Original text (excerpted song verse):
ตื่นขึ้นมาแล้วเธอยังมีพรุ่งนี้
ยังมีวันดีๆ รออยู่ตรงนั้น
จ้องมองไปที่แสงตะวัน จะเห็นประกายที่สวยงาม
อย่าคิดว่าเธอเดินอยู่ลำพัง
อยากให้เธอรู้ว่ายังมีฉัน
อย่าเพิ่งยอมแพ้ อย่าเพิ่งท้อแท้ อย่าเพิ่งร้องไห้
Literal translation:
wake up come already you to have tomorrow
to have day good good | wait be at there
gaze go at light sun | will see spark that beautiful
don’t think that you walk be alone
want give you know that still have me
don’t just permit lose | don’t just disheartened | don’t just cry
In this translation, I basically did a 99% word for word translation, so all the words correlate to that of the original text. In Thai, words in the same sentence or phrase are usually writtenwithoutspaces. Spaces are only used to divide up sentences or phrases. However, to make it more visible in this translation, I used the | to divide up the different phrases in 3 out of the 6 lines where a phrase divide was present in the original text. Also, capitalization and punctuation are not really present in Thai, so I omitted those in this translation.
“Westernized” sort of assonant translation:
Wake up and you already have tomorrow to look forward to:
still have good days waiting in the distance.
Gaze at the sunlight, see the beautiful sparks.
Don’t think you’re walking with no one near.
I want you to know that I’m still here.
Don’t give up just yet.
Don’t be discouraged yet.
Don’t shed any tears yet.
In this translation, I tried to capture some of the original meaning, sound, and format of the text, while still modifying it for my contemporary aesthetic. I added capitalization and punctuation to give the translation more syntactical structure, but also broke up the last line into 3 separate lines for reasons I will discuss later. The first 3 lines of translation I did not change most of the words from the original text, but rearranged them and added a few words to make them make more sense for American readers. When I translated the 5th line to “I want you to know that I’m still here,” I added the implicit first-person I because in the original the text, the singer/narrator is basically saying that he wants the other person to know that the other person still has him. But when he he refers to himself, he uses the word me (as seen in the last word of the 5th line in the previous), making the presence of subject essential in the translation. At first, I translated this line as “I want you to know that you still have me” because it is closer to meaning in relation to the original text. However, to capture the sound of the original text where the last words of likes 4 and 5 are assonant, I changed the translation to “I want you to know that I’m still here” so that here and near from line 4 are assonant. I also maintained the assonant quality in lines 6 and 7 (phrase 1 and 2 in line 6 in the original text): “Don’t give up just yet” and “Don’t be discouraged yet.” Repetition is also used in the original text in the 3 phrases of line 6, so I kept that present in lines 6-8 of this translation. The reason why I chose to separate the phrases into 3 separate lines is because I had a feeling that the format of the original text was inaccurate to begin with.
