In the song “Mr. Roboto” by Styx, there is this one part that is spoken in Japanese. Here is someone’s transcription of it*:
I know what “Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto” means “Thank you very much, Mister Roboto”, but what do the other words mean?
BONUS QUESTION: Is “Roboto” Japanese for “robot”? This makes sense to me, since I often see the letter “o” added to the end of words that end in “t”, that are borrowed from English.
Or maybe not. It looks like Sublight’s post means my last sentence is incorrect. As Sublight is in Tokyo, I am sure he/she is more familiar with Japanese than I am.
As for the second line, I’ve been playing it over and over and I can’t figure out what they’re saying. ‘Mata’ means ‘again’, although they could be saying ‘mada’ which means ‘still’
Hmm… “Mada o-hima desu” I’m still on my break?
“Mata o-hime desu” I’m a princess again?
As for ‘Roboto’, it’s probably just to rhyme with ‘arigato’, but yeah, that’s the typical word used for robot, although it’s usually written as ‘robotto’ (pronounced the way Styx says it, though). Japanese words can only end with an n or a vowel, so most foreign words get o’s, u’s or i’s tacked onto the ends.
No, the “-tai” ending on the verb (shiru, to know) means “want to -”. “wo” indicates that the preceding word (himitsu) is a direct object, so I’d translate it as “want to know secret”. Since there is no subject and no article for secret, just who has the secret and who wants to know is up in the air. (“I want to know your secret” vs “they want to know my secret”) It could even be a question (Do you want to know my secret?").
Your second lines sounds as good as mine. I have no idea what he’s saying.
So pooling together all the posts it looks like we may have something like this:
Thank you very much, Mr. Roboto.
Until we meet again.
Thanks Mr. Roboto
Do you want to know my secret? (Could be “I want to know your secret” or “they want to know my secret.”)
I see I was pretty off base but then again I’ve only had a year and a half of Japanese and that was 6 years ago.
Based on the rest of the song and the context, I’d say it’s probably “I (or we) want to know your secret”
The whole rest of the song is Mr. Roboto having a secret and explaining who he is. Since the opening part is talking TO Mr. Roboto, that’s what I get out of it.
It’s just a guess, but I wouldn’t say it’s wild-ass.
I saw Styx on this tour. It was a pretty elaborate stage show, complete with a mini movie and plenty of extra cast memebers. I’m sure Jonathan Chance can attest:)
