NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

  For fun, I used to take anime songs (gi Fino' Chapones) and translate them into Chamoru. Over the years I translated songs from Naruto, Gantz, Cromartie High School, Master Keaton, Evangelion, and Attack on Titan just to name a few. It was an exercise in expressing two things that I am very nerdy about. I hadn't thought about this in a long time though until earlier tonight when Youtube's next song randomness started playing anime theme songs. As I started to feel the chetnot nostalgia hit me, the kids asked what song is this? where is this from? When I described the plot of Evangelion to Sumåhi, her review, "wow sen na'triste enao (wow that is like incredibly depressing)." I told the kids about how I used to translate songs like this into Chamoru. When they asked why, I said, "Ya-hu fino' Chamoru, ya-hu este na kånta. Anggen hu pula' este gi mismo lenguahi-hu, hu na'latatahdong I siniente-ku put este. (I like Chamoru, I like this song. If I

I haven’t done this in a while, but I’m traveling this week and so it gives me quite a bit of down time on planes, with little to do other than get airsick. A few years ago I was watching quite a bit of anime and one thing I really enjoyed doing was taking anime theme songs, from shows like Gantz, Naruto and Cromartie High School and then translating them into Chamorro. Each translation was an interesting experiment, since although many of these shows are considered to be low-plebian culture, pop culture animated shadows on the cave wall for the masses, the lyrics to the theme songs tend to have a very epic and sophisticated feel to them.   These songs presented interesting challenges since translating them directly would be difficult and not necessarily match well with Chamorro. But finding ways of expressing similar epic thoughts in Chamorro, while trying to maintain a sense of the language would be fun and worthwhile. I still read manga regularly even if

Esta måtto ta’lo i tiempo para bei in che’gue ta’lo “Sakkigake Chamorro!” It’s been a while since I did one of these, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about it. I never was really an Otaku, but rather an anime dilettante, and so I very rarely go through periods of sleep depriving anima obsession, where I make unwise decisions to stay up for most of the nights reading through back issues of mangas such as MPD Psycho or Gantz (ta'lo !) or start watching an entire season of anime late in the evening, knowing full well that each episode I watch will just make me want to watch one more and the closer I get to the end of the season the more I will be able to convince myself that it is tomtom that I stay awake to finish it. The rest of the time however, my approach to anime is very temperate, ko’lo’lo’ña since I moved back to Guam. While in the states, cheap, sometimes pirated anime on Ebay or at flea markets would constantly feed my habit, on Guam finding titles I’m intere

A series of storms are currently surrounding Guam. When I was younger, I would pray for typhoons, since it would mean no school (although no power and cable too). As a professor at the University of Guam, I pray for typhoons since, there would be no classes to teach, no power (internet, video games) to distract me and then I can finally catch up on my grading. I dreamed all day of coming home and finding that classes at UOG were cancelled tomorrow, but after logging on to the UOG website this evening, I found that there were indeed classes tomorrow. Lana, I just went back to the website to see if anything had changed in the past hour, but it hadn't. I guess that means I'll need to stay up a few more hours finishing my prep for my four classes tomorrow. Nina'hasso yu' ni' i mubin Equilibrium. Gi ayu na mubi, un petsona ilek-ña este: Manmahafye i guinife-hu gi sanpappa’ i patås-mu. Adahi månu un pokkat, sa’ hu gagacha i guinife-hu siha. Dalai UOG. Sa' hafa t

With some of the stress of the writing and defending a dissertation over now, I can finally enjoy the breaths that I take and try to relax a little bit. As some might be familiar with on this blog, one of the ways that I relax is by writing songs or poems in Chamorro, or translating lyrics from songs into Chamorro. The past month while I’ve been furiously writing my dissertation was the longest period of time since 2000 that I went without opening up my Chamorro dictionary. As I’ve been shut away in my computer for so long, and without doing much talking, thinking or writing in Chamorro, I’ve actually felt at times the language fading from my head. That’s why it was exciting recently, after defending my dissertation, to finally open up the dictionary again and start work on translating another song. This post is the fourth installment of a feature that I call Sakigakke Chamorro! In this feature I take a song from a Japanese anime and translate it into Chamorro. The translation is

When I get a break from writing my dissertation, but still want to use my brain somehow, I usually end up translating songs from Chamorro to English or from English to Chamorro, or as I started doing last fall, from Japanese to English to Chamorro. I started the regular thread called Sakigake Chamorro, last year which is my quick, fun and sometimes ridiculous translations of songs from Japanese anime into Chamorro. I don't speak Japanese so I have to use other people's English translations. But these aren't meant to be perfect or well thought out, they are more for me to flex my brain and have a little bit of fun. So far I've made two Sakigake Chamorro, the first was from Sakigake! Cromartie High School and the second from FLCL . The one I'd like to share with you today, is a beautiful, J-poppy song from Naruto Shippuuden. Its song by the Japanese rock band Ikimono Gakari and is titled Bluebird. Here's the lyrics in Japanese: Artist: Ikimono Gakari

Last month I started yet another regular post thread which brought together my love for anime and the Chamorro language. I named it " Sakigake Chamorro " which translates to "Charge ahead Chamorro!" and is taken from the manga/anime Sakigake! Cromartie High School! What this thread amounts to is the theme songs for anime translated into Chamorro in more fun, less precise fashion. I named it "Sakigake Chamorro" because the first song I chose to translate was from Cromartie High School. This evening, as I was trying to unwind from a long, stressful week of teaching I decided to translate another anime song. I decided to pick one that would be a lot of fun to translate, this meaning one which is really catchy, but also completely nonsensical and insane. The one that immediately popped into my mind from those on my computer was "Ride on Shooting Star" from the anime FLCL. I've never really liked this one, but i che'lu-hu Jack really does,

Thought I'd try out something new, because I was having trouble falling asleep because of my brother's trombone playing. Since I was living in the states for so long and often had little space to practice speaking or listening to Chamorro, in order to keep fresh my Chamorro language skills, I often came up with quick and easy practices to help keep building my vocabulary. One of these practices that I've shared regularly through this blog has been the taking of songs in English, Hindi and Japanese and writing lyrics to their tunes. The lyrics are sometimes related to the original words, but not always and sometimes I change the theme completely to accommodate my own interpretation of the mood of the song's music. Some examples are " Hum Aapke Hain Koun " from the film of the same name, " Call Me, Call Me " and the anime Cowboy Bebop/Cowboy Bopeep, and " Wave of Mutilation " by the Pixies. Another practice I sometimes do is when I'm li