Go figure, thanks for that. CGTN should hire me as a consultant.
I guess my working theory/axe to grind, is that western reportage on China will wilfuly keep or use awkward translations where they can without giving proper explanation. Western reporters are also perfectly capable of doing their own research and proposing their own translations or localisation within their writing.
See my comments below with how Forbes deals with the word ‘karoshi’ from Japanese (sharing because it’s related to stress, precarity, death and economics)
But karoshi goes unspoken in the U.S. because the English language has no word for it.
We DO have a word for it. It’s death from overwork. Our language doesn’t work like german or japanese where we can slam so many nouns together to make infinitely long composite nouns, we add a space every now and again, so where they have ‘one’ word (which is really add + work + death) we have three ‘words’
“Oh the inscrutable Japanese with their beautiful, tortured, unique untranslateable culture, we have to treat it respectfully by not translating the term into mundane English so we will use the romaji karoshi throughout the text.”
Not only do they refuse to translate it, the article gives ample explanation. Japanese words are often kept in romaji elevated and exoticised*, while Chinese words are deliberately translated into clunky english and ridiculed
I’m sure you’ve noticed it before, its ‘thing, place 😐 thing Japan 😍’ through translation
*A recent IRL example I had was walking through a park with my brother, and there was a sign talking about the Japanese word komorebi and it’s all like ‘english has no word for this phenomenon’ ooo’ and I was like bullshit, we have the word ‘dappled light’ and if you want to get technical you can say ‘dappled light through leaves’ and a coworker who was explaining how ‘ganbatte’ was a unique Japanese concept (like other people don’t cheer people on in other countries)
t/n nakama means friend buzzfeed 16 untranslateable words from japanese (#7 will SHOCK you) ‘inuits have 42 words for snow’
Go figure, thanks for that. CGTN should hire me as a consultant.
I guess my working theory/axe to grind, is that western reportage on China will wilfuly keep or use awkward translations where they can without giving proper explanation. Western reporters are also perfectly capable of doing their own research and proposing their own translations or localisation within their writing.
See my comments below with how Forbes deals with the word ‘karoshi’ from Japanese (sharing because it’s related to stress, precarity, death and economics)
Not only do they refuse to translate it, the article gives ample explanation. Japanese words are often kept in romaji elevated and exoticised*, while Chinese words are deliberately translated into clunky english and ridiculed
I’m sure you’ve noticed it before, its ‘thing, place 😐 thing Japan 😍’ through translation
*A recent IRL example I had was walking through a park with my brother, and there was a sign talking about the Japanese word komorebi and it’s all like ‘english has no word for this phenomenon’ ooo’ and I was like bullshit, we have the word ‘dappled light’ and if you want to get technical you can say ‘dappled light through leaves’ and a coworker who was explaining how ‘ganbatte’ was a unique Japanese concept (like other people don’t cheer people on in other countries)
t/n nakama means friend buzzfeed 16 untranslateable words from japanese (#7 will SHOCK you) ‘inuits have 42 words for snow’