Not so ‘Elite’ translations in ‘Hikaru no Go’ opening theme

Update: The Japanese text was fixed after the first 9 episodes or so, I think the English translation was still wrong.

Ed note: On a brighter note, the majority of the translation in the actual anime is right, so it seems EF just slipped up on the song.

I started noticing something weird when I was reading the song subtitles in Elite Fansubbers ‘Hikaru no Go’ sub. I like to sing along to songs, or I wanted to sing along, until I realised alot of the written words in the EF sub, didn’t match the words in the actual music.

Here are the original lyrics compared to the EF sub:

EF Sub: nakama tono magure

Original: Nakama to tawamure

EF Sub: Dakara dayori takaramono noni
Original: Dakara mayoi nagara mo tomo ni

This is no good at all. I mean, I’m not being hard on these people, because its good that someone takes the time to translate, but certainly there is a lot of room for improvement. These are really bad errors. Why? Because if they can’t even HEAR the Japanese speech correctly, how are they supposed to translate things right in the actual anime? With lyrics, the could even check it out from other sources, such as googling, to see that the words are correct… (which they obviously haven’t done), but in the anime itself there isn’t any reference. So a) They transcribed the lyrics wrong, and b) they also translated it wrong and c) they didn’t check it. To me, that’s a pretty sloppy job. People rely on subbers to bring a somewhat correct translation, so I think the most important thing firstly is to hear words acurately, secondly to translate the meaning, and thirdly, to put this in reasonable English. I actually don’t mind semi-incorrect English because its better than someone making up something they don’t know in Japanese into something wrong but grammatically correct in English – that would be worse.
Let’s examine an example of their mistake, in-depth:
1. EF Sub: nakama tono magure
Original: Nakama to tawamure

EF Sub’s English text: “Divisions with my friends”

Actual meaning of the EF sub’s Japanese text: “chance/fluke” (magure), with friends

Actual meaning of Original Japanese lyrics: Playing/having fun with friends

2. EF Sub: Dakara dayori takaramono noni ikiteikouyo mirai e
Original: Dakara mayoi nagara mo tomo ni ikiteikouyo mirai e to

EF Sub English text: “And so before any great treasure let’s live towards the future”

Actual meaning of EF Sub: “For the purpose of the treasure/treasured item, let’s strive together towards the future”. (‘Dayori’ doesn’t have a meaning here, as it’s not a word, and even as two seperate words, it doesn’t belong here).

Original meaning of original Japanese lyrics: “Even while ‘in doubt’/’lost/confused’, let’s strive together towards the future”

(Note: Literally, ‘ikiteikou’ means something like “to live”, not as in we are ‘merely’ alive, but more like what it means to be alive – like living and experiencing our lives, and whats important in our lives and so on. So here I have transcribed the closest meaning, because ‘living together towards the future’ doesn’t sound right in English).

Now, you might be able to see another surprising thing: The actual meaning of the mis-transliterated sub makes more sense than their own English translation of their own misheard lyrics! Ironic.

And a short grammatical note to future subbers or people learning Japanese:

Japanese isn’t always written in the same order as English, in fact a lot of the time it isn’t. In song lyrics, the lines of the song are not necessarily seperate sentences or clauses, it fact, it is very common for sentences in songs to traverse lines. The only way to work out what the sentences are, is by understanding Japanese grammar.

‘Dakara’ means ‘because’. The clause, or the reason, comes before the ‘dakara’, not after. It’s O.K. if they translate it as ‘so’, as long as the text after it isn’t written as the ‘reason’. The reason, or clause, is in the previous line of the song.

Also, ‘nagara’ is translated wrong in both the lyrics translation on the website link to the original Japanese lyrics, and the sub. ‘Nagara’ means ‘while’, eg. “tabe nagara kaite imasu”= “I am writing while (also) eating”. (Taberu is to eat, kaku is to write… Mayou is lost/confused/perplexed, hence ‘mayoi nagara’).

Bonus Easter Egg: If you watch later episodes of the EF subs, there is an episode where the sub says “Wasabi”, for no reason. And another part where “Thankyou” is subbed as ‘sankyu’.

September 12, 2007. Lyrics, Translation. Leave a comment.