“Fly Away” Translation

First off, full lyrics to “Fly Away” by F.I.R.:

Fly away
不管流下多少眼泪
坚持下去的动力还在
Nothing I will be afraid

清晨的微风
如此的平凡
看似简单
雾气驱散

温柔阳光中
慢慢醒了过来
准备面对挑战

在新的世纪
该跑开过去
是好是坏
要放得开

往梦想的路
没有想象简单
我还要更勇敢

回忆就像漩涡它将我拉走
时间的锺响起我不该逗留

Fly away
不管流下多少眼泪
坚持下去的动力还在
Nothing I will be afraid
Fly away
不管未来有多困难
我仍然能感觉心跳还在
Nothing I will be afraid

在新的世纪
该跑开过去
是好是坏
要放得开

往梦想的路
没有想象简单
我还要更勇敢

回忆就像漩涡它将我拉走
时间的锺响起我不该逗留

Fly away
不管流下多少眼泪
坚持下去的动力还在
Nothing I will be afraid
Fly away
不管未来有多困难
我仍然能感觉心跳还在
Nothing I will be afraid

Fly away
不管流下多少眼泪
坚持下去的动力还在
Nothing I will be afraid
Fly away
不管未来有多困难
我仍然能感觉心跳还在
Nothing I will be afraid

And now, a translation of the following contiguous, non-redundant section:

清晨的微风
如此的平凡
看似简单
雾气驱散

温柔阳光中
慢慢醒了过来
准备面对挑战

在新的世纪
该跑开过去
是好是坏
要放得开

往梦想的路
没有想象简单
我还要更勇敢

回忆就像漩涡它将我拉走
时间的锺响起我不该逗留

Fly away
不管流下多少眼泪
坚持下去的动力还在
Nothing I will be afraid
Fly away
不管未来有多困难
我仍然能感觉心跳还在
Nothing I will be afraid

The slight wind of the clear morning
So commonplace in this way
Looks as though it so simply
Disperses the fog

In the warm sunlight
I slowly roused myself to wakefulness
Preparing to face challenges

In this new century
One should leave the past
Whether it’s good or bad
One must be able to let it go

The road to my dreams
Isn’t as simple as I imagined
I still have to be even stronger

Memory is just like a vortex, it will pull me away
The chime that marks time sounds, so I shouldn’t stay

Fly away
No matter how many tears fall
The power to carry on is still here
Nothing I will be afraid
Fly away
No matter what hardships the future holds
I can still feel that my heartbeat is there
Nothing I will be afraid

Over the course of translating this, I realized that there were so many phrases that could be interpreted differently depending on context. For example, “跑开过去” confused me at first. Literally, the words can be interpreted as “run,” “open” (although combined with the word “run,” it could mean that, in the course of running, one should become relatively separated from what one is running from), “past” or “pass,” and “go.” So now the question is, how to interpret the final two words: as part of the verb phrase immediately preceding it, so that it would mean something like, “in the course of running, separate oneself and pass [whatever one is running from, which is unspecified],” or as a noun, meaning “the past.” I finally decided that the former interpretation sounded like an awkward construction for Chinese, and went with the latter.

Also, most of the pronouns (except for the four in bold) are there solely for the purpose of making it English-readable. The pronouns are simply not there in the Chinese, so I made my best guess at what the singer was more likely to be referencing and translated in the first person and in the abstract third person as I thought was most appropriate.

A final note as I conclude this post: “漩涡” is something like a whirlpool, an eddy, but it wasn’t clear that using those words without having set up water imagery in the reader’s mind beforehand would work terribly well, so I decided on “vortex,” which kind of throws off the feel of the translation (at least, to me, vortexes sound more science-y, as in black holes or magical time/dimensional portals in science fiction, etc), but I wasn’t sure that I would get away with just using the word “whirlpool,” and I’d be interested in knowing what other people think.