Anime

I’ve been thinking a lot about why translations suck. I think it’s sometimes the fault of the translator, for sure.  Sometimes they just don’t pick up on a nuance or choose the incorrect word.  These mistakes happen.  I think that translators should be careful, be teachable (ego is the enemy of almost everything), and accept that sometimes mistakes happen. But errors in translation aren’t always due to mistakes. English and Japanese are fundamentally different in one huge way.  I don’t mean grammatically, syntactically, anything like that.  Yes, it’s different in… Read More »Why Translations Suck – Part 2

There is a pun in Japanese that doesn’t exist in English, and it’s related to the word “chinchin”. This word has two meanings.  The first is related to the action of a dog begging (“his chinchin is very cute”).  The second is a rather childish word for a male reproductive part (probably an abbreviation of “chinpo”). This is a pun that doesn’t translate well. It’s because there aren’t very good word choices that fit both meanings. There are two anime which use this pun that I know of.  The first… Read More »Chinchin: Why translations suck

I’ve been studying Japanese for years now.  Yes, I probably could get farther if I started studying much more seriously, and honestly, I really should.  But I’ve been studying long enough to become familiar with the language in the way beginners aren’t – even though my grammar and vocabulary are still fairly substandard.  There are some things you just pick up by exposure.  In this way, even though I’m only N5 level, I think I do have some advantages over beginners. One of the biggest advantages is that I have come… Read More »The Biggest Hang-Up in Learning Japanese (In My Opinion)