BTS – Stay (English Translation and Ramblings)

Track 07 on BE album.

Written by:  Arston, Jin, Jungkook, RM

 

This is a fairly simple song, but I thought I should translate it because it felt like a closure for the previous songs in the album.

BTS – Dis-ease (English Translation and Ramblings)

Track No. 06 on BE Album.

Written by:  Ivan Jackson Rosenberg, j-hope, Ghstloop, RM, Pdogg, Suga, Jimin, Randy Runyon.  Produced by Brasstracks.

“Dis-ease” is an interesting title for this song.  Obviously, it’s a play on words where feeling at “ease” is feeling comfortable.  And “Dis-ease” is that feeling of not being at ease and not so comfortable.

And then it also refers to the pandemic, that influenced the release of this song and album.

The repetitiveness of the word “ill” in the lyrics that works as a synonym for “disease” and homonym for “일 (pronounced “ill”, meaning work/one) is interesting too.

The Korean title for this song is “병 (pronounced byeong)”, which means disease or bottle.

I didn’t mean to ramble on quite so much for this song.  Some of the lines seemed like I could just translate them into English, so I thought this wouldn’t be hard.  I don’t know why I always end up rambling so much.

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BTS – Telepathy (English Translation and Ramblings)

Track 05 of BE album. 

Written by:  Suga, EL CAPITXN, Hiss noise, RM, Jung Kook

 

The Korean title for this song is 잠시, while the English title of the song is Telepathy. 

잠시 means “a moment.”   

If you look at the characters separately, 잠 means “sleep” and 시 means “time (or poem).”  However, they do not use 잠시 to mean sleepy time or anything like that. I just thought it was interesting that the word broke up like that, because song has a bit of “dreaming together” quality to it. 

We’re not actually together on an island in the middle of a blue ocean.  We’re all far apart.  But I guess we can dream together.

Another thing I found interesting about this song is that the previous song (not counting the Skit) Blue & Grey, ends with falling asleep. 

 

 

Although just the title of this track is so interesting, I was not going to translate this song on the first listen.  Until I looked closely at the “Bibilly Hills.”  I was like, “is that a typo?”

I assure you, that was not a typo.  RM’s so funny and weird with his word play – I just had to translate this song, for that line alone. 

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BTS – Blue & Grey (English Translation and Ramblings)

Track 03 on BE album.

Produced by:  Ji Soo Park, Levi, V, Hiss Noise
Written by: Hiss Noise, J-Hope, Ji Soo Park, Levi, Metaphor, RM, Suga, V

It’s kind of poetic, philosophical and somewhat confusing.

The general impression I got is that the song starts off more blue (sadness, pain, cold) and progress to more grey (numbness)…that it was too cold and painful being blue, that they welcome the grey numbness.

It’s a very strange song, but very lovely and haunting at the same time.

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BTS – Life Goes On (English Translation and Ramblings)

Track 01 on BE album

Written by: Pdogg, RM, Ruuth, Chris James, Antonina Armato, Suga, j-hope

The meaning of the lyrics are fairly clear, so I’ll just ramble on about the choice of their words and their tone.

Reading the English CC on the MV, I thought the lyrics were quite sad although hopeful.

The Korean lyrics sound a little bit… cuter. There is personification of things like Spring, Time and the World, talking about them like they’re friends. There is a friendly rueful feeling to the tone of lyrics.

The lyrics themselves though (and I don’t know if I’m reading too much into the lyrics) actually seem sadder in Korean. The lyrics are sadder, but sung in more lighthearted way.

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Agust D (BTS) – Strange (English Translation and Ramblings)

By: Agust D, EL CAPITXN, GHSTLOOP, RM

Track 04 on D-2 Mixtape.

I think this is my favorite track on the album.

I actually haven’t had time to watch Suga’s behind talk on this album yet.  I wanted to do this translation before I watch it.  I might edit it later after I watch it if it changes my views significantly.

Agust D (BTS) – What Do You Think? (English Translation and Ramblings)

By:  August D, EL CAPITXN, GHSTLOOP

Track 03 of D-2 Album.

This song is written in first person point of view, talking directly to “you” who seem to be trolls/haters/industry people who use them/journalists who write troll articles, etc.

A lot of BTS songs tend to be more contemplative musings, sometimes with changes in point of view in the middle of the song.  The changes in subject is much more flexible in Korean, as the language doesn’t require subject to be clear (making it difficult for translators).

This type of almost direct conversation type of a song with a fairly consistent point of view is not terribly common.  I find it a really different experience in translating, but I’m not sure if it’s just interesting to me because I’m doing the translations. (Please ignore me if I’m boring you).

Just to keep the rambling down a bit, some of the lines were done as adaptation (using similar meaning phrases in English) rather than to directly translate with long explanation.

Agust D (BTS) – Daechwita (English Translation and Ramblings)

Track 02 of D-2 Album

Produced by Agust D, EL CAPITXN

The music video is awesome an their subtitles are really really good too.  BigHit is getting better with CC’s over time.  Mine are gonna be more literal, which might be a bit choppy sounding, but hopefully it’s still fun.

My blog is mostly rambling about the lyrics, without going much into detail about the MV itself.  But I’m really looking forward to reading/watching the theories and explanations from other ARMYs about this MV as it’s so complex and interesting.

I actually don’t think these ramblings are all that essential to understand the lyrics, since the lyrics are fairly straight forward.  But for those who like to delve in to random things, here are my ramblings, a bit longer than I had expected….

BTS – Black Swan (English Translation and Ramblings)

Track 06 of Map Of The Soul: 7 album.

Watch the Music Video and Art Film!  They have quite good subs.

Written by:
Pdogg, RM, August Rigo, Vince Nantes, Clyde Kelly

 

I think the lyrics to this is fairly straight forward, but I translated Jamais Vu and it just didn’t seem complete without doing Black Swan as well, since the two songs share some imagery.   So here it is. :)

As it says in the beginning of their Art Film, this is based on the quote from Martha Graham:

“a dancer dies twice  – once when they stop dancing and this first death is the more painful.”

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BTS – Jamais Vu (English Translation and Ramblings)

Track 06 on MOTS: Persona album and Track 04 on MOTS: 7 album.

Written by:
Marcus McCoan, Owen Roberts, Matty Thomson, Max Lynedoch Graham, Camilla Anne Stewart, RM, j-hope, Hitman Bang

I’ve always liked this song, especially its lyrics.  The game metaphor that runs throughout the song was really nice.  It’s strange that games resemble real life so much – you overcome one level of struggles and then another harder level appears.  And you repeat…

In addition, now I have a new appreciation for this song after listening to the Map of the Soul:  7 album, especially the song “Black Swan.”    Both songs talk about the heart no longer beating, and the overlap of the imagery is only a little bit, but enough to give the album a feeling of cohesive continuation.  It’s also interesting that the two songs deal with this idea very differently.