Is this gibberish?

February 10, 2006 10:51 PM

Is this song [direct MP3 link] gibberish? It's the opening track from the PS2 game "La Pucelle: Tactics".

Many songs in this game are in Japanese, but this one isn't, as far as I can tell. I can't tell whether it's just nonsense syllables, or whether it's some language I don't know, pronounced as Japanese syllables.

posted by pocams to writing & language (5 comments total)

Since La Pucelle is French for "The Virgin", I'm going to venture the guess that it's either French sung by a native Japanese speaker, or Hanamogera-ed French - basically french rendered phoentically into Japanese. My example for this is "Wo Qui Non Coin" from the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack, which switches into Hanamogeraed French (it's even called that in the CD insert) halfway through. More info here.

I keep meaning to finish a translation of that half of Wo Qui Non Coin, because it bugs me not to know the lyrics, and it's so close to comprehensible French. Of course, I also keep meaning to play through La Pucelle: Tactics as well, liked the bit that I did play.
posted by sysinfo at 12:00 AM on February 11, 2006

I'm no fluent French speaker but there's definitely a ton of French words in that song, just in a Japanese meter. I imagine a fluent French speaker could probably translate it.
posted by wackybrit at 5:36 AM on February 11, 2006

I am a fluent French speaker and I can't really make out any precise meaning to it. So maybe it's really just meant to sound French... or maybe it's because I am not used to the Japanese sound of it.

But for instance about 34 seconds in you could interpret as "c'est la douce c'est la"... which would translate as "it's the soft one it is", which makes no sense. And with most of it I can't even make out words.
posted by ClarissaWAM at 8:35 AM on February 11, 2006

Maybe it's Babelfished French.
posted by smackfu at 11:12 AM on February 11, 2006

smackfu, that's quite possible - it may have been written in Japanese, translated really poorly to French, then pronounced incomprehensibly. Anyway, thanks for the help, all.
posted by pocams at 6:44 PM on February 12, 2006