Another important part of choral song is a lyrics. In writing an arrangement, this process wouldn’t be very significant, as the lyrics is usually unchanged. However, in this case the secondary objective of this arrangement is to translate the lyrics of the song from Korean to English with conveying a similar or same meaning. In order to do this I took the Korean lyrics and sang it and read it over and over for the last week to brainstorm the word to word translations and poetic translations. The Korean lyrics is below.

“아침햇살이 찾아들기전 작은 소리로 노래하는 나무 / 아침 햇살이 찾아들면 가슴을 펴고 햇살을 흔들며 노래하는 나무 / 오늘은 날씨가 좋아요 햇살이 눈부셔요 / 우리집나무가 노래부르면 이웃집 나무가 대답을 하고 / 탐스런 나뭇잎 만큼 가득 열린 참새들 열린 참새 만큼 고운노래 들려 주는 나무 / 하늘에 그려지는 오선지엔 햇살 한줌 내 노래 한 가락”

I did not think a direct word to word translation will work, as it is a very poetic song about singing trees and portraying the chirping birds and the tree’s leaves or sky as the music staff. So I took the meaning of each phrase, which is marked with a slash mark in Korean lyrics to write a lyrics that will convey a same or similar message.

“Before the morning sun brightens up the sky there’s a tree that softly hum their melody / When the sun shines on to the land all trees stir the light and opens up their hearts and sing their song to all / It is a beautiful day today the sun is shining bright / When my backyard tree starts singing their song the neighbour’s tree replies with harmony / branches full of hanging sparrows like the leaves on summer days the tree sing so beautifully with all the sparrows / Drawing the staff on the sky add a splash of sunlight and a piece of my melody”

The version here is only the first draft and modifications will be made in process of combining with the melody. In translation, I made sure that I am including all of the metaphors and personification and phrasing. The beauty of Korean language is that it takes up less syllables than English to convey the same message, so to make sure that translated version will somewhat be within those syllable count was tough. And I was chatting with another elementary music teacher, Sam Levasseur, about this concern and she said with the current climate of K-Pop demon hunters and all, I could make the song repeat itself with both versions of lyrics embedded. I do think this is a great idea and I will be adding this portion. Next reflection will definitely be a combination of music and lyrics!