I taught my pre-schoolers how to sing 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer' today because it's the only day this month that I will see them and I wanted to teach them a Christmas song. Warning: RUDOLPH THE REDNOSED REINDEER IS A DECEPTIVELY HARD SONG TO TEACH!
I should have gone with 'We wish you a Merry Christmas'... it has like... 4 lines total?
Anyway, apart from the fact that 'English is hard, don't try to teach it' - it turned out that all of the kids already knew the song... in Japanese! Yes, Rudolph is a popular Japanese Christmas song too. Despite the Japanese people's utter lack of enthusiasm for Christmas, they hear just about all of our Christmas songs (in Japanese, of course!).
What bothered me is that while the songs were mostly accurate translations, there were some weird changes. Like the lack of Rudolph's name in his own song. Even though his name kind of describes him already, the Japanese only know him as the All-Red-Nosed Mr. Reindeer (Makka no ohana no tonakai-san).
In the end, the kids ended up learning like 2 lines of the English song and then we just sang the rest in Japanese... sigh.
For those interested, here's the song in Japanese:
Makka na ohana no
tonakai-san wa
真っ赤なお鼻の
トナカイさんは
Itsumo minna no
waraimono
いつもみんなの
笑いもの
Demo sono toshi no
kurisumasu no hi
でもその年の
クリスマスの日
Santa no ojisan wa
iimashita
サンタのおじさんは
言いました
Kurai yomichi wa
pika pika no
暗い夜道は
ぴかぴかの
Omae no hana ga
yaku ni tatsu no sa
おまえの鼻が
役に立つのさ
Itsumo naiteta
tonakai-san wa
いつも泣いてた
トナカイさんは
Koyoi koso wa to
yorokobimashita
今宵こそはと
喜びました
Rough literal translation of awesome (done by yours truly, so take with a grain of salt)!
The 'All-Red'-Nosed Mr. REINDEER!
Always he is everyone's laughing-thing.
But that year's Christmas day
Old-man Santa was like:
"It's dark road, your pika-pika nose
will totally light this shit up."
Then the always-crying-out REINDEERs
were finally pleased.
Yes, I am the master of unlocking... er... untranslating... or something.
Hire me, Nippon-Ichi!
-DJ
