For this week, Somyung challenged me with the task of translating English songs into Korean lyrics. One of the things I wanted to accomplish was further expanding my Korean vocabulary. While studying abroad in Korea, I listened to a lot of pop music. However, when someone asked me what this English song meant or asked me to translate the meaning, I could never correctly figure out the lyrics. Some of the song selections included Justin Bieber and Bruno Mars songs. My initial thought was that this was going to be a fairly simple task since song lyrics tend to be self-explanatory and consist of simple phrases. The first song I tried to translate was Justin Bieber’s song “Monster.” The first lyrics started off with “You put me on a pedestal and tell me I'm the best.” The moment I tried to translate this, I realized that I did not know the word “pedestal” in Korean. Somyung gave me a couple of tries to try and figure it out with prior knowledge, but I could not think of the correct vocabulary word. We used google translate to find out and it was “받침대." From this moment on, I knew that this was definitely going to be a difficult task. As the song went on, there were so many words that I never knew that I didn’t know. For instance, I did not know how to translate “responsibility,” “unforgiveness,” “intentions,” and “confidence.” With just this one song, I was able to learn a lot of the essential, everyday Korean vocab words.
Similar to how I wanted to translate English songs into Korean, I also wanted to get better at translating Korean songs into English. In Korea, I unconsciously listened to so much K-pop in the streets, malls, restaurants, and e.t.c, however, I just listened to it more for its rhythm and energy. I never really dove deep into thinking about what the songs meant. Therefore, for this meeting, Somyung and I also took a Korean song called “HOLO” by Lee Hi and tried my best to translate this as well. The first set of lyrics started off as “홀로 있는 게 가만히 있는 게 어려운 일인가요 홀로 있어도 같이 있어도 외로운 건 같아요. One day it will stop.” One strategy I used to figure out the general meaning of this song was to use context clues, especially at the end when it had an English lyric. I ended up guessing correctly that “홀로” translated to alone. The word “홀로” also came up a bunch of times so I knew this song was about solitude and being okay with being alone.
I found this exercise to be very fun since it took the songs that I listened to on a daily basis and really challenged me to think deeply about its meaning and words. I feel like this would be a very good practice for me in the future to always try and translate songs I listen to and see how they translate in the other language.
Comments
Hi Vivian~ I never thought of translating songs and how many different vocabulary words you could learn from that. I will definitely try doing this in my next language learning journey. It definitely is a fun way to combine learning vocabulary and improving your reading comprehension. I looked at the lyrics for one of my favorite songs and I realized how many words I did not know how to translate but use every single day. Since song lyrics usually have a deeper meaning, it would definitely be a difficult and challenging task.
It is always very difficult to translate songs. I have already tried before with 'Blood, Sweat and Tears," from BTS. It was very fun, but it took me a whole day. HOLO is a very good song and I get what you mean about being difficult to translate. When I read the piece of lyric you wrote here, I could understand, but not translate at first.