Can You Translate This Thai Song?
February 10, 2009 5:19 PM   Subscribe

Can you translate this Thai song?

I enjoy it, but I'd like to know what they are saying. Here is my guess based on body language and props:

The two singers are in a boy vs girl battle to see who cooks a certain dish the best. The woman, Christy Gibson, says the man, Jonas Anderson, is crazy to think he will win. In the end they drag some bystanders in to judge, but it's a tie -- or it's unstated who wins.

Am I in the ballpark?
posted by jfrancis to Writing & Language (2 answers total)
 
Best answer: I asked my partner to watch the video, as she's spent a few years in Thailand and is semi-fluent. You're on the right track with your interpretation. She's not really sure if they're supposed to be a couple, or maybe brother and sister, but they're teasing each other about various things, including the way that this dish, som tum (papaya salad), is made, which in the style of these songs is a sort of metaphorical placeholder for everything else.

The literal translation is that they're two som tum vendors fighting over turf and trading barbs about how they each make it and where they can set up shop. So the one says "Mother uses the kruk (mortar and pestle) in the Lao way" and the other says "Father uses the kruk in the Thai way." And from there they talk about how they make sticky rice and where they're each going to make it and so forth. There's nothing really to win, to be less literal it's more about a couple being playfully coy and teasing each other about their differences and exaggerated incompetences.
posted by kowalski at 7:28 PM on February 10, 2009


Response by poster: cool; thanks!
posted by jfrancis at 7:46 PM on February 10, 2009


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