Music Chisaki Mono in English.

[Rentorar]

Well..I'm sure many of you know how 4kids kept this beautiful song in their dub of "The wishing star of the seven nights Jirachi" but there was one problem. They added English vocals that do not match up with with the translation of the Japanese lyrics. I really did expect 4kids to do something like this. Taking a Japanese song and splitting it into two sets of unrelated lyrics because they just don't care. They don't think anyone will notice. Now, I know little kids won't notice but older fans definitely will. Your thoughts? Maybe if I have the time later I will update with the comparison, or someone else can leave them as a reply.

 

[PockyAddict]

i thought it was decent, both versions.

 

[Moe]

Songs rarely turn out well when trying to do literal translations of the lyrics - Japanese word order alone makes that really hard when going to English and trying to keep the music the same. There's a lot of it on YouTube, where someone tries to do it - and no matter how talented the singer or how good of a job they do, it just ends up sounding unnatural.

Writing an essentially new song on the same broad theme does better justice to the music than to try and shoehorn a faithful translation of the lyrics.

Considering we're not going to get music sung in another language in the dub, I'd rather a good song that flows well lyrically than knowing that it translates to exactly what the original was saying.

 

[DestinyBond]

They probably wrote new lyrics for the English version.

 

[Rentorar]

I'm not sure if I made it clear just what they did. They took the Japanese song and spliced in English vocals, so it was part English and part Japanese. It wasn't just a case of a bad translation. In fact they didn't even try to translate. It was a case of 4kids making their own lyrics and putting them into the song.

 

[Alola]

I really liked that though. I remember when I first heard the song as kid (maybe 8-9?), and it put me in utter awe. The Japanese version had powerful vocals and was full of passion at parts, so at the time I looked at it as a duet of English and Japanese lyrics, a fusion of sorts. And not too many songs can do that decently.

I wouldn't automatically rule out 4Kids as lazy. Maybe they wanted to try something different and thought it sounded good. Besides, like Moe said, it is difficult to translate Japanese songs to English; the word order, meaning, etc doesn't match up. So I think they wanted to keep the originality of the song while making it still relatable to English audiences by having some English lyrics thrown in where it wouldn't hurt.

 

[UnovaCastaway]

I think the English lyrics match the context of the movie more than the Japanese lyrics. (Make A Wish/ A Small Thing)

Love the song, though, and love how 4Kids kept some of the Japanese on top of it.

 

[Mickey]

Honestly, I feel like this is one the most impressive things 4KIDS ever did, and it's partly why the dub of the 6th movie is my favorite. The English singer does an excellent job matching Asuca Hayashi's vocals, and I felt the lyrics, although completely different from the original Japanese, were acceptable. Both versions of the song are great, in my opinion.

 

[Frugrow]

OP, it seems like you're the only person who has a problem with this.

I loved the Japanese version because the singer who sang it had a beautiful voice.

With that said, the singer who sang the English was really good as well.

I agree with UnovaCastaaway. Who cares if the lyrics are not the same. I thought it matched the context of the movie very well.

If you think that's bad, you can probably agree that Disney movies dubbed in Japanese are just as bad.

Literal translations would result in really awkward lyrics.

 

[Kenji-girl]

I'm just grateful they left it in. They could have done what TPCi does and removed it completely and replaced it with some mediocre song (I love this dub but they don't do music well). I'm sad they never put Make A Wish on a CD.

 

[Rentorar]

I'm just grateful they left it in. They could have done what TPCi does and removed it completely and replaced it with some mediocre song

4kids was guilty of that for the movies they dubbed as well. When they weren't stuffing in popular yesteryear pop songs that is..