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Tales Of The Industry - Wanna Go To Tokyo In 3 Days?

Just to set the record straight, as I doubt this thread will continue, I agree with Psycho 101 that we shouldn't get into rabid sexism land (I didn't start it).

leafy sea dragon wrote:

I also noticed in that article that Japan apparently has a very low English proficiency rating. I wonder how that happens when it's long been fashionable to have stuff written in their own interpretation of English, resulting in massive quantities of Engrish present there.

Knowing a few people who lived in Japan, they say the Japanese popularly regard everything English as better (than Japanese) and "cool" so advertisements, songs, etc. will have seemingly random English words or phrases thrown in. The ads have to be mostly in Japanese because, according to a poster on a previous article, many people there only get a year or so of English in high school which they promptly forget. The randomness and Engrish comes mostly from that I think. Having experienced what happens in China regarding learning English myself, Engrish also comes from people learning from others who aren't really proficient or don't actually speak English or possibly have never heard the actual spoken English words they are trying to use. Same goes double for grammar and syntax, which is where much WTF comes from such as using "Algernon" (a person's name) for the name of a viral disease in Betterman. Maybe "gundam" too as supposedly derivative of "gun".

This is why localization of anime and video games to general audiences change names, remove Japanese cultural references, and otherwise pass themselves to try to be as western as they can. People question why Takeshi's onigiri is changed to Brock's donut or why all the Digidestined have western names--people like them are the reason why, and as can be seen with all these anecdotes, there are a LOT of them.