Weekly International Album Chart (Japan) - 25 April 2011
- Avril Lavigne / Goodbye Lullaby
- Radiohead / The King Of Limbs
- Green Day / Awesome as Fuck
- Sum 41 / Screaming Bloody Murder
- Britney Spears / Femme Fatale
- Foo Fighters / Wasting Lights
- The Strokes / Angles
- Bigbang / Bigbang - Special Edition-
- PiNK / Greatest Hits
- Chris Brown / F.A.M.E.
US and UK No.1 album "Wasting Lights" by Foo Fighters reached to only #6 in this week's international album chart of Japan. Apart from that, there is little change in the chart so not many things needed to be mentioned here.
I just like to make a small note: traditionally Japan edition of an album has a Japanese album title. Please note it doesn't mean changing meanings of its original English title. The change is thought necessary to get Japanese listeners easily understand what the English title means. In the other word, you don't need a Japanese title if the original is very easy to understand like "I Love You" for non-English speakers like many of the Japanese. So Japanese titles are carefully named. Looking at this week's Top 10, Green Day's "Awesome as Fuck" is the one. Its Japanese title is called "Saikyo Live!". "Saikyo" means "Awesome","Incredible","Mega" or whatever words describing an feeling like "This live is the best!".
These days, however, I personally feel the majority of album titles don't have a Japanese title. How you feel about this trend would depend on how old you are. From my experience younger people prefer directly translated titles, whereas maybe over 40 or so people are more familiar with more freely translated ones. I can guess how musicians feel about but, at the same time, I understand people who think Japanese titles are neccessary. Linguistic barrier is always a big matter to think about international music in Japan and how we overcome this is what I'm always thinking about...
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