Umineko No Naku Koro Ni: Anime OP and VN OP1

Hello, animelyrics dot com forum. I want to preface this by noting that I am aware that what I'm bringing up is, most likely, very old openings that nobody cares about anymore, but oh well, that's just how I am. A nice first post here, to be sure.


At any rate, while I have nothing to say to the japanese translations, as an italian man, I have to take some issue with the translations from my language.

For starters, in the opening from the anime (Katayoku No Tori), I want to suggest a correction to the following lines as, from what I can hear, they've been wrongly transliterated:

Quote:

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"Il giudizio finale sta per essere emesso
Nessuno può emendarsi dal peccato che scorre nelle vene


[...]


Sperare
É peccato


[...]


Tu sei senza peccato?
Quanto sará pesante il mio castigo?"

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To my ears, a more correct transliteration would be:

Quote:

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"Il giudizio vien dal mare e sta per essere emesso
Nessuno puó liberarsi dal peccato che scorre nelle vene


[...]


Sta nel male
Il peccato


[...]


Tu sei senza peccato,
quanto sará pesante il mio castigo?

---

If you want to know why, it's mostly a matter of sentence structure and emphasis. Japanese and Italian are not that far apart pronunciation-wise (both are phonetically consistent), so I can be reasonably sure of this. Of course, the translations would change then to:

Quote:

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"Judgment comes from the sea and is about to be handed down
Nobody can free themselves from the sin flowing in their veins


[...]


In evil
Lies sin


[...]


You are without sin,

how heavy will my punishment be?

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Ok, now onto the next Umineko opening: the first VN opening.
Again, I will suggest a few corrections to the italian, though this time to the translations.
First, three nitpicks not even worthy of quote blocks:

• "Il destino, chi festeggera?" -> "Who will be the one fate celebrates?"
• "Mai potró liberarmi del tuo incantesimo" -> "Never will I be able to free myself from your spell"
• "Se questa pena deve durare, almeno una volta abbi pietá" -> "If this penance must go on, at least once have mercy"

Now for the 'big' correction:

Quote:

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Cosa vedranno quegli occhi chiusi?
Pur raccogliendo i frammenti sparsi
Cola dalle dita che si toccano
Senza potersi unire fino in fondo
False apparenze dissimulate
Senza amore non si vede niente

---

To be entirely honest, I'm not sure where in the song this even is, but I'm assuming it's sung over the last refrain. The translation is however a bit different if these are the correct lyrics, even with the broken italian:

Quote:

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What will those closed eyes see?
Even while collecting the scattered fragments
They spill from the touching fingers
Without fully being able to unite
Fake appearences hidden
Without love, nothing can be seen

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Hello, thank you for taking the time to submit your correction. It is very much appreciated. I know no Italian so keep that in mind when reading this.

To get this out of the way first, @bluepenguin , please could you check the second translation, as it is one of your own.

For the first one, I have cross checked this with two reliable lyrics sites (https://www.uta-net.com/song/83719/ and http://j-lyric.net/artist/a04cab0/l01ab50.html) and both of them indicate that the current transcription is 'correct' as it were (I'm gonna ignore the differences in accents as a 'Japanese site couldn't be bothered to work out how to type accents') in terms of "this is what the lyricist wrote and is as published". To be very blunt, by-and-large, Japanese songs don't have good non-Japanese pronunciation and so transcribing by ear is a relatively fruitless task. In addition, janky foreign language lyrics are also a commonplace sight, so you have to try and work out what they're trying to say (usually by very literally translating back into Japanese and then retranslating that into English) instead of just taking it for face-value.

Unless you can confirm either A: the currently transcribed Italian is incorrect (grammatically etc.) or very unlikely to be the author's intent, or B: the translation of the currently transcribed Italian is wrong, I personally am not sure if this should be changed. What do you (both @bluepenguin and @UninspiredName ) think about this (as Italian speakers)?

My post seems to have vanished into thin air.
I was trying to edit it because I noticed something was wrong, but apparently the site did not like what I did?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by UninspiredName

My post seems to have vanished into thin air.
I was trying to edit it because I noticed something was wrong, but apparently the site did not like what I did?

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Your post was automatically flagged by the system for review and so was hidden until I just unhid it. It happens to everyone at the start, sorry.

Gotcha, thank you

Found booklet scan for Katayoku no Tori
http://puu.sh/FCahg/930f82e440.jpg

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bambooXZX

Found booklet scan for Katayoku no Tori
http://puu.sh/FCahg/930f82e440.jpg

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Thank you very much.


A cursory check of this shows that the discrepencies between the Uta-net & J-lyric pages and the current transcription is likely due to the former not being able/bothered enough to put in the right accents. The question about the actual meaning of this Italian being the lyricist's intent, actually making sense in Italian and being translated properly into English is still up in the air.

This actually makes me mad for reasons I cannot explain.
Well, there goes my first point, but there still is the second one

"Il destino, chi festeggerà?" seems ambiguous to me, but I'm willing to take the word of a native speaker that "chi" is definitely supposed to be the object and not the subject.

Correcting "never can I" to "never will I be able to" frankly seems excessively nitpicky to me; I think most people would understand both the same way. I don't really feel strongly enough about "can I" to argue in its favor, so if OP is adamant about it I guess I'll change it, but I don't, as a native English speaker, particularly see a difference.

Pretty sure "suffering" and "pity" are just as valid as translations for "pena" and "pietà" as "penance" and "mercy"; this is a personal preference thing as far as I'm concerned. Looking at this again (it's a pretty old translation) I might change "pity" to "mercy," but I don't like "penance" in this context. "For a moment" I'll admit is an embellishment and might be wandering too far away from the literal meaning of "just once," so I'm happy to change that part.

As for the last point, if you will look at the translation of the rest of the song, you will see that the same text appears several times prior as a translation of "閉ざされた眸で　何を求めてる / 壊れたその欠片を　集めてみても / 触れた指を零れる　君に届かない / 飾られた虚実　愛がなければ視えない." To my eyes, the Italian at the end is very clearly meant to be an Italian version of this stanza, although of course a literal translation would come out slightly differently. So part of the reason I chose to just use the translation of the Japanese version was for a certain internal consistency or obvious connection to the previous versions of that text. In addition, my personal policy generally has been that when a Japanese lyricist writes lyrics in a non-Japanese language, if they provide a gloss in Japanese, I'll translate the Japanese version even if it's not identical to what the actual sung lyrics seem to be saying, as I feel that's a better representation of the lyricist's intent than whatever I can make of what is often a pretty garbled attempt at another language.

That said, the last three lines are different enough that I do think they merit being translated more literally. The differences in the first three lines I still think aren't terribly significant so I'd prefer to leave them as is for the reasons outlined above.

So, to sum up, the changes I would make here are:

"Who will celebrate destiny?": "Who will be the one fate celebrates?"
"Never can I free myself from your spell": no change
"If this suffering must go on, at least have pity on me for a moment": "If this suffering must go on, at least have mercy on me just once"

Quote:

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What are you seeking with closed eyes?
Though one may try to gather up the shattered fragments
They shall spill from the hands that touch them
and never reach you
Without love, you cannot see
the decorated truth and lies

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Quote:

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What are you seeking with closed eyes?
Though one may try to gather up the shattered fragments
They shall spill from the hands that touch them
Without ever being able to unite into one
False appearances disguised
Without love, you cannot see anything

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Sure, sounds good. I just brought up anything that came to mind honestly, I figured I might as well.

Cool, I'll go ahead and make the edits then. Thanks!