A Song of My Heart - Xiao Zhan - English Lyrics (that fit the melody!)
I’ve been working on a set of lyrics for a few of The Untamed character songs. They’re in English, and they fit the melody of the song so that English-speaking fans can sing along, as the translations often pack in super long sentences that don’t lend themselves to the melody - a testament to what an image-rich and concise language Chinese is!
So, here are some notes on how the English lyrics work when compared with the original Chinese:
The syllables for the English lyrics were super restricted in the given melody. English is not a language capable of fitting a lot of meaning into a short line of lyrics - as such, the lyrics have been taken from an existing fan translation into English (credited below) and then further adapted to fit the melody with English that sounds natural and is intuitive to sing.
I have tried my best to keep the meaning as close to the original as possible, but it couldn’t always be done exactly, and naturally some meaning will have been altered or lost. As mentioned before, it’s as much of an adaptation as it is a translation and required language that would fit into the melody, could also be sung, and that matched the meaning as close to the original as possible.
If anyone wants to put these lyrics into a lyric video, just put the following credits in the video. I hope you all enjoy them!
Lyrics below.
Written by: Yi Zhe Lian Xiao Zui Qing Jiu
Performed by: Xiao Zhan
Based on translation by: Chiisaineko Chan
Written and adapted in English for the original melody by: Lois Zoppi
VERSE 1
My rows against the lake, I sleep among the mist
Under starry skies willow leaves find the Earth’s edge
And like a falling kite my past comes back to me
Drifting to the sky is every single version of me
BRIDGE
From the roof above, flowers cloak the street below
With the wine sweeter than a bloody sword
My heart’s bravery burns brighter than the doubts I face
In fire and bloodshed, faithful I stay
CHORUS
Fighting on the rooftops I found beauty by the sword
All those fleeting joys became stories passed from son to son
Will I ever know if I’m just dreaming or awake?
It’s impossible to tell life apart from the stories
VERSE 2
Nightless death has made every truth become a lie
Every sword music of life’s promises
Every rumour dies against my heart’s sincere desires
A thousand people will choose their own side
CHORUS
Teasing at the clouds I fell in love just with a glance
Pulling at the strings brings the memory closer back to me
Watching flowers drift down, is this real or just a dream?
As we walk the Earth, all we hear of is our stories
MIDDLE 8
Words don’t need to speak for my heart
I’ll play my flute beneath the stars
Reputations won’t take the place
Of the sweetest wine and being free
CHORUS
I embraced the world and had the “branch of spring” nearby
All our fleeting joys became stories passed from son to son
for some reason in my (cursed? blessed?) sims game i am able to invite the grim reaper to parties, and now he regularly shows up even if i don’t invite him. he often brings ceviche. normal quality. he’s a decent party guest except for the fact that the only interaction you can have with him is to slow dance. naturally i made one of my sims slow dance with him, which gave him the notification ‘we have a lot in common! id love to get to know you better’. so anyway, a couple of days and parties later, it’s 6 am and my sim gets a phone call. it’s death. he wants to know if i want to go on a date.
naturally my sim accepts. death takes him to the school stadium in the rain and stands outside, unable to be interacted with, while a thought bubble containing my sim’s face pops up over his head for a simlish hour, over and over again, carrying a rainbow umbrella while my sim sits on the ground and considers the hollowness of life.
remembering that all i can do is slow dance with him, i drive him to moonlight point, where there’s a couch and a record player, and i slow dance with him for about 5 hours. every 2 seconds he steps on my sims’ foot, to the point where it was hard to get decent pictures of them actually slow dancing.
after a while my sim got hungry so i let him go drink some juice, and death went and started reading a book on a couch. i went and sat next to him, wondering if there would be any new interactions since you get different ones when you sit on a couch or bench, and lo and behold i discovered, not only can you slow dance with death, you can also cuddle with him. naturally i did so because the quality of dates is determined by the number of positive social interactions you have with someone, and slow dancing unfortunately doesn’t give you any of those, but cuddling does. anyway, once you start the cuddling animation, you get fancy new options like kiss and make out, so my sim spent the next six hours making out with death on a shitty couch at the beach in a thunderstorm while listening to sim!bastille.
after a couple dozen make out sessions, a single option appeared under the Romantic… heading: ‘take a romantic photo together’. this only shows up once you’re a romantic interest of someone. i have now successfully wooed death. knowing that selecting this option would make death stand up from the couch and i likely wouldn’t be able to get him to sit again, i decided to end the date at the tender hour of 3 am (i guess death doesn’t sleep) with a kiss. it takes a while- death can’t seem to figure out where to stand or how to walk around a foosball table- but eventually i get my picture.
but apparently death doesnt like having his picture taken.
i try to slow dance again with him, but the option has disappeared. i have committed an irreparable social faux pas. i sit on the couch again in the hopes that death will resume reading his book and i can cuddle with him again, but instead he stands in front of the bookshelf for an hour. i take a break, leaving my sim to his own devices for a while while i check in on my other sims, since one of them just went into labour. i deal with that. when i return, i find my sim drinking juice in silence with death still standing in front of the bookshelf, but he’s changed into this sick new outfit in the interim.
beekeeper chic. finally, at 6 am, death decides he’s had enough. he will never forgive me for my social blunder of taking a selfie while lipping at his shadowy veil. he opens up his rainbow umbrella and leaves.
the date doesn’t end until i get home. i receive no date notification. death doesn’t even deign to let me know how badly i fucked up. all i have to remember my 24 hour gay liaison with one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse is a single selfie. i hang it over my sims bed, a constant reminder to him that he has achieved ultimate goth status, and a warning to the others he dates: i have kissed death, and he never called me back.
also it’s a shame they didn’t manage to work in marius’s whole passionate foot-in-mouth pro-napoleon speech, because if that were part of the musical they could have marius tear open the front of his shirt at the end of it, and then when combeferre does his “to be free” mic drop in response, he rips his whole shirt completely off and dramatically flings it to the side like a male stripper, and marius is super intimidated
