I'm working on a translation of Splash Free, the ending theme to Free! and it got me thinking of a stylistic thing that's been bothering me for a while, never can decide how to handle it, and I thought I'd ask for some input from fellow lyric translators.
You have a line like this, where the parenthesis echoes the end of the line:
ムキになる日もあるだろ (あるだろ)
Do you translate them literally and separately, like:
There are days when we get too worked up (there are)
or keep with the style, like:
There are days when we get too worked up (too worked up)
My preference is to go with the latter... but I get in trouble sometimes with choosing style over meaning.
Thanks!
Edit:
And now suddenly I've thought of another similar situation. What about when the parts in parenthesis are part of an entire sentence? My first thought for an example is a song from
Azumanga Daioh
帰り道に(遠回りの)
寄り道とか(みんなとなら)
したいのに
When did a translation of this song ages ago I didn't have any problem taking the stanza as a whole like:
On my way home (I want to take)
A roundabout way (To drop in and see)
Everyone
But if the song were, say, a duet, and the parenthesis were two different characters going back and forth, I'd feel bad changing the meaning of what that particular character was saying (if that makes sense), so when I did
the ending theme to Zoids Genesis, which is a duet, the result was awkward...
キミの側に(いたいんだから)
To be by your side (That's all I want!)
...but it felt more "right" somehow to translate it separately in this case.
What do you guys think?
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