I’ve finally started updating the main site with translations from the new album. Well, I’ve put up the index pages, at least; I have translations done, but it’s been so long since I’ve updated my site I have to remember how to do the formatting. (Yes, sad, I know. I’m a bad superfan.)
Anyway, at the very least, I should get Noah’s Ark, Cang Jie, and Cheers up this weekend. We’re coming up on spring break, so I’m hoping to get a few more up then.
April 11, 2010. Mark your calenders and order your tickets.
I’ve been neglecting Mandopop for the last week and a half in favor of Korean rock (specifically, Crying Nut and Yoon Band/YB), for the simple reason that I was in Korea for a long weekend last week. The Crying Nut songs like “Myeongdong Calling” and “Luxembourg” (you’re thinking, wha..? Luxembourg? Yeah, I don’t speak Korean so I have no idea why….) put me in a Seoul travel frame of mind, and I discovered YB when the lead singer, Yoon Do-hyeon, played Hedwig in the all Korean stage production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch we caught in Seoul. Fantastically good times.
And really, listening to Korean punk/rock makes me a little nostalgic for the days when Mandopop was a big mush of meaningless words I didn’t understand… though, mind you, depending on the singer, that’s often still true. And, of course, I didn’t figure out what the Superband’s breakout single “Desperado (亡命之徒)” was all about until I did the translation. Yeah, maybe those days weren’t so long ago.
I feel like I once had a point.
Oh yes! Mayday in San Jose. That’s so far off, that I’m hoping we’ll start hearing about other North American destinations at some point.
As long as we’re talking about Mayday and translations, I’ll note I also posted some of my embarrassingly long backlog of recent singles and random songs, all linked from this page.
Okay, news will have to wait until tomorrow, but the last of the Poetry of the Day After translations are now up, and I’ve also made some corrections kindly suggested by random leon, migratory bird and Linda on “Poetry of the Day After,” “The Yet Unbroken Part of My Heart,” and “Like Smoke.”
There are lots of mistakes in there that I haven’t found yet. I know this because I know I make a lot of mistakes when translating – sometimes because I’m not paying close enough attention, and sometimes because I didn’t really understand it in the first place. I just want to say again how much I appreciate all the lovely people who write or comment and tell me about my mistakes – ultimately, whether you think of it this way or not, you’re taking some time out of your day to help me improve my Chinese. That’s awfully nice. 
p.s. Still number one on G-music.
I’ve created an index page for the Poetry of the Day After album. In the process, I caught my first glimpse of the track list and was amused by the presence of a song called “Interview with the Vampire (夜訪吸血鬼 ).”
But then I got to thinking. Does every Mayday album have a song named after a movie on it? Admittedly, some of these movies were created from famous books, but Ashin is known to be a movie buff. And look:
Poetry of the Day After has “Interview with the Vampire (夜訪吸血鬼 ),” sure, but then…
Born to Love has “Motorcycle Diaries (摩托車日記),”
All God’s Children has “Superman (超人),”
Time Machine has “God of Gambling (賭神),”
People Life, Ocean Wild had “Migratory Bird (候鳥),”
…and if nothing else, Viva Love has “Romeo and Juliet (羅密歐與茱麗葉 )” (yes, it was a play first, but it was still a pretty famous movie).
So here’s my question: was there a song named after a movie on the first album? I’m not coming up with anything obvious, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there was…
On June 19, six bands from the mainland gathered in Beijing at the MAO Live House to perform together in a “I love Tanya Chua” concert. Performers included Fusion, Lucky Monkey (跳猴), Skyscraper（摩天樓), BAD DREAM, Magic Mama (魔法媽媽), and Cartoon (卡通).
The performance began with sodagreen live via satellite (I’m unclear on where they were – this might have been during their recent promotional stop in Singapore) playing one of their favorite Tanya songs, “Remember (紀念),” which of course they recorded on their live albums. They said they were sorry to be unable to attend in person, but that made them no less determined to take part. After that, all the bands played a number of their own compositions and covered at least one Tanya Chua song during their respective sets.
Fusion has been getting the press and attention lately, making them one of the big draws for the night. They covered the title track of Tanya’s last album, “Goodbye & Hello,” and the reporter calls it one of the highlights of the evening. They didn’t take the stage until after midnight, but they had plenty of enthusiastic fans waiting for them. The band also had a few fans from overseas “using their own methods” of cheering the band on. (I have no idea what this means, though it makes that handful of Foreign Fusion Fans sound pretty exotic.)
Tanya herself rarely visits the mainland, but clearly she has a number of very loyal fans there nonetheless. These young bands can learn from her experience and her persistence, and they admire her very much. When the event’s organizers announced their determination to hold a “I love Tanya Chua” event, a number of bands immediately signed up; though the bands where to honor their heroine, they also were given space to do their own performances, so some of the lesser-known groups could find their audiences.
Sort of a random, but fun story. Oh, and speaking of things that are random and fun (for me, anyway), I noticed this week that as of today, I’ve been Mayday/Mandopop blogging for two years. My, but those two years flew by. Amusingly, my very first entry was about Mayday not breaking up, a recurring theme here. The second was about a concert and the third included a complaint about Ashin’s fashion choices, both of which are also frequent topics for me. Well, at least I’m consistent…
Ashin is a lot more prolific as a songwriter than I am as a translator, but I’ve tried to get a bit caught up lately. I’ve posted translations for the following songs:
我很好 I’m Fine (sung by Rene Liu)
那些女孩教我的事 Things Those Women Have Taught Me (sung by Victor Wong)
洋蔥 Onion (sung by Aska Yang) (Thanks to JC for all her suggestions on this one! I used a number of them, so I’ve credited her as a co-translator.)
疼愛 Love Dearly (sung by Jam Hsiao)
走火入魔 Losing Ourselves in Love (the new duet out by Ding Dang and Ashin; Ashin is singing more than a bit out of his range, so you have to wonder how this one is going to fly in live performances. The video – which Ashin flew to Shanghai to film – is here. The video is a suspender-free zone, though the dangling belt features prominently.)
And one more – I posted a translation of A-yue’s 路口 Intersection. I meant to post that one ages ago, but it just got lost in the shuffle.
Anyway, I’m going to work on revisions for a while, and keep working on the sodagreen translations. I’ve created a subdomain for them, so ideally some time this summer I’ll do the great unveiling of that. My two problems are: lack of time and lack of html skills. Ah well, we fangirls do what we can.
By the way, I’ve posted translations of the new songs:
“Yiyaya (咿呀呀)”
“Little Sun (小太陽)”
“To Flourish (出頭天)”
I’m still not 100% sold on “To Flourish,” but if anyone has any better suggestions, please let me know (I’ve gone into greater detail on my difficulties with that title on the actual page).
So none of these are all that recent anymore, but well, I do what I can. I also have a bit of a backlog of songs translated and not formatted because dang it, there’s just so little time, but more stuff will go up this week. These songs and the ones in the hopper are or will be linked from this page.
In spite of an extended real-life-induced delay, we’ve gotten three more songs done.
黑白講 Bullshit
有你的將來 A Future Without You
永遠的永遠 Forever, Forever
As always, C.C.’s clarifications, additions and suggestions have made a huge difference, and the result is that the translations are much improved. We’ll keep plugging away at it as time permits.
[In other news, I'm still dying to know what exactly Ashin and co. were doing in Bangkok this week, but seeing as he has kindly reminded us via his blog that today was his birthday (er, or yesterday, by now...), I naturally wish him well. He really doesn't look or act 32. 
]
The project to improve the translations of all the Hokkien/Taiwanese songs continues. I’ve updated three songs with the assistance of my kindly co-translator:
軋車 Motor Rock
志明與春嬌 Peter and Mary/Zhiming and Chunjiao
OK啦! Ok La!
On those pages you can see the corollary project of improving the discography function of the site – I’m putting thumbnails of the album covers for every album the songs have appeared on to date. I don’t have index pages for the concert albums yet, but when I do I’ll link them. Eventually, I plan to go back and get the album covers added and formatting fixed for every song, along with doing some massive and necessary revisions on a lot of the songs (especially the older translations), but that project will take a long time. As in, “gee, maybe sometime late next year….”
Based on helpful comments and emails, I’ve updated the translations and/or notes on the following songs:
“Armor (武裝)” – with help from Peiyis
“Going Crazy (抓狂)” – with help from Joanna
“Motorock (軋車)” – with help from R.
“Charge (闖)” – with help from bedwetter
“Oh oh oh oh,”
“Microcosmos (小宇宙),”
“Little Love Song (小情歌)” – all three with help from Sleekysky
Thanks for helping out, guys.
In other news, I’m very excited about having recently found a co-translator to help with revising the (sometimes painfully misunderstood) translations of the Taiwanese songs. We started with “Fool (憨人),” which desperately needed it, and we’ll keep plugging away at it as time permits. I’m also experimenting with adding links to each song to ease navigation… and also because I feel like it makes it look prettier, and I like to look at pretty things. I’ve been adding the original lyrics to each page (in characters… I know pinyin would also be helpful, but that has to be phase two), but I’m only about half done. Sometimes life interferes with one’s fangirl duties *sigh*
As always, if you see anything that is translated incorrectly (there are mistakes everywhere, seriously…), could be better another way, or has an additional meaning, please, please, please let me know in a comment or an email. Thanks!