Harper Woods, MI |
|
|||
|
In the ED of Someday's Dreamers, "Under The Blue Sky", the singer totally butchers the title of the song. It sounds like she has paste in her mouth when she says.
|
||||
|
||||
|
samuraiwalt
Posts: 647 |
|
|||
Maybe you should worry more about your own grammar
|
||||
|
||||
|
totalgeek
Posts: 307 Location: Raleigh, NC |
|
|||
Thanks so much you grammar nazi!
I knew I made that slight error. It is easy to accidently leave out a word sometimes, but it was pretty obvious from the rest of my post that I had a pretty good command of the English language, so I just didn't feel like going back and fixing it. |
||||
|
||||
|
ScooterinAB
Posts: 6 |
|
|||
|
One word... Berserk
Worst...theme song....ever I kind of like the stupid use of English in anime themes (Burst Angel anyone). There is actually a belief in Japan that needlessly using English is really cool, which is second only to French (I have some interesting photos of a Japanese coffee shop that grossly mis-spelled several French words on a sign). In Japan, the use of pretty much any other language is considered exotic (much like how those shirts you can buy with pointless kanji on them are supposed to be popular here). I think it's fun, but you do have to watch out for overuse and poor grammer (again, the theme to Berserk). |
||||
|
||||
Jerseymilk
 Posts: 157 Location: Wouldn't YOU like to know. |
|
|||
|
Oh wow, someone else who was turned off by the theme music in Beserk. I don't know what it was about it, but perhaps it's partially the bad English like you said?
My favourite Engrishy, non-sensical line in an anime theme song ever was the opening lyrics for the ending song "Mask" from Sorceror Hunters. "Oh my darling, I love you, And the kid who just stands tonight." Still trying to figure to this day what that means. 
|
||||
|
||||
|
Michi
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 741 Location: Los Angeles, CA |
|
|||
It's not just songwriters. That sort of Engrish is everywhere in Japan. It's because random English in lyrics, on T-shirts, as titles, is "cool" and "exotic". Yeah.  
http://www.engrish.com/ Yay. |
||||
|
||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group