First, an apology. I posted a note that I was working on updates to this site and that they would be ready in a few days. That was several months ago – my bad. I had to take care of… life stuff.
You know that story.
But it’s a new year – Happy 2025 – and I’m back and finally able to give Samoan Lyrics the attention she deserves.
Oh, if you’re new here, I’m Lilieni (Lillian) Arp. I’m the Hamo Geek Girl squinting at HTMLs and PHPs on the screen behind the scenes, and one of my New Year’s resolutions is to be less shy… to communicate more and keep you all informed about what’s going on in the world of Anavatau… which is the network of Samoan-flavoured websites to which Samoan Lyrics belongs.
Anyway…
What’s Been Happening
I know it looks like I’ve been doing nothing all this time, but I HAVE been working… really slowly… and making steady progress. The first step has been a major cleanup of the parts of this website you can’t see. This included:
- Moving the site to a new platform.
- Upgrading plugins and themes.
- Fixing broken links (like the video URLs) and other issues.
This is the critical, stealth mode work that’s needed to bring our site up to the Modern Days, thank you. That phase is just about complete.
What’s Next: Making Things Better
Now I’m on to the fun stuff! Making the site prettier and, hopefully, a lot more useful and enjoyable for you. The feature I’m most excited about is the addition of proper English translations for our songs.
This is like the number 1 request we get from visitors – you already know… What does this song mean in English??
I started my own journey to learn my native language so many years ago, and while I am still very much learning, it just grips at my heart when I see other Samoans struggle with our mother tongue. Especially now that I know how stunningly poetic our words are.
With the help of my mother, who is a professional Samoan translator, I spent the last couple of years really studying our language – as in, actually reading our grammar books and making content to help me really absorb all this learning … if you follow us on Instagram, you’ll know.
And then… because I’m a geek who’s also been working on her programming skills… I trained up an AI tool – I refined its knowledge of our Samoan language with hundreds of sample sentences, including Samoan proverbs and idioms – to help me create our own ‘official’ English translations of all our stunning Samoan songs.
And we’re finally ready to roll them out!
Our First 20 Translated Songs
We’re starting with 20 of our most popular (and some of my personal favorite) songs.
- Sau, sau ia la’u Dear
- Faiva o Tama
- Faiaoga usi lau fa’alogo
- Faliu Nei Le La / Ua Na o Oe
- Alo i au faiva
- Lily of the Valley
- Samoa e maopopo mai
- Ua fa’afetai
- Ifo Maia Lou Ao
- Uso song
- Tumau Oe
- O Le Taualuga
- Moomooga (sa molia i talosaga)
- E lo’u Tama e, ua fa’afetai
- Baby nofo maia
- Ua So’ona Olioli Nei
- Sosefina
- Naumati lagona
- Falealili uma
- Samoa Matalasi
But this is just the beginning. We’ve got over 400 songs in our collection, and while I’m working much more quickly that I ever could have before, this is a big project that will take time.
I’ll keep you posted along the way.
What’s Coming Up Ahead
After the translations are complete, the next exciting phase of this project is…. a secret :).
I’m not ready to share the details just yet, but here’s a hint: COMMUNITY.
Fa’afetai tele lava!
Thank you for sticking around and for your patience during this process. I hope you’ll enjoy the upgrades as much as I’ve enjoyed working on them. Your support and interest in Samoan music mean so much to me.
Stay Connected
If I’m not here, I’m probably on YouTube or Instagram. Follow Anavatau or me, lilieni.arp, to stay in the loop.
Thank you again!
Ma le fa’aaloalo lava.
