Translating Wu Bai lyrics

Language Learning Chinese
1

I’m a huge fan of Wu Bai. I have over a hundred of his songs on my iPod, and I never seem to get tired of listening to them. For quite a while now I’ve been toying with the idea of choosing a dozen or so of his best songs to make a CD for my American friends. But I haven’t done it because I always thought that the lyrics wouldn’t translate well into English.

Until tonight, that is. I was riding home on my scooter listening to one of my faves, Aiqing de Jintou, and the translations kept popping into my head. So I sat down to translate the whole song. Here’s what I came up with. I welcome comments, improvements, translations of other lyrics, or whatever people feel like posting. Personally, I think songs are a great way to remember new vocabulary. Here goes.

愛情的盡頭 The End of Love

早知結果如此何必當初曾相逢
相逢之後何須再問分手的理由
沒有月的星空 是我自己的星空
我飛也可以 跳也可以 不感到寂寞
有流星陪伴我
If I’d known it would end like this, why’d we ever have to meet?
Now that we’ve met, why bother asking the reason for breaking up?
The moonless starry sky is my own starry sky
I can fly or jump and not feel lonely
The shooting stars keep me company

當然也許妳會感到一絲絲愧疚
諾言本身不會後悔出口的理由
沒有妳的影蹤 有我自己的影蹤
我哭也可以 笑也可以 天長或地久 是愛情的盡頭
Of course, you might feel a little twinge of guilt
A promise doesn’t regret its reason for being spoken
There’s no trace of you, only traces of myself
I can cry or laugh as long as heaven or earth endures
That’s the end of love

下著雨的夜晚最美
將所有景物拋在半空之間
有妳的笑我無法成眠（無法成眠）
怎又回到了起點
Rainy nights are the most beautiful
Tossing all the scenery into midair
With your smile, I can’t get to sleep, can’t get to sleep
How have I gone back to the start once more?

快讓我沒有力氣
快讓我沒有力氣去想念妳
讓我可以隨著落在窗外的小雨
消失在茫茫大地
Quick, take away my strength
Quick, take away my strength to miss you
Let me follow the light rain falling outside the window
Disappearing into the vast earth

讓我飛
讓我飛 在夜空
夜空裡才會讓我的心和懦弱那頭離得比較遠
飛翔時傷悲是一種奢侈的行為
我怎麼突然有一種莫名的喜悅當我穿梭在黑暗裡面
Let me fly
Let me fly through the night sky
Only the night sky will keep my heart further away from weakness
When flying, sorrow is a kind of extravagance
Why do I feel this inexplicable joy as I pierce through the darkness?

[guitar solo]

讓我飛 讓我飛 在夜空
夜空裡才會讓我的心和懦弱那頭離得比較遠
飛翔時傷悲是一種奢侈的行為
我變成一朵放縱的輕煙和小雨纏綿在冷冷北風裡面
Let me fly
Let me fly through the night sky
Only the night sky will keep my heart further away from weakness
When flying, sorrow is a kind of extravagance
I become a reckless wisp of smoke, tangled up with the rain in the cold north wind

讓我飛
讓我飛 在夜空
夜空裡才有那種熟悉的沈默將往事都上了鎖
時間它永遠是一種逃避的藉口
漂浮在半空之中可以去面對正在進行的墜落
Let me fly
Let me fly through the night sky
For only in the night sky is that familiar silence that locks up all of the past
Time is eternally an excuse to escape
Floating in midair, I can face the fact that I’m falling

當然也許妳會感到一絲絲愧疚
諾言本身不會後悔出口的理由
沒有妳的影蹤 有我自己的影蹤
我哭也可以 笑也可以 天長或地久 是愛情的盡頭
是愛情的盡頭
是愛情的盡頭
愛情的盡頭
愛情的盡頭
Of course, you might feel a little twinge of guilt
A promise doesn’t regret its reason for being spoken
There’s no trace of you, only traces of myself
I can cry or laugh as long as heaven or earth endures
That’s the end of love
It’s the end of love
It’s the end of love
The end of love
The end of love

I can add Pinyin if it would be helpful. Cheers. :slight_smile:

2

My favorite Wu Bai song as well…

I remember going to an Wu Bai concert in a tiny San Francisco bar, and it was filled with all sorts of people, and they played this song. you think this song sounds wicked on the CD? Man… I was blown away by the live performance. I can still hear the guitar rumbling in my head when I think about it. It was an experience I’d never forget.

You did an awesome job translating. One thing though, I’ve always interpreted the lyrics for 快讓我沒有力氣 快讓我沒有力氣去想念妳
not as “Quick, take away my strength”, which seems like asking someone to take away his strength, but more like a continuation from the last verse, that “her smile” almost drained all his strength.

Just my take though, I mean this lyrics is pretty abstract to begin with.

3

Hey, nice to meet a fellow Wu Bai fan! I’m jealous that you got to go to one of his small-venue concerts. The only time I’ve ever seen him play live was at the 太空彈 concert a couple years ago. I’d like to go to the 大感謝 concert in Kaohsiung, but at the moment I’m too poor. :-/

I like your interpretation of 快讓我沒有力氣. I’ve never thought of it that way! Maybe I could change it to
My strength is almost gone
My strength to miss you is almost gone
It’s my first time translating song lyrics. I think I’ll try a Taiwanese song, 白鷺鷥, next. :slight_smile:

4

I enjoy Wubai, as well. Their music has some kind of quality that’s hard to put into words (besides that disco one). I’d love to see them in a club sometime. I suppose they don’t play at small venues anymore…

5

I’ll write out a quick story here (my wrist is throbbing as I type from a basketball injury today). At one point I was going to leave Taiwan for good. I was in Seattle getting a visa for China. I listened to a bunch of Wubai songs on youtube one night as I couldn’t sleep. During that time, I decided to come back to Taiwan. I met my wife a few months later in Taiwan…

6

that’s an awesome story even in its short version.

at the san francisco performance that i went to, there were a couple of white/african american fans, i asked them if it was their first time at an Wubai concert, they said they listened to the one in LA House of Blues, then drove all day to San Francisco for another round.

7

Those are both awesome stories! It’s interesting that Wu Bai’s music appeals to people even when they don’t understand the lyrics. When I was back in the States in 2007-08, I would blast Wu Bai and other good Taiwanese tunes on my car’s CD player all the time. One time I picked up a hamburger from a drive-through window while listening to 浪人情歌, and the girl who handed me my food was like, “Hey, that’s some great music!” My neighbor said pretty much the same thing when I was playing 心愛的，再會啦 while washing my car in our parking lot. There’s nothing like good rock’n’roll.

8

I saw him last New Year’s down in Kaohsiung at Dream Mall. It was awesome. I loved seeing the reactions of the Taiwanese when he began playing their favorite songs. Everyone started singing together. So much fun.

This is one of my favorites.

心愛的，再會啦 is great as well. Unfortunately he didn’t play that one.

9

Have you seen this website?

fortune-cookie-500.com/Lyrics.html

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[quote=“Ermintrude”]Have you seen this website?

fortune-cookie-500.com/Lyrics.html[/quote]

Great find, though encoding has to be set back to Big-5 to see the characters correctly.

As for the translation for The End of Love, I think haokaiyang’s translation is closer to the Chinese lyrics. The website’s translation took the word 曾相逢 for reunite, but it should be as haokaiyang translated.