Japanese 'Do-Re-Mi' not a simple translation - messenger-inquirer

Japanese 'Do-Re-Mi' not a simple translation - messenger-inquirer

In case you’ve ever been curious, here’s an English translation of the Japanese version of “Do-Re-Mi” from The Sound of Music:

“Do, like ‘do’ in ‘doughnut’ / Re, like the ‘re’ in ‘lemon’ / Mi, as in ‘everyone’ / Fa, like the ‘fa’ in ‘fight’ / So is the blue sky / La, like the ‘la’ in ‘bugle’ / Ti is happiness / Now then, let’s all sing!”

“Do-Re-Mi” is a unique bit of translation work. Usually, when someone sits down to translate a song, they hold on to the meaning of the original, but they use a little poetic license to make it sound lyrical in the new language. The Japanese “Do-Re-Mi” doesn’t just massage the English lyrics, though, it scraps them entirely.

The problem is that it’s not just the meanings of the words that are important to “Do-Re-Mi,” it’s the sounds of the words that make the song what it is. Do has to sound like “doe” for the song to work. As for the names of the notes (do, re, mi, etc.), those are the same between the two languages. But what are the odds that the Japanese word for female deer is also “doe”? Not good, I can tell you.

It’s best to go through line by line to make sense of it. Let’s start at the very beginning, as Julie Andrews would say.

Right out of the gate, we’ve got problems. The Japanese word for a female deer is “mejika,” which isn’t even close to sounding like do. At this point, 30 seconds in, the translator must have wadded up the lyric sheet and gone out for a drink.

Back from taking the edge off, the translator would’ve set to brainstorming Japanese words that contain do. The English loanword “doughnut” fit that bill. Hundreds, if not thousands, of English words are integrated into everyday Japanese, sort of like how “sushi” and “karaoke” have settled into English. “Doughnut” (or “donatsu” to the Japanese) is one such word, and it has the light, happy feel of a “Do-Re-Mi” lyric.

Re also makes use of an English loanword, this time “remon.” We can see here the well-known phenomenon of the Japanese language not distinguishing between the l and r sounds. The first syllable of the English “lemon” is pronounced exactly like the re of “Do-Re-Mi,” so remon it is.

For mi, the Japanese version goes with the word “minna,” meaning “everyone” — a fine choice given the enormous number of von Trapp children.

The song dips back into English loanwords for fa. “Faito,” from “fight,” is a very common word in Japan, but it doesn’t have the negative connotation of the English. Faito is spoken more in the context of “Go! Fight! Win!” It’s closer to “hooray” than “domestic dispute,” so rest easy that faito keeps things positive.

So is used with another traditional Japanese word, this time “sora,” which means “sky.” The lyrics flesh out the image with the phrase “aoi sora,” meaning “blue sky,” which sounds nice.

And that brings us to la, or as I call it, the embarrassment of “Do-Re-Mi.” A note to follow so? What was Hammerstein thinking? I know the man gave us Oklahoma! and The King and I, but I cut him no slack. There must be a decent word that starts with la. Give me La Bamba. Laparoscopy. Labradoodle. Anything but a note to follow so.

The Japanese version offers a simple improvement. La is expressed in the word “rappa” (again, no distinction between the l and r sounds), which is pretty much just a bugle. It’s musical, it’s easy to understand, and it’s an actual word that means something. The Japanese version has us on this one.

Now, we’re onto ti, which in the Japanese musical scale is called shi. There are reasons for the ti/shi discrepancy that involve a few different languages and about 1,000 years of music history, but I won’t be going into it because a) this column is only so long, and b) I don’t know the first thing about it.

The Japanese word representing shi is “shiawase,” which simply means “happiness.”

There’s one more interesting language nugget in the closing line. The English version ends with, “That will bring us back to do,” with the do pulling double duty as it also kicks off the next verse. This is next to impossible in Japanese because, due to the word order of the language, sentences generally end with verbs. There’s no smooth way to write a sentence in Japanese with a noun like do plunked down right at the end.

The best they could manage was to rhyme with do at the end of the line: “Sā utaimashō!” The shō is a verb ending for “let’s,” the whole line meaning, “Now then, let’s all sing!” The kids in the Japanese version sing do on top of the overdubbed Julie Andrews’s shō, and the next round begins.

And that’s how a female deer, sunlight, me, a long long way to run, sewing, la, and tea cleanly translate into doughnuts, lemons, everyone, fighting, the sky, a bugle, and happiness. I don’t know how much that translator made, but they should have doubled it. I hope they lavished that laureate for his laudable language. And I’m pointing those la words at you, Hammerstein.

Justin Whittinghill is an Owensboro native who works as an assistant professor of English at Kanazawa Institute of Technology in Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan. His column runs on the last Sunday of the month in Lifestyle. He can be reached at justinwhittinghill@gmail.com.

2020-01-26 06:00:00Z
https://www.messenger-inquirer.com/features/lifestyle/japanese-do-re-mi-not-a-simple-translation/article_578dd86d-387d-50fe-b70d-deabaf218c3d.html

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