The Mortals Behind China’s ‘God Songs’

Re:The Mortals Behind China’s ‘God Songs’ by theseadroid on Thursday December 12, 2019 @03:08PM (#21775810)

OT but I find the translation from 神曲 to God Songs very inaccurate. The word 神 has many meanings in Chinese other than referring to gods. Some related expression such as 这玩意真神 or 这人真神 would be more properly translated into: this thing/person is enthralling/magical/enchanting/hypnotizing.

神曲 would be the kind of songs that are so hypnotizing that you can't direct your attention elsewhere. And those songs might not necessarily be nice songs. They are referred to as 魔性洗脑神曲 sometimes, which is something like enchanted brainwashing hypnotizing songs in English. One of the first songs being associated with this term is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7U0EirV2Hw

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Re:The Mortals Behind China’s ‘God Songs’ by rococode on Thursday December 12, 2019 @03:54PM (#21776342)

The Japanese definition for 神曲 (kamikyoku) is just "incredible song" which I think is probably the intended modern Chinese definition in these contexts (I speak both).

I'm not sure if it's an example of wasei-kango [1] (Japanese-invented words being incorporated into Chinese, i.e. "phone", "bicycle", etc.), but 神曲 has been used to describe online videos of Japanese songs for at least 10 years with little descriptive meaning beyond "this is a great song" (for example, this medley of the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon soundtrack from 2007 [2]).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasei-kango

[2] https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm1396236

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Re:The Mortals Behind China’s ‘God Songs’ by rangibaby on Thursday December 12, 2019 @06:31PM (#21777694)

Using 神 like that is the same as “god-tier” in English

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Re:The Mortals Behind China’s ‘God Songs’ by jacobwilliamroy on Thursday December 12, 2019 @03:22PM (#21776000)

I thought maybe the author got that translation from google translate, but then I put it into google translate and got back "divine comedy"

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Re:The Mortals Behind China’s ‘God Songs’ by yorwba on Thursday December 12, 2019 @03:29PM (#21776084)

Yup, that's the Chinese title of Dante's work: https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%A5%9E%E6%9B%B2

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Re:The Mortals Behind China’s ‘God Songs’ by otabdeveloper2 on Thursday December 12, 2019 @03:51PM (#21776302)

The Greek 'daemon' seems like a pretty accurate translation for '神'.

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Re:The Mortals Behind China’s ‘God Songs’ by schoen on Thursday December 12, 2019 @04:18PM (#21776598)

Strictly, daemon is Latin; a better transliteration of the Greek into English is "daimon".

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%B4%CE%B1%CE%AF%CE%BC%CF%8...

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Re:The Mortals Behind China’s ‘God Songs’ by Voyiatzis on Thursday December 12, 2019 @05:42PM (#21777393)

A Latin transliteration of the Ancient Greek, as “δαίμων” engendered “daimon.”

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Re:The Mortals Behind China’s ‘God Songs’ by munificent on Thursday December 12, 2019 @06:44PM (#21777782)

This is pretty close to the English term "earworm".

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Re:The Mortals Behind China’s ‘God Songs’ by ralph84 on Thursday December 12, 2019 @04:55PM (#21776969)

I don't know Chinese, but my reading was a mistranslation of Idol as in the various Idol TV shows.

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