Analysis of translated lyrics for “Key (Feat. Taeyeon) — Hate that..”

Disclaimer

• I have no idea who translated the lyrics for this song, what the requirements for the translations were (Did the client want the translation to be as short as possible? As literal as possible? Just done as quickly as possible?)
• I have no idea how the translation was actually handled (Was it machine translation that was reviewed by human translators? Was it translated by less experienced translators and reviewed by more experienced translators? Did the translator have access to background information or contact to the original lyricist?).
• I believe there’s no one right answer for translations! So this analysis is just my personal interpretation that I’m doing for fun✨ and all of my respect to the translator(s?) for doing the translation!

Color Code
💔Red: Awkward, unnatural…
💛Yellow: Personally would have done this differently.
💚Green: This is so good!

💚I’m already nobody to you

The translated English lyrics start off very strong with a very accurate and nuanced translation of the Korean text! But the rest of the verse feels very fragmented and I feel like the imagery of the original lyrics get lost in the translation (pun intended 😂 sorry)

💛I’ll be just wiped off
After being thrown away
Once more
I reload the photo
Checking just in case
I hate myself and
I’m sick and tired of me

Personally I think the Korean lyrics are describing how you feel used and abused by your breakup, but how you can’t stop checking your ex’s social media handles and right at that moment, you don’t really feel like you love yourself. So I would have gone something like:
“I know you’re going to
wipe me off and throw me away
I can’t stop checking your handles just in case
and that makes me hate myself”

💔I want you to be painful as much as I do baby / I can feel the breakup falling apart alone

If I hadn’t been a Korean fangirl, I would have been so confused by these lines. I am a lifelong fangirl of many artists from SM entertainment, and I have observed that the SM entertainment is really fond of using strong imagery, flowy sounds and switching up Korean postpositional particles (은/는/이/가) to give more poem-like qualities to their lyrics. So the original Korean lyrics are intentionally vague and open to a variety of interpretations. Also, Korean as a language is a lot less strict than English when it comes to acceptable sentence structures. All of these factors combined makes it really tricky to translate these lyrics, and if the translator was on a tight schedule and could not contact the lyricist to ask precisely what the lyrics meant on top of these obstacles, then it’d be unwise to expect good quality translations.
That being said, this is my take on the Korean lyrics:
“I hope it hurts you as much as it hurts me baby
I’m alone and it’s breaking me — now I truly understand what a breakup truly means”

💔For once in your life / I hope you can see my news anywhere / Without knowing that I’m always waiting

My interpretation of the Korean lyrics is very different from what the English lyrics might convey. In this verse, what Taeyeon sings about is the wistful feeling you get about your ex when you’re not over them yet. You want them to be reminded of you, and feel an emotional connection about you again, by hearing about you. You don’t really have a specific date in your mind or how and what they hear about you, but you want them to think of you. I think the disconnect comes from how the translation is trying to take on only one line at a time, without bringing in the context from the lines that are before and after that one line. So this is how I understood it:
“Someday, somewhere / I hope you’ll hear about me / I’m waiting for you still but you don’t even know”

💚I’m just emptying my heart

This is not what I would have come up with, but this is just 🔥

💛Even at the end, you’re being yourself

I’m not sure if this translated line provides the appropriate context. The Korean lyrics (“이별도 완벽해 / 끝까지 너답게”) not only rhymes, but the lyrics are saying that you were “perfect” (i.e. you were flawless, you did not make any mistakes, you didn’t lose your composure, and etc), right till the end. So even during the breakup, you were “perfect”. If I were to extrapolate from the lyrics, maybe these two broke up because they couldn’t really open up to each other and that led to miscommunication and the consequental breakup? But who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So I would translated these lines like:
“Ooh ooh
Event the breakup was perfect
Ooh ooh
How just like you”

So that was my take on this song!
If you enjoyed that, please go watch the music video 🎵 because it’s awesome