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Answerman - Why Are Common English Loanwords Mistranslated So Often?


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Alan45
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Joined: 25 Aug 2010
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Location: Virginia
PostPosted: Tue Apr 25, 2017 3:53 pm Reply with quote
@leafy sea dragon

Yeah, but a lot of people are really turned off by that fake personalization. In my case the fakery is obvious. They use my first name which I haven't used since college and use it in full which I never did. Even on the phone if someone asks for "Edgar" I know it is not a friend.

Yes, Japanese culture is really different. I'm very shy by nature (my father once told me that I was "backwards about coming forwards") but anime makes me feel very outgoing and pushy. Laughing
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Tuor_of_Gondolin



Joined: 20 Apr 2009
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 25, 2017 3:54 pm Reply with quote
I'll preface this by saying that it's been a couple of decades since I was in the military, but back then, you always use last name or rank when "on duty" or in formal settings. However, a lot of the time you're not in either, and then the same general rules apply as in normal life: if you're friends (or well-acquainted), you'll usually use their given name, not their surname, and people you don't know (or like) very well you'll just use their last name. Generally, once someone is above a certain paygrade, you'll almost always address them formally, regardless of how well you know them, especially if they're above you in your chain-of-command.

More generally speaking, American culture is way, way, way less concerned about social position than Asian cultures tend to be. We don't have the whole sempai-kohei thing. We don't have any nobility at all (no -samas). There are some class-based things, but they rarely occur and aren't uniformly held. Also, I have a sister but I never called her "sis", let alone "sister" when I was growing up. I might tell others that "she is my sister", but I don't *call* her that. (And, yes, I'm older than she is.)
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yuna49



Joined: 27 Aug 2008
Posts: 3804
PostPosted: Tue Apr 25, 2017 4:24 pm Reply with quote
leafy sea dragon wrote:
Something I don't fully understand is the idea that you learn about Japanese culture and its language through anime.

I enjoy watching historical shows with a strong cultural focus like Hyouge Mono, Genji Monogatari Sennenki, and Mononoke, or films like Miss Hokusai and Kaguya-hime no Monogatari. I don't look to contemporary stories to learn about Japanese culture.


Last edited by yuna49 on Tue Apr 25, 2017 4:29 pm; edited 1 time in total
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peno



Joined: 06 Jul 2016
Posts: 349
PostPosted: Tue Apr 25, 2017 4:24 pm Reply with quote
Alan45 wrote:
Immigrants were a mix of Polish, Check, Yugoslavian, and Hungarian.

Check? What Check? The one you'll receive in bank or the one your doctor gives you? The nationality, you obviously meant, is Czech, pronounced the same way, but the spelling is C-Z-E-C-H, thank you very much. BTW, if you refer a person from Poland, it's Pole, not Polish, even tough it may sound weird, but that's how it is. Polish is the language or adjective, but Polish people are Poles.
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yuna49



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PostPosted: Tue Apr 25, 2017 4:32 pm Reply with quote
peno wrote:
Check? What Check?

Please. Everyone is entitled to the occasional error when posting on forums. I'm pretty sure Alan, and most everyone else posting here, knows that it was supposed to be Czech. Moreover I've read his postings on this forum for years now, and he is generally pretty erudite.

Did this flip some switch for you?
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peno



Joined: 06 Jul 2016
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 25, 2017 4:42 pm Reply with quote
Sorry. Yeah, it probably did. I guess being Czech myself, I overreacted, but yeah, I I am a little too sensitive on this mistake, seeing how we are small country, I tend to be overprotective of our national and its symbols. Like when I flipped over when I saw our flag flipped in one episode of Cardcaptor Sakura. So, sorry about that.
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Alan45
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Joined: 25 Aug 2010
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 25, 2017 7:09 pm Reply with quote
@peno

Sorry, it was not my intent to slight you. I am horrible at spelling and sometimes let spell check have too much power. I should have known better.

For what it is worth, the ones in my class had all been raised in the US and most had been born here. Their parents were refugees from WWII. We were all born just before or just after the end of the war. Many still had relatives in "the old country" their parents were still in touch with. I often felt a bit left out because my family had been here long enough that no one knew where we were from more specific than Germany, France and the UK.
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Shiroi Hane
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Joined: 25 Oct 2003
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Location: Wales
PostPosted: Tue Apr 25, 2017 9:22 pm Reply with quote
Alan45 wrote:
My doctor still measures me in feet and inches, I'm weighed in pounds. The distances to locations on road signs are in miles, speed limits are in MPH. If you go into a grocery store your meat and produce will be weighed in and priced in pounds.

In the words of @BritishLogic "An entire British generation uses miles for long distances, metres for short distances and feet and inches for height. We're screwed."
I was just thinking the other day how I think of large audio jacks as quarter inch and small ones as 3.5mm. I've never understood pounds and stones....

lebrel wrote:
Actually, British books do get "localized" American editions. Here's Neil Gaiman talking about that

I had the UK edition of the original Last Chance to See while the one my sister purchased later was a US edition and she was annoyed that they excised the word "mooching".

And speaking of global find and replace...


Alan45 wrote:
I wish you people would stop calling the system "Imperial".

"Us people" know that system as "Imperial". I'm not inclined to localise myself for you in that regard any more than I'm going to start referring to trousers as pants.

peno wrote:
The only UK exclusive anime releases I have are the Ghibli movies, and from those, only Arrietty does not contain already existing US translation.

Arrietty really is the only recent anime on disc with a specifically UK version. There were some UK-exclusive sub tracks made for Viewster but they never made it onto any discs.
The English materials for a few very recent shows like Patema Inverted and Mai Mai Miracle were commissioned by Anime Limited, but all the dubs are done in the US and with an eye to international sales. I can't recall if there is any region-specific language used in them, but I do recall that in the the Welcome to the Space Show dub, which was comissioned by Manga UK and out here for 2 years before someone in the US picked it up, was recorded in the US and they convert yen to dollars. Other than Arrietty the most recent recorded in the UK were Millennium Actress and Musashi (again, I can't remember if there was any UK-specific language in them).

Alan45 wrote:
Well, back in the early 1050s one of the local farm wives where I lived called her sister "Titty" or occasionally "Tits". It was years later when I figured out why the adults all found this so funny. However I wouldn't suggest that the fact that those nicknames were used back then as a basis to suggest they should be used now.

You lived in the early 1050?
I'm sure I was told at some point I was in school with a Titty, but I don't recall her. I do recall Titty from Swallows and Amazons, but her name was changed to "Tatty" for the more recent film adaptation. [/img]
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Sakagami Tomoyo



Joined: 06 Dec 2008
Posts: 940
Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia
PostPosted: Tue Apr 25, 2017 9:28 pm Reply with quote
Top Gun wrote:
But the problem with that, at least from my perspective, is that nothing yanks me out of the viewing experience faster than having it made abundantly clear that I'm watching a deliberately-constructed fictional product, and one that's been translated from another language no less. I think the fundamental goal that any good creator strives for is to make their fictional characters seem like living, breathing people to the reader or viewer. Those random bits of awkwardly-literal dialog translations, or really forced attempts at matching a certain difficult lip-flap on the dub side of things, are the mental equivalent of a big flashing neon sign: "THESE PEOPLE AREN'T REAL!" At the end of the day, a native Japanese viewer doesn't face those immersion issues, because the way the characters speak is the way they themselves would. If there are steps a skilled translator can take (and there usually are) in the writing process to replicate that experience and eliminate unintentional taps on the fourth wall, shouldn't they be encouraged to do so?

Creators generally strive for making their worlds and characters seem like they're living and breathing, but there really does need to remain an awareness that the story is not reality. And personally, I find it jarring when there's an element in the translation that can't possibly have been in the original. I find the presence of Americanisms in the translation more off-putting than a Japanese element I don't understand. Even if it was an Australianism that's added, the "this can't be in the original" part of my brain would shout over the "this is familiar" part of my brain. And since I need to spell this out every time it comes up, no, this isn't some weeaboo thing, I don't want that kind of substitution in any foreign work. If I did, I could be here all day with things I'd want changed in American movies and TV shows to make them more familiar to Australians...

yuna49 wrote:
Please. Everyone is entitled to the occasional error when posting on forums. I'm pretty sure Alan, and most everyone else posting here, knows that it was supposed to be Czech. Moreover I've read his postings on this forum for years now, and he is generally pretty erudite.

Did this flip some switch for you?

Everyone has some kind of berserk button regarding their identity; be it related to nationality, gender, sexuality, political philosophy, etc, and often it involves commonly made mistakes, generalisations, or dismissals of their importance. In my case, I often have people thinking my surname is my given name, often in spite of having my full name right in front of them. Many people outside of the US will refer to all Americans as "yanks", but this really upsets people from southern states. In peno's case, I would not be surprised if he's thoroughly sick of people frequently not knowing or caring how Czech is spelled.
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peno



Joined: 06 Jul 2016
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 26, 2017 12:20 am Reply with quote
You are right. But I tend to be even more sensitive when people don't know where Czech Republic is and in that case, I've heard a lot of interesting things, including that we are right next to Australia Laughing Though in that case, I guess the person simply mistaken Austria with Australia, as some people sometimes tend to do. Which, BTW, may be similarly annoying to Austrians and Australians.

Shiroi Hane wrote:

Arrietty really is the only recent anime on disc with a specifically UK version. There were some UK-exclusive sub tracks made for Viewster but they never made it onto any discs.
The English materials for a few very recent shows like Patema Inverted and Mai Mai Miracle were commissioned by Anime Limited, but all the dubs are done in the US and with an eye to international sales. I can't recall if there is any region-specific language used in them, but I do recall that in the the Welcome to the Space Show dub, which was comissioned by Manga UK and out here for 2 years before someone in the US picked it up, was recorded in the US and they convert yen to dollars. Other than Arrietty the most recent recorded in the UK were Millennium Actress and Musashi (again, I can't remember if there was any UK-specific language in them).

I think Amazon's dub for Ronja the Robber's Daughter was recorded in UK, but I am not sure. The dub contains rather weird mix of UK and US VAs, so it may be that they recorded it in both London and LA. Still, I've heard they tried to give it European feel, but how successful they were with that, I don't know, since I did not see it yet.
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leafy sea dragon



Joined: 27 Oct 2009
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 26, 2017 1:22 am Reply with quote
peno wrote:
You are right. But I tend to be even more sensitive when people don't know where Czech Republic is and in that case, I've heard a lot of interesting things, including that we are right next to Australia Laughing Though in that case, I guess the person simply mistaken Austria with Australia, as some people sometimes tend to do. Which, BTW, may be similarly annoying to Austrians and Australians.

Shiroi Hane wrote:

Arrietty really is the only recent anime on disc with a specifically UK version. There were some UK-exclusive sub tracks made for Viewster but they never made it onto any discs.
The English materials for a few very recent shows like Patema Inverted and Mai Mai Miracle were commissioned by Anime Limited, but all the dubs are done in the US and with an eye to international sales. I can't recall if there is any region-specific language used in them, but I do recall that in the the Welcome to the Space Show dub, which was comissioned by Manga UK and out here for 2 years before someone in the US picked it up, was recorded in the US and they convert yen to dollars. Other than Arrietty the most recent recorded in the UK were Millennium Actress and Musashi (again, I can't remember if there was any UK-specific language in them).

I think Amazon's dub for Ronja the Robber's Daughter was recorded in UK, but I am not sure. The dub contains rather weird mix of UK and US VAs, so it may be that they recorded it in both London and LA. Still, I've heard they tried to give it European feel, but how successful they were with that, I don't know, since I did not see it yet.


You might enjoy a book called Non Campus Mentis, which is a collection of horribly incorrect and confused-sounding excerpts from university history essays. In one of them, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was instead called the "Australia-Mongolia Empire."

Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva has a hybrid dub between American and British voice actors. The Layton games' dubs have been like this from the start. In addition, though most of the voices are the same between both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, a few roles are played by different actors between the regions, most notably deuteragonist Luke, which arised from complaints by British players that (American) Lani Minella's accent sounds very inauthentic.
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Sakagami Tomoyo



Joined: 06 Dec 2008
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 26, 2017 1:34 am Reply with quote
peno wrote:
You are right. But I tend to be even more sensitive when people don't know where Czech Republic is and in that case, I've heard a lot of interesting things, including that we are right next to Australia Laughing Though in that case, I guess the person simply mistaken Austria with Australia, as some people sometimes tend to do. Which, BTW, may be similarly annoying to Austrians and Australians.


My first thought was "how the hell did they mistake you for New Zealand?", but yeah, the Austria/Australia thing makes sense. I've heard of people making that mistake, but amazingly even online I'm yet to personally witness it.
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Alan45
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 26, 2017 7:38 am Reply with quote
Shiroi Hane wrote:
Quote:
You lived in the early 1050?


Damn, I already had to admit I couldn't spell, now you're forcing me to face up to the fact that I can't type either. Sad No, but I was alive in the 1950s, which might as well be 1050 for this crowd.

And no, I don't expect anyone to "localize" themselves, I was just a bit irritated that I seemed to be the only one not using the term. For what it is worth, the systems are not entirely identical. The Imperial gallon is rather larger than the US gallon.

I think it was H. L. Menken that referred to England and the US as two countries separated by a common language.
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Shiroi Hane
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 26, 2017 11:31 am Reply with quote
leafy sea dragon wrote:
Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva has a hybrid dub between American and British voice actors. The Layton games' dubs have been like this from the start. In addition, though most of the voices are the same between both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, a few roles are played by different actors between the regions, most notably deuteragonist Luke, which arised from complaints by British players that (American) Lani Minella's accent sounds very inauthentic.

Forgot about that one. IIRC it was dubbed by Side UK who also dubbed the games.
Even back when anime was regularly dubbed in the UK they used a lot of American expats living in the UK and there were a lot of neutral "mid-atlantic" accents in that era also.
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WatcherZer



Joined: 29 Dec 2016
Posts: 266
PostPosted: Thu Apr 27, 2017 12:40 am Reply with quote
At my High School (UK) teachers did indeed use Surnames unless addressing you informally. We also tended to use surnames to refer to each other as well (probably around 60% of people were referred to by surnames, 30% by first names and 10% nicknames).

haven't been many UK specific dubs recently but in the 80's and 90's a lot of stuff was originally dubbed in the UK. Starfleet and Monkey most notably but all Ghibli (even to this day) and a few other series. The terrible quality of US dubs (starting from the early 00's and particularly once Funimation got going) is one of the reasons I stick purely to subs, American VA cant do emotion they just phone their performances in all bland and robotic.

Something having subs on TV isn't as much of a deal here, Channel 4 had a anime slot in the 90's and showed a lot of subbed anime, Film 4 showed a lot of anime films as well as some Korean films (though Japanese films have never been a thing here apart from classic Kurosawa) and nowadays BBC4 has loads of Scandi series as well as Montalbano.
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