[Delirium-Zer0]

No, it looked from the photos like Ayu was translating them with Timmy... there are notes jotted down on the white sheet of paper where the lyrics look like they're printed out, and the work on notebook paper is shown as being incomplete. It looks like she started translating on the white printout of the Japanese lyrics, and then transferred the first few lines onto the yellow paper, then fine-tuned it after that.

On top of that, the English words here don't even come close to scanning the same way the Japanese lyrics do, and the photos show them doing the translation work at Record Plant Studios, where Tsuriko is writing that Ayu is recording "Tell All" during this whole session.

Also, Tsuriko just says flat-out "The mood while waiting for the recording session to begin was unusually calm, as she translated the lyrics for "Tell All" into English with Timmy." according to Misa's translation of the book. So there's no way the English is the original.

Gustavopc: Translations are always gonna differ from author to author, and that's especially true with languages from ENTIRELY different families, like Japanese to English. There's a ton of written Japanese terms and grammatical points that only have English equivalents when you're speaking English aloud - "nante" in Japanese is sorta like speaking the previous word or question with a raised pitch & higher volume in English. You can't really translate that. There are also really short Japanese words & verb endings which, when translated into English, become a crapton of words instead. And there are some Japanese words and phrases that have no English equivalent at all.

The ~"te miru" verb ending, for instance, is probably best translated in English as "give something a shot and see what happens." That's WAY too long. In English that also often gets shortened to "try," but translating "~te miru" directly to "try" makes it seem like you might mean "make an attempt, and see if you're able" which isn't exactly what "~te miru" means. So it looks like Ayu and Timmy skipped translating instances of that altogether.

It appears that Ryan probably asked Ayu to translate the words for him so he'd know what she was saying, and Timmy was helping her with the correct English word choice. He probably couldn't call on exactly the right way to say every detail she includes, but she would have been able to explain "I use this word here, but this is what I mean, so what should I put here?" and he would have been able to give far better input than someone with only a basic grasp of English. Details have been omitted, but the point of what Ayu is trying to say does MOSTLY come across. Some translators go more literal and try to include more detail; some translators go as far as replacing Japanese metaphors & idioms with roughly equivalent English ones. This one is kind of in between. The tone of the lyrics is roughly maintained, which is something many fan translations don't even attempt; the trade-off is that details are dropped.

I don't think there's any such thing as a perfect translation when you're dealing with languages that are as different as Japanese & English unless the sentence is REALLY REALLY BASIC, hahaha.