Bobcat Moran

For your entertainment/edification/horror, I present the lyrics and translations to the songs from the "Atlantica" stage of "Kingdom Hearts 2." Note that these are the lyrics as they appear on the official soundtrack CDs, so dialogue is not included.

The layout is in three columns. From left to right are the "English Lyrics," or the lyrics as they appear in the North American release of the game; "Japanese Lyrics," or the lyrics as they appear on the soundtrack CD/Japanese release of the game; and "Translation," my fairly literal translation of the Japanese lyrics.

( Swim This Way )
( Part of Your World )
( Under the Sea )
( Ursula's Revenge )
( A New Day is Dawning )

For English loanwords written in katakana (the phonetic alphabet typically used for foreign loanwords), I've followed the convention of writing them in all caps and wrote them out phonetically.

Also, with the exception of a couple lines that I couldn't get to work grammatically, the translation matches line-for-line with the Japanese transliteration.

It's interesting to note the differences between the songs originally written in English ("Under the Sea" and "Part of Your World") and those originally written in Japanese ("A New Day is Dawning," "Swim This Way," and "Ursula's Revenge"). Since English lyrics are expected to rhyme while Japanese lyrics are not, the Japanese-to-English translators arguably had a tougher job, although the English-to-Japanese translators had to deal with the problem of how English can convey more on a per-syllable basis.

Questions, comments, and especially corrections are more than welcome! Hope you enjoy!