Early on in my time living in Japan, we sang a Japanese praise song in chapel, and even though I did not speak or understand any Japanese yet, something about the song struck a chord in my soul: this was not an English hymn or praise song clunkily translated into Japanese, but an authentically Japanese praise song written with a melody that rivaled the most epic Final Fantasy theme.
As I learned some Japanese and had occasion to sing the song a few more times, I learned that its name was Chiisana Inori (“A Little Prayer”) written by Eiko Wakabayashi, a member of the praise group Lyre, formed by six seminary students at Tokyo Christian University in the 90s.
I also learned that the song has the hallmarks of Japanese poetry. Although Chiisana Inori is not a haiku, the more I came to understand and appreciate haiku, the better I understood Chiisana Inori. As with a haiku, Chiisana Inori does not seek to tell a story so much as to capture a moment or a feeling. It seemed to me to be untranslatable, at least not in a way that could be sung in English.
Here are the Japanese lyrics spelled out phonetically as well as the most direct English translation:
Kono kokoro no osore ya, kurushimi no subete wo
Ima watashi no uchi kara, tori nozoite kudasai
Zutto osanai koroni, sora wo miage nagara
Kanjite ita heian, ataete kudasai
Inori motometa toki, me no mae no kumo ga
Tokete yuki, tadano sumikitta sora
Konna ni ookina sora no shita de
Sora yori ookina Shu no futokoro de
Ima watashi wa tada, anata dake no
Chikara no naka de ikasareteru
English direct translation:
All of this fear and suffering in my heart.
Please take it away from me now.
As a child I would look at the sky
give me the peace that I felt then
As I prayed, the clouds in front of me
Melted away and it was just clear sky.
Under such a big sky,
in the bosom of a Lord bigger than the sky.
Now I live in Your power alone.
What is noteworthy is that the Japanese song contains 164 syllables, while the direct English translation contains 82 syllables–exactly half the syllable count of the original text. Yet, the word count of the original text is almost the same, if not slightly smaller than the direct English translation.
There are several reasons for this. First of all, Japanese does not have an alphabet like English does. Instead, it has a syllabary: a, i, u, e, o; ka, ki, ku, ke, ko; sa, shi, su, se, so; etc. This means that Japanese words are made up of crisp, clean syllables in a way that English is not. An English word like “thanked” is one syllable composed of seven letters and multiple sounds, whereas virtually any single-syllable word in Japanese is (phonetically) only one to three letters long.
Because there is a greater variety of ways to create one-syllable words in English, and a comparatively much more limited number of one-syllable words in Japanese, the average Japanese word is going to tend to take up more syllables than the average English word. At the same time, because the syllables are short and crisp, a multisyllabic Japanese word may sound shorter than an English word with the same number of syllables.
Secondly, Japanese is a far more implicational language than English, in that a single Japanese word effectively carries with it an ellipses that the audience will then know how to fill in.
Consider a standard Japanese way of declining an invitation to go to a party on Friday:
“Kinyoubi wa chotto…”
(“Friday’s a little…”)
In English, we would typically not leave the sentence dangling. “Friday won’t work for me” or “Friday’s busy for me”, we might say. In Japanese, however, the sentence is left dangling and the listener knows how to mentally fill in the rest of the sentence.
What all of this boils down to is the reality that English is inherently more wordy than Japanese, and nowhere is this more apparent than when trying to translate a song from Japanese into English, or English into Japanese. This is, in fact, one of the greatest challenges for translators of music–it’s not simply about knowing both languages, but about understanding both cultures, and understanding music and rhythm.
All of this in mind, I tried my hand at translating and adapting Chiisana Inori to be sung in English. The English teacher and general lover of language in me was not comfortable accepting “untranslatable” as the final word.
After hours of thought and revision over the course of several months, I have a translation that I’m happy with. Is it more wordy than the direct translation above? Yes–that is unavoidable, and perhaps even desirable. If that direct translation were to be set to a different tune, it would not land the same way as the original Japanese–too choppy, too vague. Implicational works in Japanese, but not in English.
At the same time, though, it is simple and spare by English standards, and I think it could draw English speakers into the moment created in fewer, simpler words in Japanese.
One might ask, if such a translation cannot be done perfectly–if something of the simplicity and implication is lost in translation–then why bother translating at all?
To that, I say that Christians would do well to sing songs written by believers from around the world. If we only sing hymns and spiritual songs originally written in our own language and culture, we miss out on the diversity of the body of Christ, and I think, wind up with a needlessly narrow view of the body of Christ. So, even if the translation doesn’t capture the full beauty and power of the original lyrics, it nonetheless captures some of it, and what it does capture matters a great deal as members of the global church.
Without further ado, here is my adaptation of Chiisana Inori—A Little Prayer:
All the fears that prey upon my heart, all the suff’ring that weighs upon my soul,
Please remove this worry from within; please lift this burden from me now.
As a child, I would gaze up at the sky–so vast, majestic, and serene.
In your goodness, please grant unto me now the same peace that filled my soul back then.
As I pray this prayer, before my eyes, the clouds above me part, then dissolve.
Once again, I gaze into the clear and vast, unending sky.
I know that I rest in the arms of a God much greater.
Standing here now, in your presence, I can fully trust in this:
That I find abundant life within your strength alone.
