Confused about translation for 一拍の永遠 and 一粒の永遠 in viral pop song

Japanese
#1

Hi there,

There’s this song called “Pop Virus” by Gen Hoshino. One of the lines contains the expression 一拍の永遠. In every translation of the lyrics, it is translated to “a rhythm of eternity”. Even Google translates it that way. But shouldn’t it be “eternity of a rhythm” instead or am I confusing something here? The same thing happens with 一粒の永遠 which is translated into “a drop of eternity” when I thought that の would mean of the thing that comes before it, so shouldn’t it be “the eternity of a drop” or something like that?

Is this just artistic freedom, some grammatical thing that I’m not aware of, or is this perhaps just a mistranslation that has been copied a few times and now even Google translates it that way by comparing it to those sources (if that’s how Google’s translator works).

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#2

Probably just inability of Google or other writers to accurately translate it. You are right, rhythms eternity is closer to the actual translation… And personally I don’t think that sounds too weird.

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#3

My first instinct was, seeing as you can translate 一拍 as one beat, to feel a more accurate translation would probably be “one beat’s eternity” or"the eternity of a beat" Which I find quite fitting and grammatically correct.

一粒の永遠 threw me for a bit of a loop,so I looked up the lyrics. It said 刻む 一粒の永遠
Which I guess you could translate as “to carve one grain’s eternity”, but not too sure, might be referencing an idiom or something?

However, looking closer at the lyrics, we see :

刻む 一拍の永遠を
刻む 一粒の永遠を

I think that the translations might take into account it finishing on を. it’s an unfinished sentence so to speak, in that the verb hereafter is implied. Hopefully someone else with more experience can explain this a bit farther as I’m not too clear on this grammatically yet.

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#4

Hi, thanks for the answer it’s helpful.

I thought the verb was 刻む and that’s why it’s 刻む 一拍の永遠 を. So I assumed the sentence was 一拍の永遠を刻む, but he changed the order because it sounds better.

A friend of mine told me that maybe (he’s also a beginner) 一拍の永遠 is not meant as an “eternity of a beat” in a possessive way, but more like an “eternity that is of the type of one beat”, in other words, an eternity that lasts one beat, which could be better translated into a “rhythm of eternity”. I’m not sure if that makes sense grammatically, and I’m also not sure how that applies to 一粒の永遠, but maybe it’s similar, maybe it’s “an eternity of the type/form/shape of a drop”, which could be loosely translated into “a drop of eternity”. Would that make sense?

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#5

This may make sense as far as the Japanese is concerned. Buttttt that is a very very nuanced meaning that I think even natives would struggle with. In other words it’s a bit like looking at a painting and asking 10 different people what they see. This isn’t so much grammatical, as it is artistic. In that sense it could mean any of the suggestions.

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#6

i would like to add that in japanese you either say Noun + Counter word or Counter wordのNoun.
e.g. ビール二杯 or 二杯のビール
Because of this i do not have any issues with that translation

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#7

This brings up an interesting point about counters. In Japanese counters behave in an adverb/adjective type fashion… Which they usually do not in English.

Hence why constructions like this are totally ok
３人の男がいる (there are 3 boys)
男が３人いる (there are boys threely) … Sounds horrible in English, but no problem at all in Japanese. You’re just stating the way they exist. They exist threely.

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