Celedam wrote:^ In contrast…Zunu wrote:Shoujo Q wrote:I noticed on Apple Music that YOASOBI released an English version of the song. I was highly confused for a moment because I couldn’t place what was wrong with it right away. They didn’t change the title to reflect it was a different version.
I've heard it. It's true that it sounds weirdly off-putting compared to the original.
I once played the Spanish-language version of an English-language adult contemporary ballad I liked to a friend of mine who's a Spanish interpreter/part-time jazz musician. And her first response was, "
," but her follow up was, "That 'song' wasn't originally written in Spanish was it?" Disgracefully my Spanish is pretty shit so it sounded totally ok to me, but she could immediately tell the phrasing was unnatural. Everything was in correct textbook Spanish but the phrasing and meter didn't work the way Spanish songs work, it worked the way English songs worked.And so for me this English "Idol" has the same issues. The words are certainly in English but we don't typically use that type of vocabulary in our songs. For example, she says "the pupil that you got." You can say that in English but nobody ever would*. We use "eyes" in songs, not pupils, which sounds clinical in English, not romantic or poetic. But if you were going to use it then you likely wouldn't follow up that clinical word with a colloquial "got" instead of "have." "Hey baby, anybody ever tol' you that you got some pretty-ass...pupils?" Sounds weird in English, but in Japanese "hitomi" is a perfectly normal word to use in a song, and can certainly be used casually. This is why good translations are hard, and word for word translations are pretty bad at conveying meaning.
Anyway that's just one phrase, but I'd argue similarly regarding the rest of the song.
All that aside, if it helps to make the song more popular among English speakers then I'm all for it, regardless.
*Like literally nobody ever would. A Google search only turns up that Idol lyric, nothing else.
(hopefully I'll have floor seat money at that point. 
)