"Despacito" transcribed with Mandarin and Taiwanese words

https://youtu.be/SOhWknul034

1 Like

TJ7CP3m

No.

Will it ever end?

It will, slowly.

UCAeIHv

It is difficult for me to express how much I hate this song. And how much I have to wrestle to deny Taiwanese people when they ask me to translate it for them.
MokLQ

1 Like

That song is bad enough in Spanish, but there’s always room for improvement. :hushed:

1 Like

I’m not familiar with the song, but beginning with the “translated” title, “爹是怕洗頭” (“Diē shì pà xǐ tóu”–“Dad is afraid to shampoo[?]”), I’m guessing this interpretation represents a pretty substantial departure from the original.

1 Like

Less than you might think. Both are basically meaningless word soup. :sunglasses:

啊, 腦噯夕.

Edited to add:

I ran the original Spanish lyrics through Google Translate, and as far as I can tell, the result looks like mildly erotic poetry, which, of course, can register with some as “meaningless word soup” (not that they’re wrong in thinking that way), but the version in this thread just seems to pick rough “false cognates” (I’m not sure if that’s the right term) to the Spanish syllables and accompany them with a kind of extended rebus to accent the absurdity of the false cognates.

That’s pretty impressive to me, but I think I’d like it better if I knew Chinese and Spanish. :slight_smile:

Edited to add again:

The whole thing gives a hint of self-reflection and self-deprecation. I take it that this song is a faddish obsession with a lot of Taiwanese, and the Taiwanese creators of the video seem to be sort of poking fun at themselves.

This is hilarious! How does it have almost two million likes and I’m only seeing it now?

It has been going around since the debacle started. There are several versions of it.

And you guys complained about my favorite version: El Patito.
https://youtu.be/iS6e3ZTuxC8

The horror, the horror. At least the Macarena has a cool dance…And expiration date.

1 Like

That’s the point!

BTW, this where I originally saw it: A UPenn linguistics blog.
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=38473&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook

I think the point I was trying to make was that it wasn’t the same old song, and that someone was trying to do something different. In saying that, I thought I was addressing the disappointment or weariness of some of the other posters.

1 Like