Ayu - Anything Goes Thread -XI-

[Delirium-Zer0]

It does make me happy to hear LOVEppears and Duty are still considered legitimately solid by people even now - those were my first two full Ayu albums and sometimes I'm not sure if my love for them is just nostalgia or if they really are that good! hahaha.

[ExodusUK]

Originally Posted by Delirium-Zer0

It does make me happy to hear LOVEppears and Duty are still considered legitimately solid by people even now - those were my first two full Ayu albums and sometimes I'm not sure if my love for them is just nostalgia or if they really are that good! hahaha.

They are IMO genuinely solid genre-showcase worthy albums and should be considered as such.

Does anyone have the scan of Ayu's (/official) English translation of "Tell All"? I think it was included in the 15th Anniversary photobook.

[Zeke.]

I always get my ass chewed out when I refer to certain Ayu tracks and eras as timeless, because "that's a very subjective term."

I see Memorial address and her singles from MY STORY (+the album tracks that received PVs) as being the most timeless.

[Andrenekoi]

Originally Posted by Zeke.

I always get my ass chewed out when I refer to certain Ayu tracks and eras as timeless, because "that's a very subjective term."

I see Memorial address and her singles from MY STORY (+the album tracks that received PVs) as being the most timeless.

Nop, you usually gets your ass chewed because most of the time you seen to be unable to say something is timeless without saying everything else is stinky shit.

[TeamAyu2004]

Memorial Address I still love to this day. Timeless...
My story, not so much, but it has aged extremely well.

[Zeke.]

Originally Posted by Andrenekoi

Nop, you usually gets your ass chewed because most of the time you seen to be unable to say something is timeless without saying everything else is stinky shit.

Lmao.

[dreamlover13]

(miss)understood and Secret, I think are.

[Zeke.]

I don't feel (miss)understood has aged that well. I still love it, but I go to it because it has a certain feeling. For example, In The Corner is severely dated by today's standards (but it was already dated by the time it had been released).

I guess I wouldn't say it hasn't aged well. What I mean is, in my opinion, it is not as timeless as other releases.

I guess it depends on how you define "timeless." The way I look at it is, if a particular song from the past was released today, would it feel out of place? Would you bat an eyelash? For me, songs like Moments, walking proud, Because of you, STEP you, is this LOVE?, About You, Memorial address, fairyland, ... those songs don't feel held back by a particular time period. Maybe it's because most of them used a lot of real instruments along with studio work/synthesis. I mean, these songs sound fresher than a lot of her more recent material.

[LONJJONG]

My friend who's a new Ayu fan says the same thing. He says how did she produce such timeless materials in the early 2000s? It's freaking amazing!

[Surreal17]

Hmm..interesting discussion. Ayu definitely has a lot of songs that sound timeless without being put in a certain era. For example lets take some recent tracks. Songs like Party Queen and Shake it could be definitely fit in a certain timelapse. But then you have songs like BRILLANTE or Sweet scar that don't belong anywhere.

[melissalove]

Hasn't anyone felt this, when ayu preforms an old song like from duty onward, it doesn't really feel like she does?? i personally don't!!

[Gustavopc]

Originally Posted by ExodusUK

They are IMO genuinely solid genre-showcase worthy albums and should be considered as such.

Does anyone have the scan of Ayu's (/official) English translation of "Tell All"? I think it was included in the 15th Anniversary photobook.

Was it truly a translation tho? I remember some verses differed from the translations people did before

[truehappiness]

It was probably the original set of lyrics. Tell All was likely written in English first for Ryan or something.

[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.

[Gustavopc]

^ I loved your post, truly! I remember the last verse was is the most impacting one from ayu's translation, but it didn't seem that deep in early translations and had a quite different interpretation, so that's why I wondered if it was truly a translation

[truehappiness]

Ah, I see. It's been a while since I've read the Tell All (book) translation.

[Delirium-Zer0]

Originally Posted by Gustavopc

^ I loved your post, truly! I remember the last verse was is the most impacting one from ayu's translation, but it didn't seem that deep in early translations and had a quite different interpretation, so that's why I wondered if it was truly a translation

On my blog I mention that last line in particular... I'm just gonna copy what I wrote lol

The kanji used normally means "proof" or "evidence," and yet she used the word "reason." English, luckily, has the word "justification" which carries subtle shades of both "proof" and "reason."

The other word that seems incorrect is "breathe." In Japanese, she says "ikiru" which means "live," but her use of the word "breathe" implies a slightly different meaning. In English if you say something is your "reason to live," it's your goal or your passion. Ayu doesn't want to be our object of passionate focus, she just wants to help us feel like it's worth it to continue existing. She wants us to use her words as encouragement to get through tomorrow.

I do so wish I could work "with" Ayu on more translations of her lyrics, because her clues here were incredibly helpful.

I translated the lyrics here if you wanna see what I ended up coming up with: http://www.deliriumzer0.com/ayu/daily-tellall

[HarukaKamiya]

Ayu could perform Because of You every damn tour and CDL and I would love it EVERY SINGLE TIME.

[tokyoxjapanxfan]

^ agree.

I think that my absolute favorite uptempo song is Angel's Song.
I can't choose just one song, so I divide them into categories lol.
Favorite ballad is Rainbow.

[mi|kshake]

Right now I'm still loving The Show Must Go On, though that'll be an unpopular opinion lol!