I don't know if anyone of you has ever done that.
I remember when I was a teenager and made silly music videos, and then for fun sung some translated versions of kpop songs e.g. Kyuhyun's "Rain of Blades" and DBSK's "Why Did I Fall In Love With You"
Those music videos are lost films now... Except two of them, which I shared with some former classmates. (but those videos are so cringeworthy...)
But well... when I translated them, it was pretty much from English (well... because my Korean skills are not that good and it was also much worse back then)
And back when I made those silly music videos, I often changed some parts of the lyrics. (especially if I was trying to tell a story with my music videos)
I remember that in Why Did I Fall In Love With You, I made some lines that were like: (translated to English from my native language)
Happened is happened
but I wish it never happened
Why did it happen?
Why did it happen?
In the original, those parts were like: (according to one English translation)
We can't go back to that time
or how we were
I thought about it
I thought about it
And then I remember translating a part of Rain of Blades and made it like:
The heart that is pained from sadness again
The words that couldn't die
Those words
But one English translation says:
The heart that remains in sadness again and again
keeps the words that could never be said
those words
And of course, that translation makes much more sense than the things I wrote.
Like "words that couldn't die"... what the heck?
And yup, it pretty much shows how much I didn't understand that part of the song.
And then there is also when I translated EXO's Baby Don't Cry to Danish just for fun. (because the song is based on a fairytale written by a Dane)
I didn't make any silly music video for hat one though.
but I translated one part as "mine øjne som var blinde, nu græder jeg jeg jeg" (my eyes that were blind, now I cry)
As I was looking at these Danish lyrics a moment ago, I was thinking that i would have been better if i was translated as "my eyes that were blind, are crying now", and I found ut that one English translation of it is actually like that.
But yup, sometimes when I have translated lyrics just for fun now-a-days, I might look at a sentence and think "what does that even mean?" and often try to translate it literally and it ends up not making sense. (just like how I seemed to miss the point with that one part of Rain of Blades)
Different from what I did in the past, sometimes I also do look at the actual Korean lyrics and see if I understand some of the words. Even though it is still pretty much me trying to translate something from English which has been translated from Korean. (or in DBSK's song's case, Japanese)
I don't try to make them into my native language versions or Danish versions of songs anymore. I just translate them and that's it.
BTW when I had English class in one school, sometimes we would be translating some articles into English, and I think most of the times, I don't think it went that well.
Even though I think it was easier when we were supposed to translate an article about a popular American TV series. Perhaps it was easier because of the fact that it is series I was familiar with despite not having watched a single episode. And the fact that it wasn't an article about super random things like electric bicycles...
