Mandarin lyrics are light on grammar and rich in imagery. A line can be a handful of characters with no tense, no plural and no pronoun. Chinese and English are already set in the translator above. Paste the lyrics in simplified or traditional characters for a faithful English translation, a singable version and notes on the images.
Each Chinese character is one syllable and usually one note. A seven character line is seven notes, and saying the same thing in seven English syllables takes real thought. The singable version stays close to the character count, which means choosing the strongest image rather than translating every word.
Chinese often leaves time and number to context. Xiang ni can be I miss you, I missed you or I will miss you. The translation picks what the song suggests, and the notes flag lines where that choice changes the meaning.
Mandarin is tonal, and careful songwriters fit the melody to the tones so words are not misheard. English has no tones, so this limit disappears in translation, which gives the English version more freedom with the melody.
Lyrics borrow from classical poetry and from chengyu, four character idioms like 天长地久, everlasting, literally as long as heaven and earth. Translating only the picture can sound strange, translating only the meaning can sound flat, so the notes give the literal picture when it matters.
Traditional characters are read just as well as simplified ones. Cantonese songs are a different matter: they share many characters with Mandarin but also use words and grammar of their own, so check the notes for lines the translator had to interpret.
Two original lines, written for this page, with pinyin underneath. The first line has 10 characters and the second has 9, so 10 and 9 sung syllables.
月光落在你走过的街
Pronunciation: yuèguāng luò zài nǐ zǒuguò de jiē
我把思念藏进风里面
Pronunciation: wǒ bǎ sīniàn cáng jìn fēng lǐmiàn
Moonlight falls on the street you walked down,
I hide my longing for you inside the wind.
Moonlight falls where you walked down the street
I hide how I miss you in the wind
Zouguo can mean walked along or walked past, and with no tense the moment could be now or long ago. The faithful version reads it as the past, because the next line is about missing someone. Sinian is longing for a person who is far away, which the singable version shortens to how I miss you so the line fits nine notes.
Yes. Traditional and simplified characters are both read. If your lyrics are in traditional characters, you can set the original language to Chinese (Traditional) or leave it on detect automatically.
Characters work far better. Pinyin without tone marks leaves many words ambiguous, so use it only if you have nothing else.
English sentences need them and Chinese ones do not. The translator works them out from the whole song, and the notes flag lines where another reading is just as likely.
No. It gives the two English versions and the notes. The pinyin in the example on this page was written by hand for the example.
It is written for that, staying within about two syllables of each line and keeping rhymes on the lines that rhyme. If the song is not yours, releasing a cover with new lyrics may need permission from its writers or publisher.