Click here to watch Cyndi stare at you soulfully (and listen to the song too, I guess).

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灰色的天     你的脸

Grey sky     Your face

爱过也哭过笑过痛过之后

After having loved, cried, laughed, hurt

只剩再见

All that remains is goodbye

我的眼泪     湿了脸
My tears     Drenching my face

失去第一次爱的人竟然是这种感觉

Losing your first love unexpectedly feels like this

总以为     爱是全部的心跳

I always thought    Love is each and every heartbeat

失去爱我们就要…

Losing love we’ll…

就要 一点点慢慢的死掉

We’ll bit by bit, slowly, slowly die

当我 失去你那一秒     心突然就变老

In the second that I lost you     My heart suddenly turned old

The day you went away

喧闹的街     没发现我的泪     被遗忘在街角

The noisy street     Hasn’t discovered my tears     Forgotten in this corner

The day you went away

我看着你走过街

I watch you walk down the street

还穿着去年夏天我送你的那双球鞋
Still wearing the sports shoes I gave you last summer

银色手炼     还耀眼
That silver bracelet   Still dazzling

你的世界似乎一点也没有因此改变

It seems your world hasn’t changed consequently at all

有一天     也许我能把自己治好

One day maybe I’ll be able to treat myself well

再一次想起来    应该要怎么笑

Thinking of it again   How should I laugh?

第一次爱的人它的坏他的好

First love    It’s faults, his goodness

却像胸口刺青     是永远的记号
But like a tattoo on the chest   It’s a permanent mark

跟着我的呼吸     直到停止心跳

Breathe with me     Until my heart ceases to beat

——————————————————————————————♥

OK, so it’s your average syrupy heartbroken love song with unexpectedly suicidal lyrics, but I like it anyway ;) It was the first song I ever sang at karaoke in Shanghai, and has became a playlist staple every time I managed to drag a friend along with me for a three hour singing marathon. Oh, the memories! *tears up*

Only after I YouTubed the video clip for this song did I discover that it’s yet another cover of an English song by a band called M2M. I live in hope that one day the Taiwanese pop song machine will actually churn out some original music.

In the meantime, enjoy my no doubt flawless and brilliant translation above, which has Absolutely No Mistakes In It. None Whatsoever. If you find any I will make you into flesh flambée with my virtual flamethrower, capiche?

(Actually, if you find any mistakes, please comment! *bows humbly*)

Now I’m off to see Iron Man 2, because there’s nothing like lots of action and aurally damaging sound effects to help you pretend that the weekend isn’t already over, and I didn’t get to sleep in AT ALL >:( Stupid world.

Week 106

Publication date: 2009.10.15

Compiled and edited by: Ah Chun + Xin Yi + Fu Xiu

[Embedded clip for Near Future MV]

Article on Photo Modelling

About the modelling —

Of course this was the first time all of the workers [on this project] had met sodagreen. The stylist’s intuition was to give sodagreen a completely new feel, and proposed retro rock as a suggestion, letting sodagreen give the impression of rock stars. Everyone was given straight fringed* retro hair, everyone in black tones of the most basic elements of rock and roll, the male band members natural and not made up, Xin Yi** got exaggerated eyelashes and eyeliner***, with 60s retro clothes. Combined, this became sodagreen’s rock and roll flavour.

About the photography ―

Photographer Donald, who has been taking photos for 20 years, his first assignment was with the band New Order on tour. Selecting a few characteristic scenes, an entire graffiti wall,  a river bank, an old walled enclosure, an authentic overpass……we also boarded a boat and took photos along the river Thames, it didn’t matter where, the photographer’s instructions were always the same: “be cool and relax”, always made sodagreen’s poses relaxed, he let sodagreen feel that this time doing the photography shoots is the first time we felt relaxed and not exhausted.

―――――――――――-

*That’s “bangs”, my North American friends

**I like how Xin Yi gets her own category, which I suppose makes more sense than saying “and the sole female member of the band…”

***Though according to Yellow Bridge Dictionary 眼線 also means “police informer”. Hmm.

Week 105

Publication date: 2009.10.08

Compiled and edited by: Ah Chun + Xin Yi + Fu Xiu

[Embedded clip for No Sleep MV]

Fever Recording Notes: Article on the recording

(Excerpted from Teacher Wei Zhe’s notes in sodazine6)

In Taiwan we all felt England’s wave of rock music, and this time going to England we wanted to be more in depth. And we were genuinely in London, England because of “people”, and an exchange of people’s feelings, in order to accomplish genuine London rock. This time in London, besides making some awesome music — the most important thing was — my feelings were that it doesn’t matter if it’s the members of sodagreen or the accompanying workers, with this work, I gained a lot, and also increased my own self-confidence and became more certain of my unique value as an individual. Consequently I encourage everyone with the chance to go out and look around, because the world is truly big, the things we can learn really are innumerable, moreover every one of us has one kind of unextinguishable unique characteristic, just like Fever’s lyrics say: “Be crazed about our own style”. If we have confidence about our own uniqueness, naturally we can reveal our own cute and special places, and together people will also naturally cherish and value one another.

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Hmmm, this is starting to make me think Will Lin (aka Teacher Wei Zhe) was a motivational speaker in a previous life. Nice sentiments all the same ☺

Week 103

Publication date: 2009.09.24

Compiled and edited by: Ah Chun + Xin Yi + Fu Xiu

Fever Recording Notes: Article on the Sound Recordist

(Excerpted from Qing Feng’s notes in sodazine6)

We’re very fortunate, in England we met a lot of friendly [people], and they didn’t begrudge in giving us hard-working partners. Together with each of us excited musicians, the music recording engineer and mixer also completely fell in love with our music. I think at first they were only welcoming us as part of their job, but with each passing day, they transported more and more guys things from home*, and kept coming up with more and more suggestions until we had to take time to stop, which was when we knew, they were already completely filled with fever**, and so were we!

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*Carpooling? That image makes me LOL. See the comments.

**Enthusiasm

(2009-09-14)

Yesterday was Fusion’s live recording, singing 12 songs in a row. Actually before the performance we were very nervous about songing that many songs, including some unplugged new songs. Tao and LK* also played at changing positions and performed 3 never-performed-before songs. We were really scared of making fools of ourselves. But standing on stage that moment of nervousness immediately disappeared after seeing so many familiar faces and so many friends who had possibly come to see us for the first time. The number of our elementary school classmates that came wasn’t insignificant either. We also saw a lot of friends singing along with us**. At the end Soya also gave us a cake — many many thanks! I also recorded a lot of talking, although I think I couldn’t say much myself, and what I said was all pretty cold, haha. But afterwards I didn’t care if it was cold or not or if I can bicker with everyone. I also hope we’ll be able to organise more live events. Next time we’ll sing more songs for everyone to listen to.

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* LK = Leakey = Sun Quan (孙权), the band’s lead singer

** Including me! Though I was totally guessing at most of the band’s lyrics as I sang under my breath. Hope no one noticed.

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And not that many people will be wildly interested, but I’m still planning to translate all the songs from Fusion’s first album 如果未来 (If in Future), but it looks like I probably won’t get around to it until I’ve caught up with Green a Week.

In the meantime, here’s my own concert report of Fusion’s live performance discussed above.

Week 103

Publication Date: 2009.09.24

Compiled and edited by: Ah Chun + Xin Yi + Fu Xiu

[There is some old information for a sodagreen gig at The Wall in Taipei that I've skipped over]

Fever Recording Notes: Article on the foreign musicians + Octavia

(Extracted from Xin Yi’s notes in Sodazine 6)

The procress for this album’s music production was a bit complicated. First in Taiwan we prepared a demo of all the first compositions, which were everyone’s rough versions*, but because we wanted to make sure that the songs’ structure and speed was all right, we later brought the recordings to England so that we could make another arrangement with the English musicians, allowing them the freedom to decide the structure of the songs. Finally we studied the English arrangements and integrated them into our own performance, then recorded it.

At the start of June, with [Fever's] release date decided, but with everything still an unknown quantity, I started to feel very anxious. Everything had been hard from the outset, and deciding who to promote to the position of coordinator was our greatest difficulty, because we were only able to rely on reputations, and were also unable to meet [prospective candidates], without knowing if the English people working for us would attach great importance to this job. After trying to get in touch with a number of people, we were impressed by Ms Octavia’s super-quick reply to our letter**, and after Teacher Wei Zhe and I tried talking with her over the telephone, we quickly decided she should come and arrange the communication in England…

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*I had no small amount of trouble figuring out the right translations for a lot of the music production lingo in this mini-article, which necessarily became more complex when English borrow words were added to the mix. The original phrase is: 每个人都是Rough的, which I took to mean “everyone’s rough versions (of the songs)” and not “everyone is rough”. If I’m wrong though, please correct me!

**信件 is letter, but unless sodagreen has more longhand epistolary pretensions than I previously realised, I think they probably mean email.

Also, Xin Yi doesn’t use much punctuation (the original first paragraph only has one full stop — at the end), but I’ve added some into the translation where appropriate to maintain fluency.

(2009-09-10)

Our first album 如果未来 (If in Future) has already been out for more than a year and 8 months. Lots of friends have heard, and also bought it. Right now the pity is that If in Future is about to become history, and a majority of the copies have sold out. Our second album will possibly be released by a new company, so the first album might not be manufactured again. Right now the company’s remaining stock is but a poor 30 copies. Fortunately every one of our family members has kept an unopened copy to serve as a souvenir. I remember Tao said a while back that when our sons are old enough we can take out the album for them to look at and let them see that their dads used to play around like this, haha. Then I said, when that time comes your son will definitely say , “Dad, your style is really fierce*, don’t bring that out to threaten people”.

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*The original phrase is: 老爸你这造型可真B的 (Dad, your style is really “B”). From the context I assumed the “B” meant “B-grade”, but apparently it means something closer to 牛 or 厉害, so I settled for “fierce” (which also works with the “threatening people” bit).

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But you heard them, folks! If you don’t already have your unopened souvenir copy of If in Future then it’s time to stock up! I know YesAsia still have some copies because I bought one for a friend last month.

(I would also like to point out that the band members will probably all have daughters now that they’ve tempted fate by publishing their predictions).

And finally: I have a shiny new translations page. It’s a bit clunky at the moment, but it’ll be improved and expanded over time. Check it out!

Week 100

Publication Date: 2009.09.03

Compiled and edited by: Ah Chun + Xin Yi + Fu Xiu

We’ve already entered the final countdown to Fever’s date of release

We honestly have heaps and heaps of things we can’t wait to share with everyone

Whether it’s the new sodagreen songs Teacher Wei Zhe has poured his soul* into making

Or the stills** and video Fu Xiu and Ah Chun brought back from London
Please join us for the entirety of this beautiful journey

Don’t forget Sodazine 6 pre-order copies are limited!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Followed by a preview of Sodazine 6 and the Fever recording notes trailer]

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*Here’s a new idiom for everyone: 嘔心瀝血 (ou xin li xue), which literally means to “spit out one’s heart and spill blood”. I guess we’d say “blood, sweat and tears” in English, but fitting that into the sentence was just awkward, so I settled for “poured his soul into”. You get the idea :)

**靜態 translates as “static”, but I’m guessing from the context they mean “stills” (as in “still photographs”). If someone up on their Chinese photography lingo could confirm that that would be nice.

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So yes, the entry is a bit out of date, but I wanted to start with Week 100. It seemed logical. To compensate for lack of exciting content here are download links to a sodafan’s live recording of four of the cover songs Qing Feng sang at last month’s concert in Shanghai. (If the links don’t work it’s most likely a QQ problem, so try checking back later).

• 带我走
• Don’t Break My Heart
• 同桌的你
• 花房姑娘

The quality isn’t great, but it could have been a lot worse, and it’s nice to be able to add these to that other random Qing Feng song I found in a dark corner of the intramanets a while back called Queen (can’t remember the Chinese title). Still don’t know what that’s about.

• I love sodagreen and this will force me to actually read about their various exploits more frequently
• It will hopefully help improve my Mandarin over time, and will at least keep any delusions I have of being better at it than I actually am at bay
• From the response to my recent report on sodagreen’s Shanghai concert it seems there’s an audience out there hankering (yes, hankering) for more information about the band in English
• I hope the translations will bring more visitors to my regular blog
• I have discovered that I enjoy translating rather a lot; it makes me feel all warm inside :)
• I am a fangirl of many things, and wanted to give something back for a change

While I was at it I thought I’d also dive in and do some other types of translating, beginning with all the songs from Fusion Band’s (Fusion乐团) first album, 如果未来 (If in Future), and also their blog — when they bother to update it.

The major disclaimer with all of this is, of course, that I am not (really not) a native Mandarin speaker/reader/writer/anything, so as hard as I try, I will still be making silly Chinese as a second language-type mistakes. The great thing about blogs and websites though is that they are collaborative, which means if you spot an error or a point of contention in any of my translations, you can tell me.

Now, I thought I’d get rolling with my translation of Fusion’s 时光轴 (Time Axis), the first track of their first album, which I’m also rather fond of for another reason. Tomorrow I’ll post my first Green a Week translation, starting with Week 100, and working through until I’m up to date (they’re currently up to Week 108). I’m only going to be translating the entries with substantive text in them though, so don’t expect any YouTube transciptions ;)

And with that all out of the way…

Enjoy!