Just thought this was cool—went searching for the Japanese-language “Tears for Fears” fandom and a Japanese translation of “Head Over Heels” because I’ve enjoyed that song so much recently. Found a neato blog where the author translates the lyrics into Japanese and goes into the nuances behind some of the chosen words for their nostalgia factor.

I’m always so fascinated by the words that are chosen when someone translates prose, poetry, or lyrics into different languages.

Something that I don’t think people are always aware of us how some words have so much emotional weight and connotations that don’t always occur when the phrase gets translated to another language.

Even the phrase “Head Over Heels” which does not seem to have an equivalent in Japanese, is analyzed a little deeper in another article by the same author, where they elaborate on the meaning. (This one explores it in reference to the song by “The Go-Go’s” who also had a song with that phrase for the title.)

In a reverse of this entire concept of phrases that don’t have exact equivalents, this all reminds me of my favorite Japanese phrase, “恋の予感” or, “koi no yokan” which I’ve seen a couple translations of.

Some people translate it as a “premonition of love” but I think I favor “the inevitability of love” because premonition and inevitability have different nuances that change the impact. In English, while we have the phrase “love at first sight” it just isn’t the same—there’s something uhh… sucrose-flavored about it, but maybe the flavor’s just tainted by capitalism’s handling of the word.

I think that there’s something far heavier about “koi no yokan” as more an inevitability of love that just tickles my cosmic horror-loving brain more, I guess.

Speaking of which, have you ever considered love as a form of cosmic horror?

The tl;dr itinerary of this note, courtesy of mixed amphetamine salts:

“Head Over Heels” → Interest in the translation of a phrase without exact equivalent → Example of a phrase without exact equivalent (恋の予感) → Words have unique and nuanced meanings despite similarities in use-case scenarios → “koi no yokan” is not like “love at first sight” because it is intrinsically a bit darker and more existential → Love as a form of cosmic (existential) horror is a pretty rad concept, by the way.