AMVs in others language than English or Japanese

[Roccket]

soon i'll do an AMV on a creole song (the language of the island where i come from). it will be a world premiere for sure !!

Use La Compagnie Créole and you're dead XD

[Pie Row Maniac]

Tainted Donuts and To Be Excel come to mind.

[SarahtheBoring]

I didn't mean it to come out that way. I certainly don't elevate english over other languages but the vast majority of the people on this site speak english. About treating it like an instrument the brain is set up to focus on the meaning of words if you understand them and it's hard to get past that, while in other languages you can just focus on the beuty of the sound.

Understood. But "hard to get past that" is an individual thing - and so is focusing on the beauty of the sound. Once I've read a translation or a subtitle of a song in a language I don't speak, it starts "subtitling" itself in my head anyway. (Especially if I know a few words here and there to anchor it.) So unless it's completely untranslated, even in the vid description, and I have no idea what on earth it says, chances are I'm not going to hear it as an instrument. That's how my brain works, personally. Everyone is different, and that's important to know.

If you take the tactic of ignoring or not ignoring the lyrics, regardless of the language, you just have to know that viewers are going to experience that in different ways. There's no one-size-fits-all solution. I think an editor should go with whatever s/he wants on that point, but it's still good to realize that not everyone's perception is the same when it comes to that.

Besides, there are probably going to be native speakers of that language on the org, with its more international scope these days (at least if you pick a widely spoken language). So you can't bank on the viewers not knowing what the words mean because of that factor, too.

Certainly nothing wrong with taking that approach, I'm just saying that it's not a safe assumption to assume that everyone works the same way or is going to see it the same way.

[Arigatomina]

Once I've read a translation or a subtitle of a song in a language I don't speak, it starts "subtitling" itself in my head anyway. (Especially if I know a few words here and there to anchor it.) So unless it's completely untranslated, even in the vid description, and I have no idea what on earth it says, chances are I'm not going to hear it as an instrument.

That's how I tend to do it, too. ^_^;

I can only 'ignore' if I avoid any and all translations of the song. I've gone out of my way to do that with at least one song, but I didn't worry about the lack of lyric sync. I warned in the vid description that I was 'making up the meaning', so no one would get it and be confused or suprised. I don't see any reason to feel as if you're hurting the viewers by ignoring or using lyric sync. I know *you* don't make your vids for them, so it doesn't really matter, right?

Me, I've done lyric sync a lot in the last year. Only one person recognized it in my Japanese vids (Paulo - Katsumi amvs). The rest were english speakers for whom the sync was entirely lost on them. I even went so far as to do lyric sync to a Russian song (I don't know a word of Russian, at least with Japanese I knew the lyrics well enough to sing the songs). Why did I do it? Because I felt like it. And only one person (Otohiko) recognized that there was lyric sync. Didn't matter if it was lost on the rest, I knew it was there, I wanted it there.

My point...er... If you ignore the lyrics in favor of 'English-only' speakers, you'll 'hurt' those who speak the other languages. If you ignore the 'singing is an instrument' and do lyric sync, you'll 'hurt' those for whom the words are meaningless sound (leaving them out of the 'meaning' of the vid). Either way, someone's not going to be satisfied. Do we as creators really try to satisfy everyone? No. So it's good either way you go.

[bum]

My point...er... If you ignore the lyrics in favor of 'English-only' speakers, you'll 'hurt' those who speak the other languages. If you ignore the 'singing is an instrument' and do lyric sync, you'll 'hurt' those for whom the words are meaningless sound (leaving them out of the 'meaning' of the vid). Either way, someone's not going to be satisfied. Do we as creators really try to satisfy everyone? No. So it's good either way you go.

If your making a videoa nd your trying to satisfy anyone but yourself then your doing something very wrong. I think if an amv in a foregin language as an instrumental vid, esspecialy if its not in a "major" language.

[Castor Troy]

You know most anime ops never have sequences that even match the lyrics at all

They can show big musclebound men kicking each other's asses when the song is about friendship and love.

[SarahtheBoring]

If your making a videoa nd your trying to satisfy anyone but yourself then your doing something very wrong. I think if an amv in a foregin language as an instrumental vid, esspecialy if its not in a "major" language.

A "major" language? Wow, and you're not even American, with an attitude like that. Impressive. (You're not from a "major" country, so you don't count. - joke, everyone else. JOKE.)

That wasn't the point, bum. You make a video to please yourself; you just have to realize that you don't decide everything for the whole world, and be prepared for any range of comments from viewers. You don't have to even take them to heart if they're pissed off - you just can't act surprised about it.

I think that's the same with a lot of decisions - do what you want, just don't bitch if not everyone likes it. Same goes for overused song/series combos or anything else. Do what you want. Just don't whine about the reaction you get.

[FoxJones]

Not only are there non-english AMVs there's an entire <a href="http://www.animemusicvideos.org/phpBB/v ... project</a> using non-english songs.

And here I was thinking how this would make a nice MEP.. Using songs of as many language as possible I mean.

..and after close look of that project I still am.

[Otohiko]

If your making a videoa nd your trying to satisfy anyone but yourself then your doing something very wrong. I think if an amv in a foregin language as an instrumental vid, esspecialy if its not in a "major" language.

A "major" language? Wow, and you're not even American, with an attitude like that. Impressive.

Well, there ARE a number of statistics, especially since an overwhelming majority of the world's languages have no more than a few thousand speakers... And more than half the world's population speaks one of the dozen 'major' languages.

However, I do think that approaching foreign AMV's as neccesarily instrumental is wrong. If you don't know the language, OK, that's a valid approach. But if you do, then the video might and should hold a different value for you.

***

One of the highlights of the last year for me was discovering that Arigatomina actually did a very good job of Russian lyric sync in Enduring Love (give or take a few things that probably didn't translate well). And I was very glad she didn't treat this as just an instrumental.

***

To me, voice is indeed another instrument, but the fact that vocals can convey meaning explicitly and in a very immideately effective way is not lost on me.

[JCD]

Most of melezov's AMVs use rap-songs in his home-countrys language: Croatian-Yugoslavian.

And they rock. Totally.