David,

Thanks again for an interesting post! I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop and the flury of posts to being.

Anyway, I just wanted to say something about one line of your translation.

You translate "Heri wa shi nai" as "They'll be nothing to bad going on" and I think that works for the surface-level meaning, where the girl is commenting that this is objectively not a bad act...

But the line words on another level of meaning where she is thinking this isn't a bad act (like you translate), but at the same time thinking something like "This isn't a sin, but if it might get me what I'm after (a good grade), so what the hell!"

A more natural translation would have been simply "There's nothing to lose [on either of our parts]"

Let me know what you think.

Best,
Robert

Yeah, that's a hard line that I added a lot of exposition to, because 減りはしない only means "nothing will decrease". I like "There's nothing to lose" better than what I thought so I will change it to that.

I do these translations pretty quickly and without attention to the "art" of lyric writing, so I appreciate any kind of corrections/improvements.

Yeah, Hisae agrees with "Nothing to lose" for that. Also, even although I don't speak Japanese, I have to correct your last line. It should read "You are, you are the teacher". It might have been nice to show a power reversal between teacher and student as she takes over thanks to his Achilles heel, but that's not what the song says.

On the "Japan, better or worse country" score, Hisae again says "Better, of course!" But she thinks this song packs less punch than the others, because it's more jokey. For middle-aged men and schoolgirls, it releases stress, like a joke you tell that makes everyone laugh.

This kind of thing is not confined to Japan, and not confined to girls either. I used to get touched up by the maths teacher when I was a pretty young thing.

david,
actually i'm very glad to be able to trade notes with you on translation, since i haven't met too many other people who i can have these kind of conversations with. anyway, thanks for being such a saint and even doing these translations in the first place! otsukare.
best,
r.

actually, i'm interested in how this song compares with something like "don't stand so close to me"

Momus: Thanks for the proofreading.

For middle-aged men and schoolgirls, it releases stress, like a joke you tell that makes everyone laugh.

Ah, it's all about releasing the stress of married male teachers preying on their female students for possible bumps in their math scores.

The lyrics to the Sting song:

http://www.seeklyrics.com/lyrics/STING/Don-t-Stand-So-Close-To-Me.html

Sting is treating sexual relations between teacher and students like a social problem, not celebrating it as a stress-relieving joke. But maybe Sting would have felt different had the girl been "his type."

just so that we can make a quick comparison, here are the sting lyrics...

Young teacher, the subject
Of schoolgirl fantasy
She wants him so badly
Knows what she wants to be
Inside her thereﾕs longing
This girlﾕs an open page
Book marking - sheﾕs so close now
This girl is half his age
Donﾕt stand, donﾕt stand so
Donﾕt stand so close to me
Her friends are so jealous
You know how bad girls get
Sometimes itﾕs not so easy
To be the teacherﾕs pet
Temptation, frustration
So bad it makes him cry
Wet bus stop, sheﾕs waiting
His car is warm and dry
Donﾕt stand, donﾕt stand so
Donﾕt stand so close to me
Loose talk in the classroom
To hurt they try and try
Strong words in the staffroom
The accusations fly
Itﾕs no use, he sees her
He starts to shake and cough
Just like the old man in
That book by nabakov
Donﾕt stand, donﾕt stand so
Donﾕt stand so close to me
Donﾕt stand, donﾕt stand so
Donﾕt stand so close to me

Nick,
Again, I'd like to raise the question: What do 'garden variety' Japanese girls think? I think Hisae is in a class of her own, so...
R.

Well, I just told her about how Bust-Up breast-enhancing chewing gum is the big craze amongst Japanese girls right now

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4361563.stm

and she's already trying to find a place on the web where she can order two tons of the stuff. So I don't think she's as atypical as all that.

Touche!

How odd, I've been thinking about that Police song since I saw the video at the izakaya last night...

marxy, thanks again for a great post.

Marxy,

Wonder if you would be willing to put the original Japanese lyrics up with the translations?

I just looked online to see if the lyrics were already up somewhere, but the Japanese take the copyright on lyrics very seriously for some reason.

If I have some time later, I'll put them up.

now this is just hearsay... but my girlfriend up here in the wilds of Aomori said that it was not altogether unusual (nor aggressively frowned-upon) for a teacher to literally date students in her high school. She went to a not so academic school graduating in '92.
I'm new to the site here, but for all the discussion of Japan, there doesn't seem to be much appreciation that not the whole of Japan lives in Tokyo, went to college, and is under the age of 30.
Still a good read. Thanks.

but for all the discussion of Japan, there doesn't seem to be much appreciation that not the whole of Japan lives in Tokyo, went to college, and is under the age of 30.

Well, it's a blog mostly about pop culture, and anybody Japanese older than 30's not supposed to be participating in it. And unfortunately with Japan, the whole system is overcentralized to Tokyo. We talk a lot about freeter, and they mostly are not college kids.