Countless Finally How Many Ducks (Part I)

The other night while I was chatting on QQ, I had the tv on so I could listen to Chinese in the background. Suddenly a song came on and I couldn’t understand any of the words, and I was momentarily quite confused until I realized that the song wasn’t in Chinese. It was English. Very bad English. So bad that at first hearing it I thought it was some heavily accented Chinese. I sat mesmerized for a while and then ran to make this video (which comprises the final song):

The intended lyrics:

countless finally how many ducks
countless finally how many ducks
in front of door under bridge
swim a group of ducks
come come count count
two four six seven eight
ga ga ga ga
really really so many
countless finally how many ducks
countless finally how many ducks

What I actually hear:

countless finally how many dogs
countless finally how many dogs
in front door under bread
soo wam a groo docks
come come counter counter
two four see seven eight
ga ga ga ga
really red so many
countless finally how many dogs
countless finally how many dogs

The Chinese lyrics:

数不清到底多少鸭
数不清到底多少鸭
门前大桥下
游过一群鸭
快来快来数一数
二四六七八
嘎嘎嘎嘎
真呀真多呀
数不清到底多少鸭
数不清到底多少鸭

Pinyin:

Shǔ bù qīng dàodǐ duōshǎo yā
Shǔ bù qīng dàodǐ duōshǎo yā
Mén qián dàqiáo xià
Yóuguò yīqún yā
Kuài lái kuài lái shǔ yī shǔ
Èr sì liù qī bā
Gā gā gā gā
Zhēn ya zhēn duō yā
Shǔ bù qīng dàodǐ duōshǎo yā
Shǔ bù qīng dàodǐ duōshǎo yā

This is a relatively well known Chinese song. I have friends who can sing it.

As an educational tool, this song fails on two levels, pronunciation and word choice. Pronunciation still retains a very strong flavor of Chinese. Hence “duck” sounds more like “dog”. You can still hear most of the tones of the Chinese song. When he says “duck” it is even in a high first tone! Word choice is straight chinglish. The meaning of the chorus, when much more freely translated, is “I’ve lost count, how many ducks are there really?” But this doesn’t satisfy the meter of the original (try squeezing that into eight or nine syllables), so absolute nonsense is substituted, “countless finally how many ducks”.

This song really fails on a fundamental level–translation. I suppose a very talented translator could maintain the sense and meter of the original and could come up with a decent translation, but you have to ask yourself why. Apart from amusing foreigners, this song is useless. If kids want to learn English, teach them an English song.

Here’s a little boy singing the Chinese version:
In this video you see a tiger mom telling her son that he fumbled that last line and will have to sing this line 500 times or face a beating. Afterward the kid turns away and starts cursing. Kidding. No the mom is really encouraging the boy to retry the line he messed up on, but the kid ignores her, turns away, and babbles much like my young learners do when I try to get them to realize the difference, oh so subtle difference, between 1 duck and 2 ducks. No, try again…two ducks. TWO DUCK. No…two ducks. Tika tika tika gula gula bu bu bu.