After an intense round of finals, I'm happy to be back with another Plastic Tree song! I like the persona in this song, with his cynical exterior and sort of whimsical imagination. I'm sure if he were a real person, he'd be pretty irritated that I just called his thoughts whimsical.
While the language of this song wasn't as difficult as some that I like to do, the lyricist put a great deal of thought into the rhyming and the meter. Unfortunately (or fortunately, because challenges are fun), it's a hundred times harder to rhyme in English than Japanese. I really wanted to rhyme in all the same places in my translation, but it wasn't possible. I did my best to replicate the effect with some word repetition, internal rhyme, etc. Anyway, on to the lyrics.
Song: Sentiment Machine(Japanese title: センチメントマシーン)
Artist: Plastic Tree
Official Japanese lyrics
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If I could become someone transparent,
I wonder if I wouldn’t get drawn all over.
Red sky is what’s outside the window;
A black guitar is what I strum on.
The whistle:
Swim erratically,
The crawl,
A waterless pool.
You can just leave it alone.
Must be just a light fever.
Pushing too hard,
Playing tough.
The Sentiment Machine
That just won’t start for me
Scrapes,
And shows a dream in rose color.
If I could become someone innocent,
I wonder if I’d learn to deeply sleep.
Missing way too many different things,
What a time to finally start standing still.
Blink of an eye;
Closing up on a whim.
Speed;
A lens you can’t catch up to.
A total out-of-body experience;
The boredom of abandonment;
Immersed in thought…
The Sentiment Machine
That just won’t start for me
Scrapes,
And shows a dream in rose color.
You can just leave it alone.
Must be just a light fever.
Pushing too hard,
Playing tough.
A total out-of-body experience;
The boredom of abandonment;
Immersed in thought…
If the thing that reaches out
To broken down me
Were to be
Your hand…
The Sentiment Machine
That sings like it’s praying
Scrapes,
And shows a dream in rose color.
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