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So I am going through song lyrics, and the new grammar and vocab that I learn
from them goes into my studying. One song I came across was “Wolf Boy”
(ウルフボーイ) by Morning Musume (モーニング娘).

The first line of the song is:

> 本気に **なれぬ** ウルフボーイ

and is translated to be:

> "You don't show the real you, wolf boy"

Is this translation correct? Because I don't know what なれぬ means, and I don't
understand how this translates. Someone please explain it to me. Maybe it's
slang that I am not getting.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-01-06T21:39:00.897
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2015-11-17T11:13:51.387
2015-11-17T11:13:51.387
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question
translation song-lyrics archaic-language
What does “本気になれぬ” mean?
As a literal translation, it's wrong.

> 本気になれぬ  
>  ≒本気になれない  
>  ≒(You) can't get serious.

(Side note: if you look at the rest of the lyrics, it's pretty clear that at
least some of the clauses before 「ウルフボーイ」 don't act as relative clauses, so I
don't think the meaning of this line is "The wolf boy who can't get serious",
but just "You can't get serious; wolf boy.")

But, most song translations are not literal, and rightly so, so expect to find
a lot more things like this if you're trying to learn from them.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-01-06T22:18:39.417
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2015-01-07T01:17:37.233
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answer