Update: I did get great feedback on the lyrics by Charles Yang, who commented on exactly those places I was uneasy about. I updated the translation and am now finally getting around to uploading my homepage. You’ll find the revised translation under the link below. For more glossed texts, also see this post.
I’ll be posting a lot more about teaching here, since that is the current focus of my work. A most wonderful feature of the Düsseldorf curriculum are the classes on grammars of non-Indo-European languages, which take two sessions per week, rather than the usual one. This semester, I’ve been teaching Daakaka, and it’s been an intensely gratifying experience, on which I’ll certainly post more later. Right now, I’m planning a class on Mandarin Chinese for the summer term, and I decided to dedicate part of it to the worship of a song that I absolutely adore. It’s by the band 二手玫瑰 (èrshǒu méigui, Second Hand Rose), and I would translate it as “Let the artists get rich and their wealth trickle down”. The title is based on a quote by Deng Xiaoping, who said, basically, not everyone had to get rich at the same time, it was ok if a few people got rich first and passed on some of their wealth to their neighbours. I have glossed and translated the lyrics, take a look if you’re interested, and please let me know if you have more information about the song!