JLD DS Session #2: Handling English for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics

ATA 61st Annual Conference 2020

 

Session:           Handling English for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics

Speaker: Chikako Tsuruta (鶴田知佳子先生)

Date:                    Friday, October 23, 2020 (5–6 p.m. EDT)

Summary by: Marina Takahashi

Description:    The speaker will discuss issues in Japanese > English translating/interpreting centered on culturally specific content in signages. She will focus on how culturally specific terms can be expressed in English that is easy to understand even for first-time visitors to japan. She will also give specific examples related to the postponed 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games such as unnatural English signs at the newly built National Stadium and in shops and restaurants around Tokyo. Discussion with the audience will focus on how form and content in Japanese can be translated into English and what it takes to convey the intended meaning.

 

 

• Introduction
  • How a street in Tokyo looks in anticipation for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics
    • “Tokyo 2020” flags all around Tokyo
  • How a street in Tokyo looks living with COVID 19
    • Flags about social distancing and the coronavirus

 

• New National Stadium (signage)
  • “Hello, Our Stadium”
    • Why does this sound strange? Comes across as unnatural
    • Do you greet a stadium? An inanimate object?
    • To make it better: “Say Hello to Our New Stadium”
  • “Joho no Niwa”
    • Why does this sound strange? Putting into roma-ji or doing a phonetic translation
    • This does not convey the meaning
    • To make it better: “Event space ‘Joho no Niwa’”
  • “Please push the under button” (sign beneath a water fountain)
    • Why does this sound strange? Too many words? Not correct English?
    • To make it better: “PUSH” (on the button itself) which is short and concise rather than “Please the button below”
  • Around town and in restaurants
  • “Welcome Aboard! Point-and-Speak Foreign Language Sheet” (sticker found in a taxi)
    • Indicates where they would like to go, how to pay, the AC condition, etc.
    • A literal translation from “指差し外国語シート”
    • Point at what? Speak what?
  • “Kiyomasa Ido (Well)” at the Meiji Jingu (famous “energy spot”)
    • 掘り方の巧妙と水質の優秀なこと translated as “Ingenious way of sinking and the superiority of water’s quality”
    • Confusion from writing both “ido” and “well” together
    • Common use of redundant words (such as Arakawa River)
  • “Safety Evacuation Area”, “Chofu base ruins exercise open space”
    • Near Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (sign no longer there)
    • Literal translation directly from the Japanese (広域避難場所、調布基地跡地、運動広場)
    • Possible machine translation use
  • “CLOSE Staff Only”
    • Sign on a hotel door for staff
    • Frequent misuse of the word “close” (e.g., hotel signage that says “17:00 Close”)
  • “Go To トラベル”
    • Recent government campaign to help the economy

Meaningless to those who do not understand Japanese

• “Cook Do”
  • Two verbs next to each other
  • A direct translation of 料理する
• Piman no niku zume
• Stir-fried hormons in miso paste
• Japanglish

1. Who are we communicating to?
   • Japan welcomed over 30 million foreign visitors to Japan in 2019.
   • Despite the setback posed by the worldwide pandemic, the government still holds the target of 60 million foreign tourists by 2030 as decided at the Cabinet meeting on July 17, 2020.

 

2. Do we really have foreign visitors, more specifically, English speakers in mind as the intended target? Or is English used as more for a “design” or “decorative” purpose to be “fancy”?

One example is a local shop that translated 白鯨整骨院as
“White whale a bonesetter’s office”

 

3. Are we communicating in English? Or are we using Japanglish?
   • Examples: “live house”, “Hello Work”, “My Number Card”, “suku-sho” (screen shot), “kure-ka” (credit card)

 

4. Why would we want to use English? Cassette effect?
   • Akira Yanabu in 1976 defined the “Cassette Effect” as: the original meaning of a “cassette” is a “jewel box” which is a small, beautiful something that by definition contains a treasure. But it is only a box. The exterior hides the interior. This inability to know leads people to assume there must be something splendid inside.

 

• By using exotic sounding words that have the appearance of being important, ordinary citizens may have a sense of reverence towards the words that are coined. This is precisely the situation with how words related to Japanese government organizations such as Hello Work or My Number Card are used. These words may be especially difficult to understand for the elderly but do give the appearance of being important. That is also true with Japanglish used frequently in advertisements usually for fashion items etc. They give the impression that they are fashionable and cutting edge.

 

• Just as it has been in the past with kanji words, Japanglish expressed in katakana is becoming a source of confusion. The flexibility of the Japanese language is a great advantage in importing words and, hence, the culture associated with those words. But, in going in the other direction, that is, in trying to express what is happening in Japan to the outside world in English, the ambiguity hidden beneath the surface becomes amplified and the feature of the Japanese language can become detrimental. It is simply not possible to go in the other direction, of going back to the process of how the words are imported and made suitable for the Japanese context in reverse order.

 

5. We need a “native check” or “native touch”
   • Japanglish affecting English education?
   • Survey of 50+ students taking a class called “Introduction to Interpretation” class about loan words from English that are frequently used and have different meanings compared to the original English
   • Examples: “claim”, “take-out”, “mansion”, “tension”

• We can do better

Three necessary points

• User first
• Correct and concise English
• Don’t use Japanglish
• To be communicative, we need to see from the user’s perspective.
• What we can do
• Interpreters and translators can take the lead in improving communication in English.
• Raising awareness of this issue.
• Making English signs understandable to English speakers is something we should accomplish. In interpreting to and from Japanglish, the most important precaution is, as in any interpreting, to think first and foremost about the intended meaning in the source language and accurately convey the meaning in the target language.

 

• Translation of intended meaning: twin tower analogy (Professor Tomoko Tamura at International Christian University)
• Translation from Japanese can be likened to trying to transfer between twin towers, one tower being a Japanese one and the other an English one. A message originating from the Japanese tower at the surface level should be understood in terms of its intended meaning. Then, you should close the Japanese tower door and open the English tower door on the ground floor, formulate the necessary expression considering syntactic structure, and then go up the English tower to arrive at the final expression to be expressed in English. There should not be an automatic transfer at just the surface-level expression.

 

Example from a press conference by Japan’s new prime minister Yoshihide Suga that Professor Tsuruta simultaneously interpreted

• When reporters asked about who he would choose as his chief cabinet secretary, he said, “Someone who has 総合力”. If we try to jump from one tower to the next, we might translate the word as “comprehensive ability.” However, what we should do is think about his intended meaning which is “someone who is versatile and can perform various types of jobs.”

• Discussion from the May 2020 7th Meeting of The Next Generation’s Roundtable in Tokyo (NGRT) (Professor Tsuruta is the director)
  • Theme: “English Signs in Japan: Are they helping communication?”
• On the newly establish blog “日本の英語を考える会” (https://note.com/nihonnoeigo)

 

7. Q&A