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View Full Version : Promote Alizee with Dual French/English Subtitled Videos


zingy
12-29-2015, 06:30 PM
Promote Alizee with videos with dual French/English subtitles. Most people will not listen to a song if they do not understand the words. With dual language lyrics anyone can easily understand the French language, especially since many words are similar. Send to friends, post on your Facebook.

A good song to start with is Blonde because it is easy to understand.

More dual language lyric videos here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLOGvUn51HA7iVgUL2yFS6g/videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRmHfZ4GplU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOE7ARFpckg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-31hqswa9I

Scruffydog777
12-30-2015, 12:01 AM
That's a great idea zingy but I think it needs to be improved on quite a bit. I have a few projects that I started months ago and now that I'm back out of work for 2 months, I hope to finish up and there is one I'd like to start up and that is what you are doing here and that is promote Alizee by using French and English lyrics.

But if you look at some of the subtitles from where you got these videos, these songs don't flow smoothly at all lyric wise. I made a video of my own liking for the song Alcaline which I added both English and French subtitles, but I did it as closed captions.

When I did this video, there were very few English translations for the song and even with my limited amount of French, I could see they didn't do a very good job of it. Translating songs from French to English can be very difficult for even someone's who's fluent in both languages at least for the purpose of adding them as subtitles to a song. First there is a fact that some lines are just very difficult to translate period. But with song subtitlles, you want if possible for the English part that match up poeticly with the French words, but that's often impossible. But the main thing you want with a song is to have a story that flows smoothly and tells the original story in an easily understandable way.

Look at some of the lines from these songs you posted.

JPVA "Rather a long stay, but not (a) always (total[all]days)"

I mean holy crap Batman, even the Battranslator can't figure the English part out, when all I think it needed to be said was " A long stay, but not a forever"

There's another line that translated "If it's not for the life, so be it, then say yes."

which they should have dropped that first "life" out of that would have been "If it's not for life, so be it, then say yes", which I'm sure is what they meant but what they came up with did not flow smoothly and that's something you really need for these translations. Confusion in any one line can cause the story of the whole song to be lost.

Sometimes in my projects, I'm prepared to use poetic license I guess you call it to change the meaning a "little" bit of some lines to get that smoothness of a story, but it worked out that I didn't really have to with Alcaline. The English story flowed well and for the most part, I think it was true to the song.

So what I'd like to do is come up with good English stories for these songs that will be as true as possible to the French words, then add them as closed captions, rather than Subtitles. That way if you find out you made a mistake it's easily corrected.

Another thing I'd like to do to is add Spanish closed captions too, but I don't know an Alizee fan who speaks Spanish and is willing to do something like this.

Again look at my video below. The toughest part was to translate in the beginning that she was putting on a headset and clicking on a button to listen to music to escape the world she was in. But I think it came out as well as could be expected and smoothly tells the story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI1-37rXM74

zingy
12-30-2015, 11:19 AM
Two more I found:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8t9Q9pV1AM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyuwWgrDbsQ

Scruffydog777
12-30-2015, 11:56 AM
Thinking about this overnight, I have to go back to one of the lessons "they" learned when they first put out some of the songs that had both a French and an English version.
They couldn't do a direct translation I'm sure because the English words didn't sound any where's near as good as the French one, so they had to rewrite the "story" to make it sound better and that rewritten song in some lines didn't really make sense and were laughed at.

So if you're objective is to promote, you again have to come up with a good story, hopefully as true to the original French version as you can, but if you have to deviate a small amount to make it work, then so be it and there should be nothing in brackets or parenthesis . If any person who wasn't that familiar with Alizée saw those subtitles in the song JPVA in the first post. They'd probably get a headache from trying to figure that mess out and would never try it again so it's important to get their attention on the first pass.

Ray4AJ
12-30-2015, 07:04 PM
This reminds me... back on the 19th we briefly chatted about this 'Learn things' channel in the Chatbox. This image was at the end of one of the Alizée videos there, but I don't remember which one.

http://i.imgur.com/RN2aRDq.png

zingy
01-02-2016, 01:10 PM
I do not believe that this thread should of been moved to translations. It is about primarily about promoting Alizee, not translations.

Scruffydog777
01-02-2016, 01:19 PM
I agree 100% zingy. It's kind of a gray area that overlaps promoting and translations but your opening post said "promote" and I certainly think it's main idea is promoting Alizée by putting out videos with English translations that I think if done correctly will be much more likely to capture new fans, if they can understand the story. I think it will be moved back. If not, I'll discuss it with the mods or if they so choose to keep it here, maybe they can discuss why. It's not an easy job trying to keep these posts in the proper thread, because one thing that's been characteristic of this forum and it's easy going nature is we drift off topic all the time and threads will drift off in 2 or 3 different directions, but like I said, I think this belongs under promoting Alizée.

zingy
05-01-2016, 11:39 AM
Voici un autre

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIk3APLFSpQ

Scruffydog777
05-01-2016, 01:31 PM
One point about this song is the line where she's telling him (Is it a him?) to devour her with your (his?) eys, my princess. I'm assuming this wolf is a male so she should be saying devour me with your eyes my prince? This is a MF song so who knows? But Alizee definitely seems to be saying "princess", so I think it might be more of an interpretation thing so what she may actually be saying is devour me with your eyes, your princess.
I like the notes he put in red at the top of the video giving some explanations of the song and things in it.

I didn't like the picture at the end. I think he could've pictured the dangers of a girl alone in the woods in a less graphic manner and the audio quite frankly with that picture was awful.
So I think the basic idea of what he was doing was great. It went beyond just translating the song, but it needed some changes imo.

Ray4AJ
05-01-2016, 03:50 PM
Every Alizée translation video out there on YouTube is promoting Alizée, and this thread belongs with all the rest of the song translation threads.

It will get just as much exposure here, and potential French Foreign Legion folks will still be able to see it.

Scruffydog777
05-01-2016, 06:58 PM
As far as the translation videos, they make a nice attempt of what they say they are trying to do, but as with the discrepancies I pointed out in a song that is relatively easy to interpret, they fall short of "teaching", someone who is seriously interested in learning the nuances of the French language. I think they would maybe have to offer the video such as Gourmandises in the way they did it, but follow it with a line by line description to really be able to benefit someone who's trying to learn the language. As far as if it should be with promotion or translation, I don't really know. It's something I never really worried about in here. If we're not sure, we can post it in both.

alizeefan
05-02-2016, 11:35 AM
One point about this song is the line where she's telling him (Is it a him?) to devour her with your (his?) eys, my princess. I'm assuming this wolf is a male so she should be saying devour me with your eyes my prince? This is a MF song so who knows? But Alizee definitely seems to be saying "princess", so I think it might be more of an interpretation thing so what she may actually be saying is devour me with your eyes, your princess.
I like the notes he put in red at the top of the video giving some explanations of the song and things in it.

I didn't like the picture at the end. I think he could've pictured the dangers of a girl alone in the woods in a less graphic manner and the audio quite frankly with that picture was awful.
So I think the basic idea of what he was doing was great. It went beyond just translating the song, but it needed some changes imo.

My interpretation is that she is singing in that last few words of that line and not the whole song - for/from the wolf or better to say not singular but multiple - " wolves " perspective . It is possible that she is singing princes as in not singular prince or princess , to say the ending of the word being sung does not seem singular but perhaps is . . . All though it is of my opinion again it is simply being said as the wolves perspective and the comma is in the wrong place as it should be one word before .

Now i'd like to point out that hmmm say wolf in sheeps clothing - wether it be little red riding hood maybe the wolf is the girl and the wolves are the ones may seem the danger yet when the story unfolds in the end it is the wolves who are the predator turned into the prey . So perhaps the real wolf is riding hood ? In this manner , from lil reds eyes as in what she is seeing through the wolves eyes to mirror her own .

Sorry if that is confusing , to say it simply as with many songs and MF . . a well writ Double entendre .