Heartland

Alrighty, a bit of a stretch, but I study Japanese for a hobby and was just looking at the word 'kaisha' which means 'company (that you) work for'. In Japanese, this is two characters, which (if this comes out) are

会社

Almost all Japanese characters were borrowed from Chinese, and typically have two readings, one in each language. If you read it one way, you get 'kaisha', if you read it another way, you get 'meeting temple'.

So basically, it would appear the chinese characters for work are based on those for 'temple'. (and that the Japanese think of work as a shrine of some sorts... mmmm)

So.... temple of love? work of love? Labor of love.. the labor being the sisters?

No idea, but seeing Von studied Chinese, and its late, I thought this might be a good time to go for the most-obscue-interpretation-of-a-lyric-award-2005



The lyrics did seem to make a *little* more sense to me after this thought

Now that is obscure

We aim to please

I spent fifteen years studying French. My Italian is discrete, and I can understand Latin. I'm quite fine also in Russian and Serb-Croatian, but I forgot almost everything of the Chinese Mandarin I learnt at the Leeds University as the Chinese people in Europe tend to speak only Cantonese.

I claim the prize for most-pedantic-rebuttal-of-an-obscure-interpretation-of-a-lyric-award-2005


Interestingly babelfish translates 会社 as "Corporation" (Chinese-simp to English).

Regards,

The Lazarus 会社

Yeah, "Corporation" would be a good translation, not far off the mark at all.

Which brings to mind "a love for the corpse for the corporation..."

Ah, the lyrical webs we weave

Also, remember that the lyrics for TOL were written in 1983, along time before that interview took place, so I'm sure things were more familar than. (and Mandarin and Cantonese are written the same scripts)

@nodubmanshouts

I like your style



Anyone interested in languages should direct their browsers at www.omniglot.com ...

nodubmanshouts wrote:Yeah, "Corporation" would be a good translation, not far off the mark at all.

Even more curiously, if you use Babelfish to translate 会社 into English, but choose the original language as "Chinese-trad" instead of "Chinese-simp" then it translates as "Society"

nodubmanshouts wrote:Which brings to mind "a love for the corpse for the corporation..."

and since China was the centre of the Opium trade, back in the heyday of the Empire (and we're all aware of Von's empire/white-suited-diplomat fixation [pun intended], with all of it's implications of romance and assassination), then the preceeding line "a love for the fix..." is suddenly granted a further reference point.

@nodubmanshouts

I like your style

Why thank you

and since China was the centre of the Opium trade, back in the heyday of the Empire (and we're all aware of Von's empire/white-suited-diplomat fixation [pun intended], with all of it's implications of romance and assassination), then the preceeding line "a love for the fix..." is suddenly granted a further reference point.

Now that's how to play


And then there's the line "a love for the death", with clearly relates to the cover of the following single (Temple Of Love) being a tunnel down which one travels after death. Why no light at the end? Coz

"we are the light at the end of your sorry little tunnel".

lazarus corporation wrote:

I'm quite fine also in Russian and Serb-Croatian

Oh how I'd love to hear that! Ja sam bolestan od ljubavi...
Why oh why has he never done a song in any of the languages he knows other than English and German?

And then there's the line "a love for the death", with clearly relates to the cover of the following single (Temple Of Love) being a tunnel down which one travels after death. Why no light at the end? Coz

"we are the light at the end of your sorry little tunnel".

I´ve never thought about it that way.....but.....okay....

I think my heads just come undone!

Do not tread lightly in the Lyrics section, for you may fall disturb the might of the Hypothesis, a truly fearsome beast!