English vs Chinese

[BrazilianGuy]

Hi!

Another day I was downloading some songs from Shareazaa and I could find a very interesting song "Gangsta's Paradise", I think most of us have heard it before, but for my surprise it was in korean!

I couldn't understand the words, but a korean friend of mine heard it and he could confirm the lyrics matching with the original english song, wow... it was nice and song was interesting to listen with korean words.

So I went to Shareazaa and I tried to find other songs in chineses and I couldn't find anything, I would like to find original english songs transalated to chinese.

I'm just opening this thread to start a list with songs that you guys have possible found on the internet and wish to publish here, it could be interesting and help other like me to find chinese versions.

[Ferno]

chinese doesn't work very well with modern music

[Outofin]

A funny avatar! I love it!

It's very common that singers don't write music and sing a same song over and over again with different lyrics, because they release a new album every 6 months or so. So you will have a very long list of English/Japanese songs translated into Chinese. I don't think serious musicians would do this. From what I'm familiar, Zheng Jun (郑钧) sings Coldplay's Yellow in his album ZJ. And he did it very well.

[roddy]

Off the top of my head I can only think of 2, though I'm sure there are more (I suspect we may have had a discussion about this before)

F4 did a Chinese version of Coldplay's Yellow. Can't remember if the lyrics matched up, and I'm not sure of the Chinese name.

Wang Fei's Cantonese version of the Cranberries' Dreams, 梦中人, which is featured in Chongqing Express as she's cleaning up the cop's apartment.

Roddy

PS If anyone sees Wang Fei, can they remind her she hasn't come round to secretly clean MY apartment. It's been a few months, and things are a bit untidy. . .

PPS Just noticed Outofin's bit about Coldplay's Yellow - and there I was thinking F4 were original.

[BrazilianGuy]

Thanks guys!

So we have a version of Cold Play's Yellow and Cranberries, very good!

Did we have a discussion like this before? Oh... I tried to find it here and I couldn't, anyway, let's keep talking and filling this topic, I'd like to discover more songs and their respectives singers to search on the internet using shareaza or other sources to download them.

Thanks!

[BrazilianGuy]

chinese doesn't work very well with modern music

why not? is there any particular reason?

I'm my opinion chinese people sing beautifully western songs.

[Lu]

There's a Cantonese version of the Ketchup Song. Crazy.

There's also a Shanghainese version of P.I.M.P., called 'I don't know'. I like it much better than the original. I found it on shanghaining.com.

Wang Fei has a song called Leng zhan, according to my cd booklet it was originally by Tori Amos.

Edit: And of course Tang Chao (Tang Dynasty) has a great version of the International (the communist song, am not sure of the English name): Guojige on their album Meng hui Tangchao.

Roddy, are you sure F4 also sung Yellow, or was it Zheng Jun's version on a Liuxing huayuan CD?

[roddy]

It could well have been - I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference at the time, and it was on a copied cassette. I apologise to Zheng Jun for the insulting mistake.

Roddy

[Ferno]

why not? is there any particular reason?

I'm my opinion chinese people sing beautifully western songs.

but there's the tones issue' date=' namely the singer doesn't pronounce the tones of the words because they have to sing to the song's melody. You're supposed to be able to understand the songs from context, but if Chinese doesn't have that much syllables in the first place, and then you take out tones, and problems still exist [i']with[/i] tones..? (as we see from the "embarassing moments" thread..) Maybe this is why most popular Chinese songs are the slow variety and use simpler, repetitive language (ie play a mandarin pop-song and count how many times you hear 'wo ai ni')

maybe someone knows more about this?

[skylee]

This thread is relevant -> Singing in chinese??

[Ferno]

yep, that's pretty much exactly what I said, even down to the "wo ai ni" example with making lyrics simple! Didn't know about the Cantonese-tone matching thing, but that's not the majority (esp: if we're talking about Mandarin) and of course won't apply to Chinese remakes of Western songs.