¿Lyrics or phonetics?

This problem has so many faces... As I said before, Those spanish lyrics on "Frances the mute" really disturbed me. Ivan was talking about meaningfull translations, wich is another thing to notice. I don't care much for strong accents; perhaps it is usefull to a German band to keep that idea of German band by having that strong accent on the English version, but I think the most hydeous thing is when the translation is bad and sounds like "forced" into the language, ruinning the music and the lyrics, and the album and so on. Anyway, this is a bit difficult to determinate for me. We, South Americans, are quite used to simply read the translation somewhere, or making it. In terms of German bands, Italian bands, etc., I'm lost, I just listen to the whole thing without even think about possible meannings of anything. So, I was wondering about those issues. My first post is about Eloy's Ocean; I like that album, but maybe there is something awfull about the lyrics and I don't know anything about it...

cuncuna wrote: That's... horrible. I can't tell, but I suspect that Grobschnitt English lyrics are weird to listen. I know that I hate that part in Frances the mute in wich the singer attempts to do some spanish on his own. english speakers can't tell, but that spanish sounds very wrong... it doesn't have correct punctuation and pronunciation, and it fits into the music by force, wich is always unpleasent.

1. 'Appena Un Po’ (Just a bit) is translated as 'River Of Life' (ridiculous)
2. 'È Festa'  (The Party) is 'Celebration' (Well at least the had an idea here, but the title and lyrics are so simple that there's no merit at all).
3. 'Per Un Amico'' (For a Friend)  is translated as Photos Of Ghosts'  (???)
4. 'Generale!' (General) is 'Mr 9 'till 5' but with vocals (Easier job, he had no lyrics to work with) 
5. 'Geranio' (Geranium) to 'Promenade The Puzzle' (Probably to relate it with Pictures at an Exhibition?)
6.  “L’Isola Di Niente” (Nobody's Island) was changed again (Not even consitent) to ‘The Mountain’ (Probably Sinfield saw the picture of the island in the albuim cover and thought it was a mountain and didn't even asked)
7.  ‘La Luna Nova’ (The New Moon) became ‘Four Holes In The Ground’ (Mr. Sinfield killed the poetry of the song)
8. ‘Dolcissima Maria’ (Very Sweet Mary) became ‘Just Look Away’ (Terrible)}
9. ‘Via Lumiére’ (Lumiere Street) became ‘Have Your Cake And Eat It’ (This is the record, completely stupid title, you can't change something so specific in another thing that sounds as a Three Stooges movie title).

If the rest of the world can listen songs in English, why should other country musicians sacrifice their identity? And if Mr. Sinfield is paid to translate, he should ask the band and do something coherent or at least intelligent.

I know it is easier for Pete Sinfield to forget what PFM did, erase all the poetry and sweetnes (Because Italian Prog is very poetic, sweet and descriptive) and do whatever he wants because PFM wanted to enter to the UK market (Believe it was with Manticore Records), but it's simply a crime.

 

I believe that a song and/or album should be left in the language it was recorded by the author. For example the Peruvian band Traffic Sound sung in English because they studied in a USA school and teir proficiency in this language was good, another Peruvian band Laghonia also did the same, but one of the vocalists was Dave Levane from USA and the rest of the members were also from a USA school.

 

But people from UK and USA should learn to listen the music in their original language if the author decided to do so.

 

Well, the cheesiest title and lyrics I remember are from Meatloaf:

If Meat Loaf just wasn't such a great vocalist and Jim Steinman a great pianist and song writter, it would be easier to hate the lyrics without loving the songs.

Edited by Ivan_Melgar_M - April 24 2006 at 23:15

Oedipus complex?

Still, no comments on the issue...

Mine are from a song called "Canción didáctica nº1" (Didactic song nº1), wich has a very clever verbal structure:

¿You know what?... I think I have the ultimate bad lyrics in my own country. A singer called "Keko Yungue" wrotte on one of his many lovesongs (I'm not kidding) :

First of all, I must start this by telling everyone that I'm not particulary atracted to Eloy. I just think they kind of worked hard in the Ocean album. But here's the thing: many people here talks about Eloy as if they were idiots, because of the lyrics, the musical phrasing behind them, etc. As many people from South America, I'm kind of used to pay attention to voices only in terms of noise. So, that Ocean album does not sound that bad. Perhaps it is trully idiotic, and I can't see it.

Now:

1.- Is there another band with idiotic lyrics that I should know from?; or a band with lyrics that simply doesnt fit, or are badly or poorely written?

2.- When it comes to foreign music; ¿do you chase the lyrics to it's ultimate meaning, like transcultural translation, searching for context references in order to understand them as much as possible, or you just ignore that and go straight to whatever your imagination can make around those unknown human music noises?