OT: Appalling English

[Yosuke Ichikawa <ichikawayosuke -at- obun -dot- co -dot- jp>]

I$B%f(Bm coming in late in this thread, but I$B%f(Bve just skimmed through about 2 
weeks of Digest, and thought I have to write.

I$B%f(Bve just seen the $B%a(BEngrish$B%b(B site. My colleague is giving me a strange look 
as I$B%f(Bm having a hard time trying to contain my bursts of laughter.

(I hope you don$B%f(Bt mind my renaming the thread to $B%a(BOT$B%b(B, since, while the 
latter part of this long message has some relevance to tech writing, the 
first half is just about the way the Japanese people are.)


1) About the $B%a(BEngrish$B%b(B phenomenon

The reason $B%a(BEngrish$B%b(B (please take a look at the site if you don$B%f(Bt know what 
I$B%f(Bm talking about) is so popular here in our country, I have to conclude, 
is because it definitely helps sell the product.

It$B%f(Bs everywhere and on everything; name of buildings, stores, businesses, 
on food packages, household products, stationery, etc. Far more often that 
you people would put a Chinese character on a T-shirt for the sake of 
design. The majority of Japanese don$B%f(Bt understand what the writing is 
supposed to mean, and they don$B%f(Bt care. They$B%f(Bll just see the the English 
phrases (well, $B%a(BEngrish$B%b(B phrases, but they can$B%f(Bt tell) and get the 
impression that the product is somehow sophisticated than the ones without.

To be more precise, having the $B%a(BEngrish$B%b(B on products is so popular that I 
guess it couldn$B%f(Bt be counted as a strong appealing effect in itself. But a 
Japanese teenage girl, for example, who likes to surround herself with cute 
little thingies, would certainly choose a colorful notebook with perhaps a 
drawing of some cute creature, and of course the fancy $B%a(BEngrish$B%b(B.

It$B%f(Bs strange, and I never buy such products, unless it$B%f(Bs something that$B%f(Bs 
quickly comsumed, like potato chips; you couldn$B%f(Bt find one without it. But 
with the unbelivable popularity of $B%a(BEngrish$B%b(B, I know the majority of people 
do not mind seeing it on the things they buy.

I just remembered that the humble apartment that my family and seven other 
families live in is called $B%a(Broiyaru-rejidennsu$B%b(B ($B%a(BRoyal Residence$B%b(B). We$B%f(Bre 
all common people, of course! They don$B%f(Bt think about what the English 
means; they just like the fancy English sound. (Let me quickly add as 
excuse that I would be very limited in choice if I had to exclude all 
apartments with these sort of stupid names!)

I also just remembered the name of a motel located not far from where I 
live. It$B%f(Bs near a river. The place is appropriately named, $B%a(BHotel Liver 
Side$B%b(B. Yes, most of us can$B%f(Bt discern the L from the R. (Whenever this 
subject comes up, I always recall the Monty Python piece where they speak 
every line replacing the two with each other, which is quite amazing.) 
Perhaps incompetence is not such a sin. What puzzles me is why people still 
love to see--what they think is-- English, without understanding it.

So, with our great love for Engrish, some copywriter in an ad agency is 
told to come up with superficial prose that $B%a(Benhances the product image$B%b(B, 
and perhaps a non-1st class translator would try to convert it to English.

The Japanese $B%a(BEngrish$B%b(B phenomemon is, in my view, a combination of 1. the 
sadly immature commercial mentality in majority of our people, 2. marketing 
demand, and 3. poor English skills.



2) About the quality of writing in English manuals for Japanese products

As someone mentioned in the thread, I think it$B%f(Bs ultimately a matter of 
cost, and how many good English writers (native or otherwise) are 
available, compared to the number of manuals that have to be written.

I saw $B%a(BSpace Cowboys$B%b(B last weekend. Early in the film, Clint Eastwood, 
trying to fix his garage opener (or whatever it$B%f(Bs called), throws away the 
piece of paper he was holding, and says something to the effect of; it$B%f(Bs no 
use trying to read this stuff because some stupid Japanese must have 
written this, then some second-rate translator translated it, then another 
Japanese must have messed with the English afterwards.
(Not a quote. It$B%f(Bs especially difficult for me with the low and mumbling 
way he speaks.)

At first, I felt just a bit offended ($B%a(Bnot all of us are like that$B%b(B); but 
then I thought of how people in the US must be really fed up with such 
manuals in real life for something like this to come up as a line in a film.

The line interestingly also gives a good description of how many poorly 
written manuals are produced. Most of the time, a Japanese writer will 
write in Japanese. Then, they make the English version from there, but more 
often, an English _translator_ would just convert it to English, rather 
than an English tech writer _writing_ the English.

I$B%f(Bm not blaming the translators. The best translator would think about what 
the writing is trying to say, and _write_ the English equivalent. But this 
takes time, and with the pressing due date (and the rate), I can understand 
that the translator simply wouldn$B%f(Bt have time for this, so such a person 
would be more the exception than the rule. They$B%f(Bre usually expected to do a 
$B%a(Btranslation$B%b(B, provided with the J-draft but not the other reference 
material like the spec sheets, so they often have to settle for something 
close to a word-per-word conversion.

Then, after that, the person in charge for the manufacturer, $B%a(Bwell 
educated$B%b(B and without an objective knowledge of his English ablities, might 
even try to $B%a(Bimprove$B%b(B the writing into what they perceive as English. Not 
all of them, but some really do this. The person who wrote the movie script 
must have some knowledge of the industry!

But back to my previous--and most important--point; the importance of 
English _writing_ when working from a J-version.
The difficulty of creating a well-written English manual from a J-version, 
I think, is due to the fact that Japanese language/writing is different 
from the English language/writing in a fundamental way.

We don$B%f(Bt have definite or indefinite articles. So, in normal J-writing, 
things are much more ambiguous about whether a certain statement is 
referring to the specific subject or the subject in general.
To give you an exaggerated example, if you could imagine a sentence, $B%a(BPress 
button, and so and so will happen.$B%b(B, you wouldn$B%f(Bt know if the $B%a(Bbutton$B%b(B 
refers to a specific button that was mentioned in the previous sentence, or 
if this statement applies to every button found on the machine.

We don$B%f(Bt have singular or plural forms of nouns. We certainly have numbers, 
and can use them if we choose to to modify a noun, but a noun is usually 
neither singular nor plural, whereas in English, it$B%f(Bs always either 
singular or plural as long as it$B%f(Bs countable. This is certainly a cause of 
ambiguity compared to English about what exactly the noun is referring to.

We have a very loose sense of the active and passive voice. For example, if 
something hit a window glass and the glass was broken, the natural 
expression in our language is to say $B%a(Bthe glass broke$B%b(B, which may sound 
peculiar to you because the glass didn$B%f(Bt break by itself. (I wish I have a 
better example.)

We often don$B%f(Bt put a subject in a sentence. The subject is omitted as long 
as the speaker/writer feels its understandable from context. For example, 
if I really enjoyed my lunch, I would say, $B%a(BWas good$B%b(B. Not $B%a(B_I_ enjoyed the 
lunch$B%b(B, not $B%a(B_Lunch_ was great$B%b(B, not even $B%a(B_It_ was good$B%b(B; and this is not 
an ellipsis, an exception, but completely proper language.

So, the Japanese language is generally much vague compared to English. I 
hear the thinkers term this matter as not having a strict subject-object 
differentiation. I hope the linguists or the translation pros or who ever 
could jump in if you can add or offer a better example, but I think you get 
the picture.

As far as I know, it$B%f(Bs rare that the J-writer writes the J-version with 
some idea of how it should turn out in English. If one thinks in the 
articulation that one$B%f(Bs language system provides, then most Japanese 
writers will write perfectly passable Japanese manuals without being 
technically precise as his English speaking counterparts.

I happen to write manuals in both lanugages, but sometimes, my client will 
give me a snippet written in Japanese and tell me to incorporate it in my 
present English manual. While at first read the sentence seems to be saying 
something, the more I try to put it in English, the more I have to try to 
think about what it is really trying to say, what unmentioned assumptions 
are made, and sometimes ask the client for details. It will often turn out 
as a completely different, but much more simple, sentence. It takes much 
more time to work from someone$B%f(Bs J-writing than to originally write the 
English myself, working from the bits descriptions from the engineers.

There are a lot of great English writers and native English checkers here, 
I$B%f(Bm sure, but compared to the amount of products/manuals, I guess there$B%f(Bs 
not enough around (and the good people are pricey).

Someone in this thread said that many educated people in Japan can speak 
English. True for perhaps a very very small fraction, or the ones who were 
fortunate to happen to have lived in an English speaking country--like 
myself--,  but I have to say in general it$B%f(Bs a great overstatement.

English education starts from the first year in junior highschool here, and 
continues to at least the sophomore year in college, so a Japanese who$B%f(Bs 
had college education would have studied English for at least 8 years. 
Something is very wrong with this education, because while a few may be 
able to fake the speaking part, almost none can read or write with ease (I 
hear a lot of other asian nations are far more successful in this respect). 
The ubiquity of $B%a(BEngrish$B%b(B, as I$B%f(Bve repeated above, is proof of this fact.

Most companies don$B%f(Bt understand the importance of this English _writing_ 
part, simply because they can$B%f(Bt really tell if the final English writing is 
good or bad. Even if they do, I guess most feel they can$B%f(Bt afford the cost 
(time and money). Maybe for their very best $B%a(Bflagship$B%b(B product, but not for 
most others.

When their manual receive complaint from the customer, I can imagine they 
will quickly change their views, however. So Mr. Eastwood should perhaps 
have taken the time to write or call to the manufacturer. Hopefully not for 
a manual I was involved in, though!

Thanks for reading.

Yosuke Ichikawa
Tech writer
Obun Printing, Tokyo






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