I've been planning on using Frecklegirl's translations to make myself Japanese/English flashcards for a while now. Once I take the JLPT N3 in a couple of weeks (I'll definitely fail, but it'll help me prepare for next year) it'll be one of my first projects.

That ties in to my view on parsing Ringo's lyrics. I don't want to have to rely on someone else's translation, or translation of a translation, then filtered through another person's viewpoint to parse the messages in her songs. It becomes a game of telephone. I want to understand the Japanese lyrics as well as their cultural context, so I can form my own opinion directly from the source. Frecklegirl's detailed notes and translations are very helpful in that aspect.

centigrade-j (when it still existed) had some of the best translations, for me. unfortunately they don't really do those anymore

We are totally on the same page! I wanted to make flashcards out of Ringo's lyrics for the JLPT as well. :lol:

And yes, you're right about it being a telephone game. That's where questions of ambiguity and audience arise. I believe the specificity of her lyrics is less important in some degrees now as I get more of a sense that SR is writing for an international (European?) audience in addition to her Japanese audience. Earlier in her career, she claimed she had no interest of traveling to the U.S. or distributing her works outside of Asia.

I'm not really sure if that is practical.
After all, Ringo uses tons of words that people in modern day Japan don't use at all.
You'll sound like you're from the Showa-era.

And even Japanese people don't understand Ringo's lyrics.

I wouldn't recommend studying from Ringo's lyrics either. Find something more practical.

For me it's more for my own personal pleasure, that's why I'm waiting until after the JLPT to study her lyrics. For practical study I don't really use lyrics at all, just regular sentences.

Woaahh I didn't know this existed, this is great! Really hope it gets properly released one day..

You should all learn Chinese using Sa Dingding lyrics flashcards next. Oh wait, lots of her songs are in gibberish. (Yet still are totally powerful and moving, but that argument's over now :-p...)

Sadly, it's fading into obscurity and the hopes are becoming lower and lower. Though, never say never, EMI are greedy cash grabbers so you never know. Still, at least it manages to catch some people who haven't seen it off guard. Everytime I see it I feel totally entranced by it, it's what I imagine a nu-KZK would have sounded like (well that and the track Between Today and Tomorrow she wrote for that ballet movie).

BTW, Ringo isn't on EMI anymore.
EMI went down under. She's on Universal Music Japan now (all EMI Japan artists are), and her new music videos are published through their YouTube channel.

Is that why she sucks so much now :-p

Actually, there's no EMI logo at all on Sunny (there was one on NIPPON though), says Universal/Virgin