忏悔日 Confession Day by 林笛 Lín Dí

[pho50]

So it took a Chinese song to teach me what Shrove Tuesday is... keke.

Wiki says it's the term used in Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Australia for Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday.  "Shrove is the past tense for "shrive" - which means to obtain absolution for one's sins by confessing and doing penance.  Shrove Tuesday gets its name for the shriving (

Comments

[dustthouart]

Repentance Day is a dumb translation, no offense to Lin Di, because in chanhui in Chinese, in the context she's using it, refers to what in English we exclusively call "confession", not repentance. Chanhui Ri is a Catholic term. The whole idea is that it's the last day of carnival... after all that exuberance, you're going to need to confess, lol

[pho50]

Haha, if I had to confess in Chinese it would be a very short confession. ...uh.. dou shi wode cuo amen.

I have a Catholic friend known for her awesome baking skills who gives up sweets for Lent each year... but she still manages to bake goodies for me. That's pretty much my memories of Lent.

Thanks for clarifying Chanhui Ri. I had a feeling Repentance Day didn't quite do it. I haven't really checked the rest of the song translation...

[pho50]

Hey, can I ask you a translation question? I hope so, 'cause here goes. Is "If I could see hell, then I wouldn't fear the devil" an accurate translation of 如果看见地狱，我就不怕魔鬼? or better to say, "If I see hell, I won't fear the devil"? or maybe they're both wrong?
(btw, it's name of Tizzy Bac's new cd.)

[dustthouart]

The latter, but it's complex to explain why. "If I see hell, I won't fear the devil."
Breaking it down for you:
Ru - guo - kan - jian - di - yu, wo - jiu - bu - pa - mo - gui.
suppose - case - look - see - earth - prison, I - then immediately - not - fear - demon - ghost.
In the case where I complete the action of seeing hell, I will then not fear the devil.
If I see hell, I won't fear the devil.
:3
I'm not exactly sure why I feel so strongly in my gut that it's all very future tense and not past tense, but... Chinese isn't a very past tense language in the first place, y'know? Trying to do conditional past when you want to do it is like pulling teeth. I remember trying to express the concept "If I had known you didn't have work, I would have asked you out to lunch". I was in agony lol. I had to time mark everything. "Ruguo wo na yi tian zaoshang..."

[echowillow]

ooh, this song is lovely! I'm not familar with indie bands at all, you've showed me great stuff :D

can I say, I'm so happy that your post did appear on my f-list for once! lolz

I think confess and repent give different meanings in a cultural context. Confession has a religious implication. In this case maybe Lin Di is expressing her remorse for her certain thoughts and actions. She is repenting but she is not confessing ;D (and the idea of confession was only brought into eastern culture from the west later on). Thats just a thought, just me trying to find a reason not to study. haha.

[dustthouart]

Chanhui itself can mean repentance, but chanhui ri means something specific. And on their own website, Cold Fairyland itself translates it as Shrove Tuesday. So I think they looked up chanhui ri in their Chinese-English dictionary and got "Shrove Tuesday" (which they would get; I got it when I looked up chanhui ri in my dictionary; it's the term we use in Chinese Christianity), and then looked up just "chanhui" and got "repentance" as an option as well as "confession" and didn't realize that in this case "confession" was the only way to go.

And actually, and this is really interesting and I need to look into it further, I have heard that some sects of Buddhism actually had a confession ceremony that they called chanhui as well. But I only know that from my dictionary which had, under translations for chanhui, in addition to "repentance", "confession", "remorse" and "Catholic ritual of repentance", it had "Buddhist ceremony of repentance". I want to find out more about that

[echowillow]

I think it really really depends on the context. I totally understand what you're getting at. In the context of Christianity, chanhui ri is Confession Day, no doubt about it. But looking at the lyrics to the other songs, they seem more incline towards eastern spirituality, very Zenish. I see the words reincarnation and nirvana. To keep into the theme, I think to translation it as repentance instead of confession is pretty apt

[pho50]

I totally get what you're saying :) I have that whole album if you want it. It's kind of interesting. From what I've read online, for the album that song is from (10 Days in Magic Land) Lin Di was commissioned to interpret poetry of Chen Song. I'm guessing the lyrics are the actual poems but I'm not sure. But Lin Di even provided translations for the instrumental songs so I'm guessing they are the actual poems. I'll have to look up Chen Song and see if I find anything.

Haha, we're in the same boat - you should be studying and I should be working!

[thirddyfrk]

What a beautiful song. I love it. Thanks for sharing. Even my son like it and he hates slow songs.

[pho50]

Ah you made me listen to it again right now. It IS so beautiful! If you don't mind me asking, how old is your son? I used to be a nanny for a girl who at about 5 or 6 years old would get really upset and cry whenever she heard her Mom listening to sad new-age kind of music like Enya. She was really sensitive lol.

[thirddyfrk]

My son is 12 yrs old and is beginning to love asian music. He loves hip-hop and rap. Trying hard to get him interested in the indie scene but he still prefers the hip-hop. He like Jay Chou and Alan Kuo for chinese-no mainland favorites yet. Plus anything Korean. Between the both of us, music is a big bag of mix nuts.

[pho50]

When I used to pick up my friend's boys from school (ages 5-13) I would play Jay Chou in the car and they LOVED him. I've never met a kid who didn't love Jay Chou's music... even if they had never listened to Chinese music before... haha. It's great you get to share all kinds of music with your son. I used to listen to Korean music before my Chinese indie obsession took over lol.