Sunday, March 29, 2009

The Story

Ever since I started listening to Chinese music, I always had the pinyin lyrics with the English translation, if available. Then one day, it came to a point approximately a year ago when I realised that I understood a portion of what was being said and I could read at least half of the lyrics. Of course, there were the times when I really got into a song and there were no lyrics (pinyin and/or the translation) available online - but the Chinese lyrics were most often than not were. That begins the stage where I started to translate songs with much help from an online dictionary.

At first, I started with songs that I couldn't find online but as time went on, I also saw it as a way to further develop my Chinese as well as to practice it. In short, I began to translate any songs that I was into, whether or not I could find them online and I found that as time went on, I could translate more without the help of a dictionary. Even if I couldn't find the lyrics, I would just go onto YouTube and find the KTV video of it and copy the lyrics from there.

After a period of almost half a year, I had a good amount of my hard drive taken up by lyrics and I decided that it was time to post them online just in case my computer crashed and so I originally posted them here, but that may change to here soon enough, because the original one seems to have a problem with posting up entries with Chinese characters. Then, just a month or so ago, the side list was getting rather long so I decided to make a new blog to categorize them more nicely and that is what this is for.

All of my translated songs (except for a song in Cantonese which I added the pin yin for) are categorized by the singer by their most well-known name (mostly their English version). You can find them off to the side bar or just look to the following:
Last Update: 5 song(s) added on 16 June 2010
Total # of Songs Archived: 130

Exception(s):
[Will Be Listed Under the First Letter of the Title]
Ai Dao Xia Tian/愛到夏天 (Love Contract OST/愛情合約 OST)
Tong Hua/童話 (Cantonese Version)

Of course, a warning: I have only learned Chinese for two years, and even though I'm in 4th year Chinese due to me studying abroad in China for a semester, that means nothing. :) I skipped those years which is nice and all, but that also means there are some (a lot of) characters and grammar that I skipped learning. I translate everything with the help of online dictionaries for those words I don't know and from what I learn in Chinese class and there's always room for improvement. For at least half of the songs here, you most likely could find a better translation out there somewhere. This is just what I do for fun, a hobby, if you will, so don't blame me if something just stinks. Thanks much!

Some of my favorite sites to go to for translated lyrics:
Chinese Music Blog (some of my first translations are posted here)
Ting Dong
Jay-Chou.Net