I am also not a very poetic person, sometimes my subbers are better than me.
However in song lyrics the actual words or sentences are not important, what is important is that the mood matches that of the scene. It’s not Shakespeare, artistically most of the time it is pure crap, so even if you change it a bit it won’t matter that much as if you changed the dialogue.
Yes, a few months ago I saw a review here asking for Hindi translations on a webdrama. The user first wrote in Hindi and then in bad English. So, it is true that some people can’t understand English completely and watch kdramas. Although, I have never met a person who watches kdramas and does not knows English side by side, I’ll still want the songs to be in Hindi because you know… Bollywood 
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Wow, After reading this, I will check the channel languages that I am CM.
But the problem too is that I can only read/understand only 3 Languages more than my mothertongue…
Send it to me too!
It’s true. But I always like to see the first episode of the drama so I can then translate the lyrics according to the context
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I don’t know how it is with Korean or Japanese songs, with many Chinese lyrics I saw / was translating a huge problem has been that the English lyrics used to be wrong, at least partly, but sometimes also in a way that the real meaning stays hidden and when you read it, it makes no sense at all so translating is not a problem of finding a fitting term for a English word/ing but more of finding the lyrics’ real meaning (which is impossible without a native speaker with a wide range of knowledge, at least for certain types of songs).
Translating such lyrics into German usually needs way more time than simply translating English lyrics (of a modern English song) into German, because first it is about the Chinese lyrics/meaning and then how to transfer that into German.
(So probably old European lyrics would also be harder to translate but these days our TV shows don’t have such complicated lyrics so they are usually very easy to translate between each other, from one language to another).
Translating Chinese lyrics takes much time but on the other hand it is interesting for me because I learn more (about Chinese language and culture) this way although I don’t know how many viewers would even watch/read the lyrics. Maybe most viewers simply skip the lyrics or don’t read them at all.
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Maybe you can ask people who do know the other languages.
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I don’t think most viewers skip or don’t read the lyrics. Even if you want to, how can you not read something that is in front of your eyes? You can’t do that, unless you skip the song by bringing the video forwards.
I used to be a huge Bollywood fan and all lyrics are always translated in English subtitles (they are still on NF), so at least viewers with that background are very used to knowing what the lyrics are saying. Same for American films, Disney films, you name it. Every country who has subtitles and not dubbing (dubbing-loving countries are Italy, France, maybe some others but I’m not sure) is used to also have subtitles for the lyrics.
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True… That’s a good question.
Do viewers read the lyrics? Well, I always read the ones of the dramas I watch!
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I don’t.
I skip the song parts, especially if it is mid-episode and it is the same song repeated in many episodes.
However, I may look at them once to see if there is a plot element hidden in the lyrics and I appreciate it when they are subbed.
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I do, if the song is especially beautiful…and a lot of the time the Viki translations are the best and fastest…it took a lot of time to find them online
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