Hello this is Masaki, grumpy due to the lack of bike riding. Someone told me I had been touchy recently. “I’m not,” I shouted back. I’m sorry.
Related to what I recently wrote about a YouTube video not available “in the country you live in,” I’ve got to dis someone one more time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt5xHUiCqak
Adele, the new phenomenon from England. She’s a good singer, and the song is great too. Well, I don’t have to prove it because the whole world already has.
Problem is, the translated lyrics. What the hell?
Not about translation style issue like direct or more poetic manner to employ, there just are a whole bunch of wrong or awkward translations. Job well done at such a level as when it was contracted out to a friend on a voluntary basis, or for a pint of beer to translate this. What’s even more awestriking is the fact that this is the official video from Adele’s Japanese distributor.
I believe it is vital in the music import business to provide well translated lyrics. Principally because it helps a great deal in the understanding of the world that the artist creates. Besides, everything else is available online anyway, like the CD, or other form of sound file, or the biography of the artist.
So this distributor doesn’t commit to it to serve the Japanese customers by helping them understand the song, while, on the other hand, talking to YouTube like a boss wielding the distribution rights so they can block other Adele videos from Japanese viewers? And there of course is the typical massive rip-off on each Japanese version CD they sell, huh?
They say the business climate is getting tougher for movie and music industries based on physical media. Well, if this is the level of their best effort, then they are simply not needed.
Speaking of which, this movie distributor is on my shitlist too. It’s a shame cause it is a good movie, wrong characters in the introduction. If you seriously can’t spell with no error in Japanese, it’s time for you to retire the physical media business.
