(no subject)

[elwen]

To: Dan Brown

I don't know if I ever had any respect for you to begin with, but if I did, you just lost it.

This is kind of a nice complement to my previous post, I think. One is Japanese people screwing up English, and the other is English people screwing up Japanese. :P

ETA: Y'know, one of the reasons many of my stories drag is because I fear having to research what I'm talking about. The Sailor Moon/Xanth crossover stalled when I couldn't find the names of airports in Florida. I'm dreading the day when, if ever, I have to start talking about the Beijing and London seishi in my Fushigi Yuugi fic. [This is also why I prefer fantasy worlds, where I can just make it all up.]

But Dan Brown has shown me the light. Apparently I can still make it all up! And still get published!

I think they need a Rule 11 for writers.

[Rule 11 says if a lawyer signs something it certifies that he reasonably researched the arguments and they have a reasonable basis.]

Comments

[mergle.livejournal.com]

....
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I think my soul hurts.

[thierrys.livejournal.com]

It hurts! Make it stop! T_T

Where is the previous entry?

[ctrl-a.livejournal.com]

Uh, this one?
http://ctrl-a.livejournal.com/113710.html

[thierrys.livejournal.com]

Ohh, I thought you meant on the community.. *sheepish*

So which makes you angrier, English-speakers with bad Japanese, or vice-versa?

[ctrl-a.livejournal.com]

Ahh, no, I was unclear. Thanks for pointing that out!

Hm... it's hard to say. I think it really depends on the attitude of the person. The more presumptuous, the more it pisses me off. I find Dan Brown's thing pretty egregious because it's in a published novel, and he so blithely pretends he knows what he's talking about that people would be misled. (I'm similarly bothered by the weird pseudo-Chinese they use in Firefly, but at least they can pretend evolution of the language over time explains the weird pronunciation and the fact that they talk like little kids.)

With Engrish, it's almost so much a part of Japanese culture to try to use English to sound cool that you just kind of sigh and move on. There are some totally gratuitous examples that bug me -- the one that comes to mind is in Saint Beast ~Kouin Jojishi Tenshitan~ they randomly have a narrator do some parts in English, kind of like bookends to the story arc. It's really badly pronounced English, and I don't see why they couldn't have had it in Japanese.

But even that's not as bad... I guess -- and maybe this is pejorative of me -- I see Japanese people as being all shiny-eyed and "English is so cool, let's use it!" and Americans as being more calculating about using elements of Asian culture and then being bad because they don't bother to do enough research.

I don't know. I guess there really is no difference between when a Japanese person chooses an English word as the name of their restaurant to make it sound cool, even though it means something utterly inappropriate, and when an American chooses a Japanese word for the same reasons.

...that was probably a longer answer than you wanted. ^^;;

[thierrys.livejournal.com]

No, long answers are good. It's interesting, like when people who aren't into anime/Japan/whatever will make fun of it if they hear the random English, and then they realize that we do the same thing with French or Spanish.

I agree that the misuse of language is irritating in different ways. The thing about Japanese using other languages for cinematic purposes is that it's so often incorrect that you wonder WHY a person couldn't take two seconds to look it up? Especially television producers who would likely have links to someone who's a native speaker. There is a large number of English/French/German speakers in the world, so not taking the time to double-check is either lazy or arrogant. I think that's why the Dan Brown bit rubbed so many people the wrong way--if we can see it without even checking, what was stopping the publisher or author from finding a person with a basic knowledge of Japanese? Maybe the assumption we're all just "ignorant Americans"? >_<

Well, that's most certainly a longer response than you expected ^^

[nendil.livejournal.com]

HEAD
DESK
HEAD
DESK

[ctrl-a.livejournal.com]

Did'ya like the "Mandarin symbols" part? That's what really indicates to me that he just wants to sound like he knows what he's talking about. As if a spoken dialect has its own symbols and meanings for said symbols. -_-;; The more linguistic-al you can sound, by using terms like "Kanji" and "Mandarin" instead of just "Japanese" and "Chinese", the better!

I should translate song lyrics out of sequence. They might make more sense that way!

[nendil.livejournal.com]

Did'ya like the "Mandarin symbols" part?
OH YES THAT WAS SO SEXY

How the Christ can you make a code out of Chinese characters anyway, unless it's just a substitution code to which those people couldn't possibly have the key for. ::puke::

[ctrl-a.livejournal.com]

I know I know! Maybe it was phonetic! Like white goose dead egg!

I guess that doesn't fit because Dan Brown says "translation" -- though I begin to doubt whether he properly knows the difference between pronunciation and translation -- but that would be fun. XD Though once it turned out to be Japanese, you'd be screwed. I was just reading a different thread at japanese the other day that complained about how pretty much every other kanji can be read 'jou' or 'shi' or 'ka', etc.

My other thought was something radicals-based, like you put together radicals from several words to form the word you actually mean. And that's something you could only do with a pictorial writing system like Chinese.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_octopod/]

WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT

Although now I want to do cryptography using Chinese characters. A universe of new opportunities! Too bad Ditch Day's over.

[ctrl-a.livejournal.com]

That is a really cool idea. I wonder if the Three Kingdoms stack tried anything like that.

[ling84.livejournal.com]

*Mandarin* symbols?!? Last time I checked, both Cantonese and Mandarin used the same characters for the written language. Dammit, they're not even symbols, they're characters.

And when has a writing system been a completely separate language of its own? *grr* >.<

As for misuse of English in Asian culture - I was pretty impressed, actually, that all the English signage in "Read Or Die the TV" (during the Hong Kong sequences) was spelled correctly and had mostly good grammar. Someone on the production staff clearly had done their research.

I think the prevalent mis-use of Chinese and Japanese in American culture and vice-versa happens because these languages were being employed for shallow reasons in the first place. Adding random characters or phrases for "exoticism" only shows that you don't understand them well enough in the first place. If you could read them properly, then they would lose their "exotic," "foreign" flavor and just be - well, normal written language.

[twelvebeauties.livejournal.com]

何だって O_O

So he's what happens when hacks professionals try to get away with fangirl language.

magna

[maruchan.livejournal.com]

First I laughed, then I felt ashamed, and then I thought of you:

http://www.calendarlive.com/galleriesandmuseums/cl-et-manga6jun06,0,1020106.story?coll=cl-home-more-channels

Re: magna

[ctrl-a.livejournal.com]

Whyyyyy? x_X They spelled it correctly the first few times...

I didn't know Tezuka did a manga version of Crime and Punishment. I wonder if that's just pages and pages of the guy looking pensive with thought bubbles. D: