“元素” (Elements) Lyrics and Translation

So recently there was an article on boingboing titled “The Elements Song (Tom Lehrer tune), Super Cute Japanese Version,” which featured two 13-year-old girls singing “元素” [genso]*, meaning “element” (Japanese doesn’t have articles or plural forms of nouns), a Japanese rendition of the well-known tune “The Elements” by Tom Lehrer. Because it is awesome, I’ve decided to transcribe the lyrics and translate them (obviously, for most of the song, the translation is fairly obvious) here. First, I’ve made a table of the elements in the order that they are sung — unlike Tom Lehrer’s version, there are no extra words like “also”, etc, so these are the lyrics to most of the song — with chemical symbol in the left column, Japanese name (as written in the youtube video — there are alternate ways to write some of the names, which I’ll talk about later) in the middle column, and Hepburn romanization in the rightmost column, followed by the final sentence in the song….

The final line of the song is “これが今ま派遣された全てな元素の集まりです” [kore ga ima made haken sareta subete na genso no atsumari desu], which roughly translates to “this is all of the elements collection that have been sent up ’til now.”

Here comes the random spew of notes about the song, transcription process, translation process, etc: the order of the elements is the same as in the original, but there are more of them, which have been tacked on to the end of the song. In fact, the last element in the song is new enough that when I was going through and checking my transcription/romanization using WWWJDIC, I found that the dictionary didn’t have it. And in checking the transcription/romanization, I ended up finding two mistakes. I’m also considering giving this mass of katakana to my Japanese-Learners students for practice. How about it, guys?

Anyway, to the last line: it’s hard to get the number of syllables exactly right for everything, so some of the vowels are stretched out when sung. The problem is, in Japanese, the length of the vowel is a differentiating trait between words. The final line is sung with extra elongated vowels (so that it sounds like “haaken saareta”), but given that we’re probably trying to approximate the last part of the original “The Elements” song, I settled on the word 派遣 [haken] (defined in WWWJDIC as dispatch/send) as the noun to form the compound verb “send” when combined with された [sareta], the perfect/past form of the potential form of する [suru], meaning “do.” Thus, the combination “派遣された” [hakensareta] roughly means “was sent,” and it modifies the noun phrase “全てな元素の集まり” [subete na genso no atsumari], where 全て [subete] means “all”, な [na] is a nominal-connecting particle, 元素 [genso] means “element” (or, as pointed at near the beginning of the post, could be interpreted as “the elements” because of the lack of articles and plural noun forms in Japanese), の [no] is the other nominal-connecting particle, and 集まり [atsumari], derived from the verb 集まる [atsumaru], which means “gather up” or “collect”, means “collection.” Thus, the noun phrase can be translated as “all of the elements collection,” and since it is modified by “派遣された” [hakensareta], I translated that chunk of the sentence as “all of the elements collection that have been sent.”

As for the rest of the sentence, これ [kore] is a demonstrative that means “this” (and here refers to the aforementioned elements, of course), が [ga] is a subject marker that indicates that “これ” [kore] is the subject of the imperfect, distal copula, です [desu], at the end of the sentence. And the “今まで” [ima made] component of the sentence can be broken into 今 [ima], meaning “now,” and まで [made], a particle meaning “until.”

So now, some comments about the names of the elements, because I find them somewhat intriguing: most of the element names are from English, German, or Chinese, as exemplified in アルミニウム [aruminiumu], アンチモン [anchimon] (from “Antimon”), and ヒ素 [hiso], respectively. Okay, so the completely katakana names have origins that are fairly obvious — they’re nipponizations of either English or German, mostly (I’d say all, but some are potentially ambiguous, and superlatives are difficult to support). A handful of elements share the exact same kanji as their Chinese counterparts: Fe/鉄 [tetsu], Au/金 [kin], Ag/銀 [gin], Pb/鉛 [namari], and Cu/銅 [dou]. Another handful of elements are derived from the Chinese: As/ヒ素/砒素 [hiso], I/ヨウ素/沃素 [youso], B/ホウ素/硼素 [houso], Si/ケイ素/珪素/硅素 [keiso], and F/フッ素/弗素 [fusso]. (All of the non-素 [so] 漢字 [kanji] are not considered common kanji, according to WWWJDIC.) Going down the list one at a time, then: 砒 is pronounced pī​ and means “arsenic” in Chinese, which is where the Japanese pronunciation derives from. The Chinese word 沃 is pronounced wò​ and means fertile/rich/irrigate; again, Japanese pronunciation derives from the kanji and is thus written with katakana because it’s a loan word of sorts. Oddly, the Chinese 硼, which does mean “boron,” is pronounced péng​, so this nipponization is beyond me…. Both 珪 and 硅 mean “silicon,” though the first character has a radical that is generally used with precious materials and can refer to a “jade tablet” (according to MDBG), while the second character refers specifically to the chemical element and is the character used in the Chinese periodic table; both characters are pronounced guī​, for which the nipponization makes sense again. Finally, we have 弗, pronounced fú​ and meaning “not” in Chinese (according to MDBG), though the meaning of the 漢字 [kanji] in Japanese is “dollar” (according to WWWJDIC); the pronunciation makes sense, but I’m unsure as to the rationale behind the meaning….

Of course, some of the names are original to Japanese: H/水素 [suiso] meaning “water element,” O/酸素 [sanso] meaning “sour/acidic element,” N/窒素 [chisso] meaning “plug-up/obstruct element,” Br/臭素 [shuuso] meaning “stinky element,” Hg/水銀 [suigin] meaning “liquid silver,” Pt/白金 [hakkin] meaning “white gold,” S/硫黄 [iou] meaning “yellow sulfur” (the first character is the same as the Chinese character for elemental sulfur, while the second character means “yellow”), Zn/亜鉛 [aen] meaning “come-after lead,” Cl/塩素 [enso] meaning “salt element,” and C/炭素 [tanso] meaning “charcoal/coal element.” The hypotheses for nitrogen and zinc that Ben came up with on zephyr follow:

[Nitrogen] blocks oxidation and/or breathing.
Traditional early experiments in such things involved burning metal in a confined volume of air, allowing one to measure that 30% of the air’s mass was added to the metal and 70% was left unreacted. Isolation and further study of that remaining portion shows that it obstructs breathing, etc..

I think it has to do with the refining process — if you have mixed zinc and lead ore, the lead will reduce out first, but if you go to higher temperature (???) then the zinc will come off.

So there you have it. “The Elements” song in Japanese!!

* Japanese in this post is followed by the Hepburn romanization in brackets, as it is through most of the blog.

F.I.R. – “I Don’t Care” Translation

More or less complete lyrics (I say more/less because there’s this yelled part that involves the world “this world is not fair / it’s not fair … you know I don’t care” but I can’t make all of it out and apparently no one on the internet cares enough to have published it):

Hey

Hey

So what did you want to talk about?

I…I want to break up.

What?

Look, I’m just tired of all of this. We always fight.

You can’t just leave.

You know what? I can, and I am. I, I’ve had enough of this.

You think you can just walk out on me?

Are you threatening me?

Get over here! I’m not gonna let you go!

Let me go!

It’s not over, you can’t do this!

Let go of me, let go of me!

*slap*

A! It’s over, I don’t care, it’s over!

风轻吹
吹干泪
泪流了一夜 才觉得浪费
是错对
无所谓
我让你去飞

别再做无畏的美梦想去挽回
就别再做困兽之斗去挣扎一切
那些美丽容颜如今都已破碎
飞越谎言冲破无力改变的世界

I don’t care
It’s not fair
就让你犯你得罪
I don’t care
No more care
带着下一个梦去追我不后悔不后退
就是那么的绝对
我要的完美不是不是不是你能给
将一切毁灭
I don’t care

风轻吹
吹干泪
泪流了一夜 才觉得浪费
是错对
无所谓
我让你去飞

别再做无畏的美梦想去挽回
就别再做困兽之斗去挣扎一切
那些美丽容颜如今都已破碎
飞越谎言冲破无力改变的世界

I don’t care
It’s not fair
就让你犯你得罪
I don’t care
No more care
带着下一个梦去追
我不后悔不后退
就是那么的绝对
我要的完美不是不是不是你能给
将一切毁灭
I don’t care

I don’t care
I don’t care
No more care

I don’t care
It’s not fair
就让你犯你得罪
I don’t care
No more care
带着下一个梦去追
我不后悔不后退
就是那么的绝对
我要的完美不是不是不是你能给
将一切毁灭
I don’t care

All three of the non-redundant verses:

风轻吹
吹干泪
泪流了一夜 才觉得浪费
是错对
无所谓
我让你去飞

别再做无畏的美梦想去挽回
就别再做困兽之斗去挣扎一切
那些美丽容颜如今都已破碎
飞越谎言冲破无力改变的世界

I don’t care
It’s not fair
就让你犯你得罪
I don’t care
No more care
带着下一个梦去追
我不后悔不后退
就是那么的绝对
我要的完美不是不是不是你能给
将一切毁灭
I don’t care

And the translation for those non-redundant verses:

The wind blowing gently
Blows dry my tears
Only after tears flowed an entire night do I realize it’s a waste
Whether it’s wrong or right
It doesn’t matter
I’ll let you fly

Don’t keep dreaming those fearless dreams, trying to redeem [yourself]
Just don’t keep acting the bound animal, only fighting to struggle against everything
Those beautiful looks [facial features] are now already broken
Fly over/past the world that no power/force can change, thoroughly broken by lies

I don’t care
It’s not fair
I’ll just let you commit your sins
I don’t care
No more care
Go chase the next dream [you] brought along
I don’t regret, won’t retreat
It’s just that absolute
The beautiful conclusion I want isn’t isn’t isn’t something you give
Everything will be ruined
I don’t care

Interestingly, the translation I had on file was as follows:

The wind blowing gently
Blows dry my tears
Only after tears flowed an entire night do I realize it’s meaningless
Whether it’s wrong or right
It doesn’t matter
I’ll let you fly

Don’t keep dreaming those fearless dreams of turning it all around
Just don’t act the bound animal, fighting and struggling
Those beautiful features are now already broken
Fly over the lies that crushed the world that cannot be changed

I don’t care
It’s not fair
I’ll just let you commit your crimes
I don’t care
No more care
I’ll chase the next dream
I don’t regret, won’t retreat
It’s just that absolute
The beautiful conclusion I want isn’t isn’t isn’t something you give
Destroy everything
I don’t care

The first, second, and third lines of the second verse have changed a moderate amount, seeing as some of the adjectives have shifted to modify different things, etc. More importantly, the line immediately following “no more care” changed quite substantially, and I can’t tell whether it’s just because I’m really out of it because it’s past bedtime, or what. We might find out in next week’s post, or I’ll just edit this when my mind is clearer. Ta!

Language Classes Update #5

For the last class and the upcoming class (which is over a week from now), we’re going over homework worksheets in class. Last time, there were just a few exercises, but I still managed to make a mistake or two (one was debatable, because we did manage to come up with an explanation for the slightly unexpected sentence).

While writing up the homework assignment for the next class, I tried to maintain a balance of grammatical forms, to keep them equally fresh in the students’ minds. Some of the sentences are to be translated from Japanese, some into Japanese; some of them use the distal form, some the direct form; the vocabulary words used are picked from as many different sets of vocabulary as possible: some are colors, some have to do with shopping, some have to do with the weather; some time expressions refer to the date, some refer to the day of the week, some refer to the time of day, etc; so on and so forth. Where possible, I tended towards the more frequently used or irregular vocabulary or measure words, to really emphasize those.

It’s an interesting process, writing worksheets like this, because I get to think about the sizable amount of knowledge that we’ve covered. And yet at the same time, I did have to revise the sentences that came to mind every now and then because they did, in fact, contain grammatical structures or vocabulary that we haven’t covered yet.

Both last time and this time, I threw in a katakana loan word that we hadn’t covered in class, that the students get to sound out and figure out on their own, which I hope adds some entertainment value and a sense of accomplishment in figuring out vocabulary words without having to be taught them or look them up.

Last class session, the students said that going over the worksheet was very useful, and possibly more useful than just the class sessions we’ve had so far where we’ve covered conversations and the grammar and vocabulary contained within, probably because we get to really think about the structure of the sentences instead of just going along with precomposed constructs. If anyone has more suggestions or feedback on what else might be useful to really solidify concepts that students have previously been exposed to, I’d be glad to hear it.