My recent hobby
Recently, as you would have known already if you follow my Instagram @its_nghiatr or YouTube channel @duskhopper, I am really into machine-generated voice, aka singing software, aka singing synthesizer. The best known software are Vocaloid by Yamaha and UTAU by Ameya/Ayame (shareware). There is also OpenUTAU which is FOSS (Free and Open-Source Software). Recent development includes AI generated software such as Synthesizer V, which sounds really good in my opinion.
How these software work:
You put in notes (CDEFGAB or Do Re Mi Fa Son La Si) and Japanese syllables to create some singing! There are also English but.. English is not a phonetic language, and the stressing syllables are crucial in how to speak English correctly, so in my opinion it doesn't sound good with voice synthesizer.
The software looks rather simple. But, with most things seems to be simple, there are a lot of complicated stuffs underneath. I bet these software are also like that. It must have been hard to tune these syllables to be connected and sound good together. I can see audio engineering skill is needed, which I do not have, so I'll try to refrain from discussing it further.
With that all out of the way, here comes the fun part.
With these vocaloid music, I have found myself a huge iceberg to discover. I have always been fascinated with Japan and the culture, but the lyrics in these songs resonate with my in a way I have never experienced before. So, I will pick up Japanese again and try to translate these songs which I enjoy very much, just to understand what they are saying. This post is literally just a heads up about that. Byeeey.
Oh, I forgot. I will have a list of the songs which I will try to translate
here along with the links so you can follow easily (nobody is reading
anyway, but I have to do something otherwise I die out of boredom. I was
going to say something about how I feel disconnected to the real world and
that is why I started to like these vocaloid songs but, that can wait).
I will try to to one album a time so that I have some consistency. The
format will be similar to a lot of JA-EN song translations out there, with
lyrics in Japanese characters, romanized Japanese characters, then English
translation.
The first album I'll translate is going to be:
by 電ǂ鯨
The translated title on Apple Music is "Circus Night Is Coming To Town". I think the author chose that title, so I'm going to keep it like that.
I have just found out that this album was pretty big when it came out
Oh. Oh. I have also just found out that there is already translation of the whole album on fandom.com. Well, this is great, actually! I can understand it without going to translate everything with my limited Japanese proficiency. So, this may be just a post to talk about my recent hobby after all!
Don't worry. There are a ton of stuffs for me to translate. But first I'm going to look at these translated material! Byeee for real now.
UPDATE [~1 hour later]: I have found out that the vocaloid community is HUGE, therefore, the translations (of at least the most well known songs) are already there. Welp, there goes my job. But, like I said above already, there are tons of material to translate. For example, a lot of well known manga that only well-known to the Japanese audiences. I will translate them! Furthermore, although English is only my second language, I can still use it quite well, having to read textbooks and study cOmPuTeR ScIenCe with it after all, so I can use that skill to, maybe, help the current translation with the wording or grammar to be a bit better, or even formulate singable English version of the songs.
"Singable English version?" may be the question that you're asking. You see, when you translate, you can do it word-by-word, but that is not going to sound nice when you are trying to say/sing a sentence. I can try to make it sound smooth, sort of "sandpaper" the words out.
I have always been amazed with how the Finns (I'm studying uni in Finland) reword popular English songs and sing them. No offense, of course. I love that. It's a form of cultural exchange in my view.
But then again, sometimes it's impossible to retain the correct meaning in
a translation without making it sound weird. That is why you should learn
languages! It really will broaden your horizons.
I am just a dameningen trying to do something so as not to be so disgraceful, so I won't try to nor should I solve any big problem, like how to make people understand each other better, how to convey idea in one language to another smoothly and correctly, stuffs like that. And of course, the translation that gives me the most motivation are the ones that:
- Haven't already had a decent translation
- About stuffs that I enjoy
- Make me feel less like a dameningen
So with that, I hope you'll send me recommendation of stuffs you think that
you will enjoy but there isn't a translation yet. I'll try to help.
It
feels weird saying this even though I haven't had anything to offer yet,
lol. But I am a dreamer, always had been. I will keep visualizing how stuff
goes even before anything happen. Maybe that is one of the reason I won't do
anything: I thought that I know them already, through my imagination. But
most of the time, things aren't so similar to my imagination.
I will try to do at least one translation a week, just a head start so I get some kind of momentum going and figure out if I like it or not. I think I will thought. I have understood myself enough to say that. But my laziness can get the better of me rather easily, so I'll have to be careful.
UPDATE [~2 hours later]: Welp, to find stuffs that haven't got a translation yet is not too hard. All I needed to do was to go through the artists that I like on pixiv.net or x.com or any of their social network. They normally will promote their works through social media (of course). However, I can only find the TITLE of the work, and luckily some pages from the work serving as a teaser. The actual copy is physical ; ; and there is almost no way I could get my hand on that without spending a lot of money. So, I will translate those teasers instead ^ ^ problem solved (?)
UPDATE [~3 hours later]: ; ; how am I supposed to figure out what this said?
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