Lounge Lizard Foreign Language Speaking Exercises

Lounge Lizard foreign language speaking exercises…

It is probably because I am a bit obsessive compulsive that I still spend some time every day studying Thai. But that means that I have to constantly find new and interesting ways to work on my language studies. Writing these posts on WLT forces me to think about Thai, and a new blog I have been working on, Thai Vocabulary in the News, is also a great exercise for me. Now I think I have found a new learning method.

To the chagrin of my neighbors and my long suffering wife, I have been learning to play the piano and fantasize about becoming a lounge-lizard singer of popular songs. The other day, while banging away and belting out a new song I had one of those “Ah ha” moments. Why not try translating this song into Thai as a language learning exercise?

The more I thought about it the more I realized that every time we attempt to speak a foreign language we are usually translating into it. And usually when we are listening to a foreign language we are translating back.

Except for the advanced language learner most people don’t have that switch in our heads that allows us to start thinking in the target language until it just flows, without having to translate first. So learning all the ins and outs of translating into a foreign language would be great meaningful practice. And songs are fun to work with.

When I sat down to do my first song translation I realized how fascinating and multi-faceted translating into a foreign language can be. You don’t have to be an advanced student of Thai to try this method. Just choose a song that corresponds to your language level.

Songs are a really good challenge for a translator. They are quite often idiomatic. In our native language we often think idiomatically. This becomes a problem when we try to render what is in our heads in our native language into a target language since one thing we should never do is try to translate an idiom word-for-word.

Taking a song and trying to render it into a foreign language is great training for us because it forces us to break down our native language idioms into what they really mean in normal standardized language. If we are lucky sometimes there is even a corresponding idiom in the target language. This makes translating songs really good training for real world foreign language speaking.

Below I have some examples of songs I have attempted to translate, and the challenges we face when we try this.

Note to native Thai speakers: I’ll be trying my translations here. If you come up with something different please share it with us. It would be great to see how you would say it.

Let’s start with an easy song.

Mary Had a Little Lamb…

Mary Had a Little Lamb, little lamb, little lamb
Mary Had a Little Lamb
His fleece was white as snow.

First things first. Translate the title “Mary had a little lamb”.

Mary is “Mary”. That was easy.

We can translate the verb “had” as มี /mee/ or for the past tense เคยมี /koie-​mee/. A lamb is a baby sheep. Sheep is แกะ ​/gàe/; lamb ลูกแกะ /lôok-​gàe/. One word for “little” is น้อย /nói/ but since this is an animal we can use ตัวน้อย /dtua nói/.

“Mary had a little lamb” = Mary เคยมีลูกแกะตัวน้อย

But there is something missing here. Really the English word “had” in this case has a little more meaning behind it. It really means that Mary was “raising” the little fella. She was feeding him and taking care of him.

Let’s translate “had” to contain these subtleties. I think it should be เลี้ยง /líang/ “to raise”. A “domesticated animal”, or a “pet” of which this little lamb is one, is สัตว์เลี้ยง /sàt líang/ “animal that we raise”. Note: it sounds better without the past indicator of เคย /koie/, so we’ll just drop the past tense which isn’t required in Thai.

Putting all that together the title becomes Mary เลี้ยงลูกแกะตัวน้อย “Mary raised a little lamb”.

The rest of the song repeats the title and then adds:

“His fleece was white as snow.”

“Fleece” is ขนแกะ /kǒn-​gàe/, or the hair or fur of a sheep. Since we know we are talking about a sheep let’s just drop แกะ /gàe/ and just keep ขน /kǒn/. “White” is ขาว /kǎao/. “Snow” is หิมะ /hì-​má/. “As” really means “to be like” or “the same as” which in Thai would be เหมือน /měuan/.

“His fleece was white as snow” = ขนขาวเหมือนหิมะ

But this sort of lacks a certain flow. Let’s add a few words to make it flow better.

Instead of “his” fleece, Thai needs to use “its” fleece. That would be ขนมัน /kǒn man/. And although it isn’t required we really could use a “be” verb somewhere, like คือ /keu/.

And since the term “white as snow” means “really white”, and the term “as snow” is an English intensifier of the word white, we can use the Thai intensifier จ๊วก juak (specific for the word ขาว kǎao) as in ขาวจ๊วก /kǎao juak/ “really white”. This puts a little more emphasis on the word “white”. That gives us ขนมันคือขาวจ๊วกเหมือนหิมะ “Its fleece was very white, like snow” which flows much better.

Here is my translation of “Mary had a Little Lamb”:

Mary เลี้ยงลูกแกะตัวน้อย

Mary เลี้ยงลูกแกะตัวน้อย ตัวน้อย ตัวน้อย
Mary เลี้ยงลูกแกะตัวน้อย
ขนมันคือขาวจ๊วกเหมือนหิมะ

Now for the song that I was belting away when I had the “Ah ha” moment. It’s one of the shortest, and one of my favorite Beatles’ songs.

I Will…

Who knows how long I’ve loved you
You know I love you still.
Will I wait a lonely lifetime
If you want me to I will.

The title “I Will”.

If we translate this we get ฉันจะ /chǎn jà/. But you can’t do that in Thai. The word จะ /jà/, which translates to “will” or “shall” isn’t a stand-alone word. It is simply a future indicator. It needs to be followed by a verb. So we need to think about what Paul is going to do.

And from the song it is obvious that he is going to “wait for” the person he is singing to. We can then add the words คอย /koi/ “wait for” and คุณ /kun/ “you”. And “I Will” becomes ฉันจะ(คอย คุณ) “I will (Wait for You)”, parentheses added to keep the original in mind.

“Who knows how long I’ve loved you”

“Who” would be ใคร /krai/ but I don’t really feel that in the song this is a question. I think it is more like “No one knows” so I came up with ไม่มีใครรู้ /mâi mee krai róo/. “How long” = นานแค่ไหน /naan kâe năi/. “I’ve love you” = ฉันรักคุณ /chăn rák kun/. No need for the present perfect to be translated. Giving us ไม่มีใครรู้ฉันรักคุณนานแค่ไหน “No one knows how long I have loved you”.

You know I love you still.

“Know” is รู้ /rúu/ or ทราบ /sâap/. ทราบ seems more formal so I’ll stick with รู้. But คุณรู้ /kun róo/ by itself sounds a little hard so I like คุณรู้แล้ว /kun róo láew/ which means “you already know” and doesn’t change the meaning but softens it a bit. “I love you still” in normal speak is “I still love you” which would be ฉันยังรักคุณ /chăn yang rák kun/. “You know I love you still” becomes คุณรู้แล้วฉันยังรักคุณ “You already know that I still love you”

“Will I wait a lonely lifetime”

“Will”. From my thinking about this song I don’t think this is a simple future tense word. It seems to have the meaning that he is asking if she is going to make him wait for a lifetime before she responds to him. That would be something like “Are you going to make me …?” which would be คุณจะทำให้ฉันต้อง… /Kun jà tam hâi chăn dtông …/

“Wait is รอ /ror/ or คอย /koi/ even better to use the Thai double verb of รอคอย /ror-​koi/. “Lifetime” is made up of “life” ชีวิต /chee-wít/ and “all of” ตลอด /dtà-lòt/ as in “all of my life” ตลอดชีวิต /dtà-lòt chee-wít/

“Lonely” is เหงา /ngǎo/ And instead of describing “lifetime” as being lonely we describe our “waiting” as being lonely. So we need to put this after the verb รอคอย /ror-​koi/ as in รอคอยเหงา /ror-​koi /ngǎo/ “wait alone”. And this is a question so we tag on the question word หรือ /rěu/ at the end. Giving us “Will I wait a lonely lifetime” = คุณจะทำให้ฉันต้องรอคอยเหงาตลอดชีวิตหรือ “Are you going to make me wait lonely for my whole life?”

“If you want me to I will”

If = หาก /hàak/
“Want me to”, “Want” = ต้องการ /dtông-​gaan/. When you are using this in the case of she wanting me to do something you get ต้องการให้ฉัน /dtông-​gaan hâi chăn/. The song just says “want me to …” and leaves the verb unspoken. But in the translation into Thai we kind of need to say it. What is it she wants him to do? “Wait”. So we get คุณต้องการให้ฉันรอคอย. And then we are back to “I will” but that would be repetitive. How about we say something like “Well. If you want me to wait I’ll go along with that.” So we can say something like ฉันก็ยอม /chăn gôr yom/. The word ยอม /yom/ meaning “to be compliant”.

“If you want me to I will” becomes หากคุณต้องการให้ฉันรอคอยฉันก็ยอม “If you want me to wait then I’ll go along with that.”

And my complete translation of the first verse is:

ฉันจะ(คอย คุณ)

ไม่มีใครรู้ฉันรักคุณนานแค่ไหน
คุณรู้แล้วฉันยังรักคุณ
คุณจะทำให้ฉันต้องรอคอยเหงาตลอดชีวิตหรือ
หากคุณต้องการให้ฉันรอคอยฉันก็ยอม

You can see that when translating a song we first have to think about what the song means, what all the idioms and left-out-words are trying to say. Then we can render it into the target language. This is why I like the term “interpret” rather than “translate” since we really can’t do a word-for-word code switch. The mental exercise becomes more like Step 1, “native language words”; Step 2, “meaning of the native language words”; Step 3, “target language words”.

And in fact, these are the same steps we need to take whenever we attempt communicating in a foreign language – that is until we get to the level where we can eliminate the first 2 steps and simply think in the target language.

Hopefully, we are all on the road to getting there.

Try interpreting your own favorite song. You can just start with song titles. How about this one from Jackson Browne for a starter, “Running on Empty”? or how about this from the Eagles, “I’m going down the road trying to loosen my load I got seven women on my mind.” I have my answers and will share them with you but want to hear what you come up with first. Drop us a comment with your answers. I’m looking forward to reading them. I’ll bet we get lots of different ones.

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Hugh Leong
Retire 2 Thailand
Retire 2 Thailand: Blog
eBooks in Thailand
Thai Vocabulary in the News

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