Ultima's and Titan's song lyrics

[Mysteltain]

I normally wouldn't triple post, especially with posts so close together, but this is a pretty good update. I believe I've finally cracked the first verse of the Ultima lyrics, insofar as the male singer's lyrics; I'm convinced the female choir is singing a slightly different set of lyrics. While I can't guarantee it's 100% accurate, I feel that it's as close as I'm going to get right now. Also, to add a bit more to this update, I've also included a rather rough translation of the lyrics for the first verse, although I was fairly liberal in doing so--more prose, less lyrical. They definitely fit Gaius and his claims to be the one fit to rule Eorzea.

[Dotsusama]

I was going to suggest using something like Audacity or another audio mixer to try and isolate the vocals, but the chorus and the effects make it almost impossible for me to get close to them without warbling that just makes it harder to hear what's being said, or artifacts that distort the words. I was really hoping for official lyrics to come with the soundtrack honestly!

[Mysteltain]

I've never thought of using that actually, but yeah, there really is just too much else going on in the song, especially with two layers of vocals at most times plus the instruments blaring after the intro.

And not to go off on a tangent, but the more I go over the first verse and looking at and listening to the words, I start to piece together new ones that are, well, actual Latin, haha! I'm finding it pretty fun to try and come up with all of the proper words, then fiddle around with Google Translate to find an actual word, then find a way to translate the line so it both retains its meaning, as well as makes sense in context. And all this without knowing a lick of Latin grammar! If anyone wants to know what's going through my head while I do this, well, here's a bit of an example for one line of the song...

In the second line, I had until recently:

"Req vi mitu sen sabunt tie sta"

Which I can translate to:

"Scream our ideals with strength, stand and throw yourselves before us, as it is your duty."

The problem with that is 'Req' didn't translate to anything, and the closest thing to 'mitu' was 'screams' (which is 'clamat' in Latin, so that wouldn't work). However, Google also said that 'mitu' could also be a part of 'et gemitu interfectorum', which Google said meant "screams of" (it actually means "the groans of the slain" when I looked up the meaning of 'interfectorum'. Yes, double-checking Google Translate has been essential). So I honed in on 'gemitu' and it turns out that 'gemitus' means 'groan', which also makes a lot more sense grammatically. So, my current interpretation is:

"Regemitus sen sabunt tie sto"

Which means literally:

"Renew groans of the ideas. Duty is stand, and throw themselves."

That doesn't make a whole lot of sense, so I took a more liberal approach and came up with:

"Cast yourselves before Us, and grovel anew, as it is your duty."

'Sto' means 'Stand', but to try and slap that somewhere in the middle seems awkward, as well as at the end, although I suppose Gaius ordering the adventurers to stand up after each line could come off as him challenging them. I could very well rewrite it as "Stand, and cast yourselves..." but that may come off as too wordy, and if they're throwing themselves before him, they're already standing, haha.

I chose 'grovel' instead of 'groan', since it carries more of an implication that those who are grovelling must adhere to the rules of the authority figure. Therefore, adding in 'ideals' or even 'groan' felt extraneous. It's also much more vivid this way, I feel, the image of the people of Eorzea falling to their knees and bowing before Gaius.

As for the We, Our, and Us I use throughout, that's just some rather liberal use of the Royal-"We" on my part, haha! It gives the translation an air of authority and arrogance to it all, since I'm going under the assumption that the song is sung from Gaius' persepctive, much in the same way Nael's theme was sung from the perspective of his soldiers.

[A_Magical_Unicorn_Rider]

snip-

Because the word you're looking for is RECIT, not req vi. Just thought I'd put in my observation.

[Valerathon]

I wonder if it would be helpful to people curious about the currently missing lyrics if there were a separate thread for Ultima (and maybe Praetorium) lyrics. We have Titan, so let this thread sink, and maybe a new thread can lift your amazing contributions from here, Mysteltain, and continue it there. I defer to you, though, Mysteltain.

I think the people speculating on Archons would be really interested if it turns out that those voices in Ultima's song are Archons (not Garleans!) celebrating the coming rule by Zodiark ...

[Mysteltain]

I've been thinking of doing that--making a compilation thread of ALL the songs with lyrics, both known and unknown, and having it be both discussion and interpretation. I think I will do that, since this thread has over all been going a bit slow. Plus, as you said, the topic title isn't particularly relevant anymore.

EDIT: The new topic has been posted, as such, I don't think we'll need to keep this one around anymore. I've copied over the Latin lyrics to Ultima's theme as I need to redo the translation. Leviathan's I'll post later, as there's a pretty good discussion of them occurring on another thread.