Catch Me Catch You: Part 5
Another easy start, with a line mostly in English.
そう Nice To Meet You Good To See You きっと
Simply put, そう means “so”. Easy enough. And きっと is “surely” or “certainly”.
“So, nice to meet you, good to see you, certainly.”
Bootleg translation: “Yes! it’s nice to meet you, good to see you, I’m sure.”
Licensed translation: “Yes, nice to meet you, good to see you, I’m sure of it.”
I’m just going to bow out of this one and move on…
私の想い あなたのハートに飛んで飛んで飛んでいけ
わたしのおもい あなたのハートにとんでとんでとんでいけ
A repetition of words makes this less work than it might at first appear.
私 (わたし) is I, me, myself; this is basic stuff even for a beginner.
The word 想い (おもい) is one of the most evil words ever. It has so many similar meanings and different meanings depending on its situation. It can refer to ones mind, ones heart, ones feelings, emotion, ones wishes or hopes or desires, etc.
The particle -no combines these two as “my feelings”. Or “my emotions”, “my hopes”, etc.
Another basic word, あなた is “you”. And ハート is the English word, “heart”. The particle -no combines again, for “your heart”. The particle -ni can mean “in”, “to”, or “at”, depending on context.
The thrice repeated 飛んで (とんで) is an expression for “fly”.
Finally, いけ probably comes from the verb いく, or “go”. I don’t know what form puts it as “いけ”, but I’ve heard it used before in the same context as the -te form of いく would be.
Putting together, I get the following:
“My feelings go fly, fly, flying into your heart.”
This comes from the pieces “my feelings” and “go fly(ing) to your heart”.
For comparisons, the bootleg translation is “My feelings to your heart will go fly, fly, fly!” This is actually close to what I almost went with, but I decided on moving the “fly” to the middle for a smoother reading. I’m not content with using “go fly fly flying”, though. Continuing to show what a professional translation looks like, the licensed translation goes, “Let my feelings for you fly, fly, fly away to your heart.” It’s like poetry. I think I missed out on the “いけ” part by using “go” whereas this translation uses “let” and “(fly) away” together.
One final word finishes the song.
コ・イ・シ・テ・ル！
こい (with the kanji 恋) means “love” (differently from the prior used スキ).
してる is a difficult one if you don’t know it comes from している. The base verb is する, “do”. The -teiru conjugation shows the that verb is in its present progressive (happening presenting and continuing to happen) form, “doing”.
Love + doing = loving. “I’m (being) in love.” “I’m loving.”
The bootleg translation is “I’m in love with you!” The licensed translation is “I’m in love!”
That concludes the short version of the opening theme song, the version used at the start of the earlier episodes in Cardcaptor Sakura. And yet, I don’t feel I’ve picked up anything. The sentences are fragments, pieces of song. I don’t think I’ll put the time into translating any of the other songs line by line. Listening to Catch You Catch Me, you’d think I’d recognize every word as it’s spoken, but I don’t. I need to add the words I learned to my spaced repetition review, but first I want to see how well I can do picking up words and phrases from the episodes. This is going to be difficult without Japanese subtitles.
