Glow

Forward Planning

The next few weeks were mostly focused on the quickly approaching comeback, making sure everyone got the required one-on-one contact so that we didn't have any unnecessary issues from the soul bond, and studying.

Most of the guys decided to do online classes, getting degrees that would help them in either production or management of the music industry. As shareholders of their beloved Bighit's evolved form, HYBE, even the ones not driven to be hands-on in the music production seem to want to focus on growing the company, looking at how they can still be effective in the industry even after BTS's time is up.

I don't think they're looking at it like they're planning the end of BTS, but rather wanting to do more, be more than just BTS.

Which is mind boggling. Wanting to be more than BTS?! I don't think they realize just how important they've become. And not just to the k-pop industry. With how global their music and videos are, with the advancements of translation via tech rather than a humans needing to do everything by rote... I wonder if I could do an article or essay on their influence and how widespread it really is, and what exactly it means. I mean, it's easy enough to see the parallels between them and the Beatles, Ed Sheeran, Bach, Michael Jackson, Bob Marley... and so many more.

I send a quick email to Manager Sejin, asking him about his thoughts on me writing an article about the guys' dreams for the future, sending it before I lost my nerve. 

Of course immediately after I wish that being soul bonded gave me special time powers so that I could go back and not send that email, the anxious shivers at what I had just suggested seemed never ending.

****

My lessons for them in English were being pushed to the side with their other work taking precedent. The classes they are taking through their college does include English, and they come to me for help with their homework, but I'm not able to give them additional lessons right now. 

Instead I have continued my Korean lessons, and while my Hangul writing is still horrid I can now understand maybe a full third of the words written in the local news rag, including gender and age contexts for the words I am not sure of. My pronunciation may never be as good as theirs, but then they will never understand the complex differences between all the versions of English there is. I call that fair.

****

'Y/N! Can you help me with this?' shouts Seokjin from the main room. I leave my bedroom to find him at the desk, going over notes on a tablet while he's typing into a laptop.

'Where's the problem?' I ask, looking over his shoulder. When he highlights a portion of the text on the screen and points to a section of his notes on the tablet I get a look at where his level of English is at.

'"How now brown cow" is an elocution tactic. It's supposed to make you round out your Os, make the sound more universal in the English world.' I point out.

'But then what is "she sells sea shells down by the seashore"?' He asks, pointing to the next line of notes.

'That's a tongue twister. It's more for being able to pronounce and understand the differences between the S sound and the Sh sound.' I say, sitting in a club chair near him.

'So are they both used for making universal English sounds?' Seokjin asks, taking further notes.

'Yes and no. The cow one is specifically used as that tactic, like when people want to get rid of an accent that they grew up with they can use that among other tools to retrain how they enunciate certain sounds. With the seashells one, it's used in early education to help control lisps and make the reader/speaker focus on what they are saying so that they say it correctly.'

'When it comes to ESL, or English as a second language, it does help with pronunciation, but I think it's better used to help the learner correlate simple words between languages.' He looks over his shoulder, smiling as he continues to type into his tablet. 

'Sentence structure, as we've both found out, changes according to how people read, and what the priority is for the culture. But even then, certain ideas are almost universal. Unless you live in a landlocked society, seashells are common to everyone. Cows are pretty common too, though the type of cow can change from region to region.'

'Yeah, I don't know if people from the Himalayan mountains know what seashells are, but they probably know cows, or at least pack animals.' Seokjin agrees.

'Depending on the culture of the Himalayans, you may be right, but remember that Tibetan monks are known for traveling. I'd bet that they not only know about seashells, but have holy ones as well.' I wink at him, grinning.

'You may be right.' He hums to himself, going back and forth between the tablet and the laptop.

****

'Have you ever thought about translating one of your songs into English, like you do for Japanese?' I ask Namjoon as he's going over some email.

Sitting in his studio while the guys are making dinner seemed like a good use of my time... if he needed my help.

He didn't.

'Yeah, I have, but my understanding of English is not strong enough to make the jump.' He says distractedly.

I look at the video of We Are Bulletproof, the sub in English, and wonder how exact it actually is.

'Have you watched any of the subbed into English videos of your songs?' I try again.

'Yeah. It's kind of cringey and hard to watch.' He says, thinking for a moment. 'We love our music, and enjoy singing it, but watching ourselves, hearing ourselves on video seems wrong on levels I can't explain.' He frowns, spinning around in his chair to face me.

I nod. 'Actually, almost everyone is like that. With a few exceptions, everyone dislikes how the look and sound when they are recorded. It also falls into the seeing oneself in the mirror as well, people disliking how they look.' Tapping my knee with my hand, I consider. 'I'm not sure if it's a cognitive thing or if it's a genetic throwback to humanity's dark history, but it's pretty universal.'

'It's not quite like the basic human fear of too many legs like on centipedes or spiders, which is the humanity's dark history thing you mentioned, so it's likely a cognitive issue.' Namjoon replies.

'But when you have, would you say the English translation is pretty accurate?' I prod, going back to my main question.

'Yes... and no. There's nuances in the words used, cultural references, slang and sarcastic use of certain phrases, that can't really translate over, or at least I'm not sure how it would without changing the flow of the song.' He sits back, thinking.

'The ddaeng song we three did is a good example. There is a lot of references to both public school, idol training, teachers and trainers in both fields, as well as a bunch of slang that folds neatly into those lyrics. All three of us are actually very proud of that work.' He look in my eyes, nodding. 'I know more English than the rest of the guys, but I don't know enough to get all that we packed into those lyrics into an English version of that song. It was both simple and hard to trim it down as much as we did in Korean, I can't imagine how to do it in another language... which is why it isn't also in Japanese.'

'I think I understand. Honestly, most English speakers don't know all the lingo associated with their own language, I can't imagine what it'd be like to try to do that when it isn't even your first or second language.' I nod. 'I think I want to try though.' Looking down at the video paused on my laptop, I considered my self-given projects.

'I've already asked Manager Sejin if I could do an article on you and the future you guys want to build, but I think I also want to edit a song into English. Maybe make it collaborative with the maknae line to help them with their language studies.'

A raised eyebrow at my statement is his only reply.