for your karaoke pleasure

a certain vinamee Prince impersonator thug friend o'mine asked me to translate the opening lyrics of Purple Rain. ever eager to evade work in favor of (un)productive creativity, i complied. i was surprised to find that a translation does not yet exist, at least on the web. so i present for your karaoke pleasure, the first stanza installment (thanks to mimi n. for her "never" poetic suggestion). i will update as i get a chance to translate, so refresh often...

Mưa Tía* Nhạc sĩ PRINCE

Purple Rain his Purple Majesty

mình đâu nào muốn làm cho ta buồn tênh

i never meant 2 cause u any sorrow

mình đâu nào muốn làm cho ta đau đớn

i never meant 2 cause u any pain

mình chỉ có muốn một lần trông thấy ta cười tình

i only wanted one time 2 c u laughing

mình chỉ có mong muốn trông thấy ta cười tình trong mưa tía

i only wanted 2 c u laughing in the purple rain

Mưa Tía, Mưa Tía

Purple rain, purple rain

Mưa Tía, Mưa Tía

Purple rain, purple rain

Mưa Tía, Mưa Tía

Purple rain, purple rain

mình chỉ khát khao thấy ta tắm trong mưa tía

I only wanted 2 see U bathing in the purple rain

* * * * * * *

*anthropological note: while the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity was shown to be overly linguistic determinist, while the human arbitrariness of color classification and the existence of 11 basic color categories had universal saliency as demonstrated by Berlin & Kay (1976). as of last year, it is understood that the closer a people exist to the equator the less likely they will distinguish between green and blue due to ultraviolet radiation. indeed in vinamese there is only one word xanh to indicate blue and green . in order to differentiate, one has to indicate xanh như nước biển (like the ocean) or xanh như lá (like a leaf). in looking at chữ nôm--the cangjie-based Vinamese script from 10th to 20th centuries--for etymological purposes,though tím is used in contemporary vernacular to signify purple, it is more accurate to say it refers to dark blue, reddish while tía (as in tía tô-perilla leaf) refers to the extraspectral color of purple, violet, amethyst . Therefore, for etymological reasons and the fact that there is a new tango of indeterminate relation
by Trần Thái Hòa with the name Mưa Tím, i have chosen to translate "Purple Rain" as Mưa Tía. And i like the poetics of it.
**after consideration, i changed the subject in the pronouns to be gender neutral without losing the intimacy connotated. for more on that, refer back to one of my other blogs where i go on a long tangent about pronouns in Vinamese.