Music: What are you listening to today?

lol was actually looking at that last night and scratching my head over that translation

chinese is a very flowery language where everything is put into a cultural context - ie you can say "it's cold" directly, but another way is to go the metaphorical way and say "big winter" or to say a line from some tang dynasty poem they all know like we know shakespeare which was about a cold day so they'll say "plums on a rock" and we're all supposed to know that's a well known line from that poem thus they are saying it's cold

while google translate is a lot better now, back then it never understood the context of anything, and since each character has 20 different meanings and there's lots of combo characters ie if you put them together is a different word entirely

google really struggles with this one because it can't figure out the context

this is probably how they got the english name of the song back when they wrote it, using google translate

but if you use a more professional dictionary, you can see the possible options

ie the first character could be dragon and the second could be tiger, but alas, when combined they can also mean this

and the 3rd one

and the last

so in short, i literally have no idea what it means - which is a very common occurrence for a foreigner in china who is supposedly fluent in the language like me

i knew all 4 of those characters and yet had zero clue what it could mean - again, probably referencing some Song Dynasty philosophy which I and the translation software is unfamiliar with

When I studied Ezra Pound, I read quite a bit about his Chinese translations that worked for some even though Pound couldn't read or speak Chinese. He used someone else's study of Chinese to help write the poems. He also saw the characters as representing what they looked like. For example, the character for "sunrise" looked like a sunrise.

Nevertheless, some of his translated poems are great ones.

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historically speaking they were very base visual representations of the words they were conveying - which over time had shortcuts introduced which took away the visual element

like house is a roof over a pig, man is a field over the symbol for power, woman is the symbol for good and baby, mountain literally looks like how children would draw mountains etc but a lot of other stuff is very esoteric/abstract

i never dove deeply on ezra pound, but it was my understanding that none of his translations are remotely accurate but nobody complained because he was producing beautiful work which was going to be ignored otherwise

as a history buff, it always pains me that 99% of their extremely well documented history is untappable without fluency in the language because there's just not enough interest to translate it to english

this is why you get westerners believing in nonsense like "the mandate of heaven" which in reality is basically non-existent in china, just some random one-off thing that the jesuits clung onto for dear life because they desperately wanted to paint the chinese as people inherently open to the idea of monotheism so keep funding us to convert them and since nearly all western scholarly work on china in the west is based on stuff which itself was based on the jesuit translations that you get a whole lotta mandate of heaven mumbo jumbo casually thrown into stuff by academics who themselves do not speak the language

Pound was often criticized for his "mistakes," but it doesn't really matter.

My colleague and friend is the best translator of Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet. He had some understanding of Turkish, but his wife was Turkish, so she helped with the language. Randy said it needed a poet to turn the translations into poetry.

As an aside, Randy was struggling with a reference in one of Hikmet's poem because it referenced a place in Poland. I happened to have a Polish student, so we were able to arrange a call to her grandfather in Poland to help with the translation.

One of Hikmet's well known poems written after his release from prison.

https://poets.org/poem/things-i-didnt-know-i-loved

Poets.org

Things I Didn’t Know I Loved

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I listen to a bit of Korean shoegaze but not sure any Chinese artists

For the Dream Pop fans, I discovered Crushed late in the year and been on repeat a bit. 2 favorites from their 2024 EP

back in the day the macau wynn used to play this song at least 2-3 times a day, i was really surprised

i used to think it was paula cole for some reason (they also played her but not as frequently) and would make stupid jokes whenever they played this song about the cowboys probably left because she wasn't one of the cool kids

finally, someone was like "wtf are you talking about" and the ensuing discussion revealed it was not paula cole but rather a new band

every single shopping mall in china plays this song

the similarities to tatu and fact i never heard it outside of china, i always assumed it was one of those russian imports which only took off in the china while ignored in the west

but apparently it's euro and widely known in the west

if you're ever on a ferry in aswan, egypt, little kids in rowboats will paddle alongside the ferry singing this song for tips

it's always this song

I love the experiences of fellow posters. **** those who think the Internet forums are a place for idiots.

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the GOOD ^ 4/4 days... quite unlike some the abominations that about in these modern times.
That being said, I have heard a lot of really impressive 'timings' that are expressed by modern artists... we older folks need to recalibrate our programing sometimes so that we wont be left behind.

I love this. It looks like a pastiche of Shaw Brothers films. If RZA drops by, he'll explain all 500 references. There are a bunch of Old China Hands on this forum. Whenever I forget my love for C-pop, they drag me back.

Old's cool.

There were some outstanding rap groups in the 90s.

Some kinda recent stuff.

fyp

you only embed the last part

so not this youtube.com/watch?v=uIBJJ3M76Mg

but this uIBJJ3M76Mg

this how it should be

Beach House is a band that should just be so much in my wheelhouse and yet I find them just...fine. Hell they are even from Charm City like me. Not sure what it is.

I like them just don't adore them the way many do...odd

this is my favorite chinese band
link to fave album
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHcFT8WC...

here's two of the better songs on it

What was everyone's first concert? Mine was Aerosmith during the Get a Grip tour. Jackyl opened. But my second concert was the real game changer. I got to see the Ramones on their final tour. I was fourteen and working at the pool. A lifeguard girl knew I was a fan and asked me if I wanted to see them. One of the best nights of my life.

First 'Major' concert was Yes with Peter Frampton at the Anaheim stadium in Orange County...

rise and fall of frampton has always fascinated me

apparently was the biggest thing ever for a brief period and then everyone forgets about him quickly

If you haven't try checking out their older stuff, their album "Devotion" is a "cult" hit (whatever that means).. and Victoria Legrand is, well.... <3