Linguistic Woes--international worship is not for the faint of heart!

With Christmas quickly approaching, I decided to put together some pages of Christmas music in English and Japanese to use with students and for evening worship and prayer times. It turned into an interesting saga, so I've decided to document my woes here...

Take "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" for instance. If I wanted to include lyrics for the average Japanese adult, this is what I would type up:

久しく待ちにし　主よ、とく来たりて

Which is all well and good. Except that I (and any child) can't sing aloud all of the kanji (Chinese characters) in the line, because each kanji has multiple readings. I could memorize the readings for the line above, but there are a lot of lines in "O Come, O Come Emmanuel," making memorization a rather impractical option.

So I have to add this line also:

ひさしくまちにし　しゅよ、とくきたりて

久しく待ちにし　主よ、とく来たりて

Okay, now we're all on the same page, you might think. But no--if I'm going to use this song with English students, I need to include the English:

O Come, O come Emmanuel

ひさしくまちにし　しゅよ、とくきたりて

久しく待ちにし　主よ、とく来たりて

Very good, one might think. But wait--now I also need guitar chords.

Em------------Am------Em

O Come, O come Emmanuel

ひさしくまちにし　しゅよ、とくきたりて

久しく待ちにし　主よ、とく来たりて

Surely now, this is all I need, right? Well...if any other foreigner was going to come and join us in singing, I would probably also have to add roman characters so they know how to pronounce the Japanese characters. So, here goes one more line:

Em------------Am------Em

O Come, O come Emmanuel

ひさしくまちにし　しゅよ、とくきたりて

Hisashiku machi nishi Shu yo, toku kitarite

久しく待ちにし　主よ、とく来たりて

I now have five lines. Count them. FIVE. Do you know how many lines are in ONE verse of "O Come, O Come Emmanuel"? And do you know how many VERSES are in "O Come, O Come Emmanuel"? (Quick return to elementary school mathematics: 5x4x7+the chorus, which would be 10 lines...) Answer...is that really 150 lines?!?!

And the clincher:

We sang "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" in a morning prayer meeting this last week. The Japanese lady with us, who has been a Christian for a long time, commented afterwards, "I wonder what 'とく来たりて(tokukitarite)' really means."

Good grief. Why am I trying to put together lyrics for songs that are not understandable anyways? And remind me again why we insist on translating hymns?

Last night I finally just told Cindy, "There will be no more singing. None. I'm done. So there." She laughed at me.

Thankfully, we have Taize music. Most of those songs are only one line, which means each song only requires five lines. And Sensei to explain the meaning behind them. Oy.