The “Very Faithful” Blessing: On the Singable Japanese-English Translation between YOASOBI`s Shukufuku & The Blessing

Abstract

Song translation is heavily constrained by the linguistic differences between the source and target languages, often struggles to achieve a balance between the lyrics` lexical meaning and the song`s overall singability. However, the Japanese duo YOASOBI takes advantage of the flexibility of fast-paced music and employs tactics such as adding of complete translation strategy, including explicitation of pronouns, adding function words and synonymous repetition to remain faithful to the source lyrics`(SL) meaning while preserving singability. When complete translation strategies could not meet the need of singing performance, they resort to variational translation strategies including imitating, trans-writing and altering, maintaining singability while trying their best having the core meaning of the source lyrics retained in the target lyrics. In this way their The Blessing, English version of their Japanese pop-song Shukufuku was a hit, while succeeded in retained most of original lyrics` meaning. The latter achievement was always viewed as a “mission impossible”, given the substantial lexical and grammatical differences between languages like Japanese and English, and thus offer valuable insights for Chinese practitioners and researchers major in song translation.