Saturday, August 11, 2012

SOLID SLIDER ー 山下達郎

I've liked this song for a while, but never tried to translate it. Kind of harder than I anticipated.



Solid Slider - Tatsuro Yamashita

SOLID SLIDER
In the stillness of the night
In the stillness of the night
I'm well hidden [1]

Keeping an eye out
from within this
tense tense [2]
atmosphere

One thing I say to myself
"This is it"

My eyes are dry I've hunted
him down [3]

SOLID SLIDER

The knife glints
The knife glints
Illuminated by the moon

One thing I say to myself
"This is it"

SOLID SLIDER
In a heartbeat [4]
In a heartbeat
I can kill him

Notes:

[1] This is weak, but I don't want to say "under cover" because that has other connotations that would be unavoidable here. I don't see him as creeping, more like lying in wait. Maybe I should just say that...

[2] This is also weak. 気配の中 seems to be used mostly to describe a day where the change of seasons is starting to gel.

[3] More weak nonsense lol. But I'm not gonna say "hunted down his heart" or "cornered his chest." I considered it! And then I considered it awk as hell lol

[4] I'm glad I googled some more. Basically this just means "really quickly" (and/or without pause). I thought about "in no time" and some other non-set phrases, but then I kind of liked "heartbeat" because it brings back the chest reference that I was unable to get to work for above.

Not sure if it's just my admittedly still wonky translation or if this song just really does fall kinda flat in English. Hrm hrm.

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