The crazy year that was・大変だった年

Hi reader! Thanks for being here again. 🙂 In my last post in May, when I said see you on the other side, I meant the other side of my semester 1 assessments. Well, now Semester 2 and Lockdown 2.0 are both finished, and it’s the other side of 2020. And might I add, the better side. At least in Melbourne.

日本語で上手く書けないので、私の日本人の友達はもし読もうとしていれば、英語で頑張ってください！(<– I can’t write well enough in Japanese, so to my Japanese friends, please do your best in English!)

It’s a year today since I arrived back in Australia. What a year.

It’s nice to finally take a bit of time to write on here again. Some people had way too much free time this year. That was me for the first few months back in the country. Other people were completely overrun: health workers, politicians, [insert others here] and students of interpreting and translation.

At the start of the year I thought I’d have time to write more. Ha!

I thought I’d write about the things I was learning. Usually in Japan, there was a heap of cultural stuff I would pick up all the time, but never time to actually sit down and study. Well this year, there was an abundance of sitting down, and admittedly also a lot of study. It was the kind of study, however, that made me aware of the enormity of the task of acquiring Japanese, and the fact that I am effectively still beginning. That being said, I did learn many words and expressions. I consumed a lot of news.

What did I learn this year?

The main thing I want to say about interpreting at the moment is this: it’s different to talking for yourself. You become the voice for someone else in another language. In some situations this is more important than in others, but what you’re responsible for conveying is not just the content of what someone’s said; it also includes the intention. That means feeling, connotations, and any other information that can be gathered from the choices someone makes about the way they say something. People make choices deliberately about their phrasing, and it’s up to an interpreter to convey that. For example, if one person says, ‘SIT DOWN, NOW,’ and this is conveyed as ‘Would you be so kind as to be seated?’ the effect changes and is probably not what the original speaker intended. In the physical world it might only change the speed with which someone sits down, but the emotional impact will be different.

In situations that include psychological monitoring and/or manipulation, it’s especially important that not only what someone says, but also the way they say it, is rendered into the other language. This is true of various consultations, e.g. health or legal. The way someone speaks gives indications of all sorts of information: how well they’ve understood something; whether they’re lying; whether they’re experiencing some sort of mental disturbance; whether they’re an expert on what they’re saying.

At uni, the example that came up the most times was a cross-examination in court. Apparently barristers use all manner of trickery and rhetorical techniques to intimidate, put off and confuse witnesses. This is to discredit the witness for the other side – in other words, it’s so that the other side’s case will look weaker and the judge/jury/relevant party won’t believe this witness. E.g. a lawyer says, ‘In fact, you were at the bank that morning, and you did see Mr X, didn’t you? DIDN’T YOU?’ In some other situations it’s OK to edit out repetitions like this. But it was really hammered home this last semester that in some circumstances, seeming redundancies like these are a considered decision on the part of the speaker, and it’s unethical to omit them or fix errors in what someone says, because doing so distorts the message.

The idea of interpreting is of removing the language barriers so that everyone talking has equal access to what is being communicated.

When I was in Japan and struggling along to make myself understood in Japanese, sometimes there would be something I wanted to express but I didn’t have the exact words, so I would just change what I was saying.

E.g. ‘I don’t really want to go into that shop because the assistant last time was really snooty. I felt like she was judging me and I was uncomfortable.’ Half the time it would feel like too much work to say all this, so I might just say something like ‘Last time I went into that shop, I didn’t like the assistant, so I don’t really want to go in there.’ Even now that I think about it, I can’t think of a good equivalent for the ideas of ‘snooty’ and ‘to judge someone’. 俗物な人？ジャッジする？批判的な目で見る？

So. For myself, I managed by saying less or saying something slightly different using language I knew. But if you’re interpreting for someone else, you can’t do that. You can’t be the voice of a judge/police officer/Centrelink staff member/banker/doctor/lawyer speaking as if they’re speaking to their friend. Likewise, you can’t interpret as the voice of a 4-year-old and use words like ‘distortion’ or ‘equivalent.’ It’s like acting.

In summary, it was fascinating to learn about and practise interpreting and it took a huge deal of time and effort to make the progress I have to this point. I only did a bit of translation. More of that next year, I think.

Other news

This year as well as studying and practising, I also went on quite a few walks. My partner’s Australian partner visa was granted (WOOHOO!!) but he wanted to wait for his December bonus and anyway, we were all locked down over here, so we are due to meet again in January.

What else is news? Hotel quarantine, Biden elected, Go To Travel (what happened to Go To Eat?), several TV shows… I think I mentioned earlier in the year that it was hard to settle in again here. Covid made that harder than it could have been. A lot of old friendships had sort of gone stale, petered out or just changed. The upshot of this was that adult me wanted to meet new people and make new friends. With the help of uni and language exchange events, this was going swimmingly until Covid hit Melbourne. Uni group projects were a blessing in disguise because they meant contact (albeit virtual) with other humans throughout lockdown. A language exchange buddy introduced me to their other interpreting practice Zoom group, which helped both my interpreting skills and social life a great deal throughout the bigger lockdown. I started teaching English again via a couple of online platforms. That contact with people outside the house was a sanity saver in Semester 2 and Lockdown 2.0. And recently I started another job! Woohoo.

I think that’s most of it from me. You know what 2020 was like. If there’s never another one again, it’ll be too soon.

What about you? Did you learn anything good this year? Any special milestones?

As always, thanks for reading! And as always, I hope to write again soon 🙂 There’s no uni for the next while so who knows, I might even do it.

Until then, please take care and stay safe!

BB 2/日本語タイム、その２

（日本語版は下）

A couple of weeks ago, my translating and interpreting course started. Here’s what I’ve learned so far.

It’s better to interpret what is said directly, not indirectly

It’s faster and easier.

For instance

Direct

A: [I’ve got a headache.] (in Japanese)

Interpreter: I’ve got a headache.

Indirect

A: [I’ve got a headache.] (in Japanese)

Interpreter: She says she’s got a headache.

This doesn’t work in all cases (over the phone, for example).

Do a professional interpreting self-intro at the start of each [dialogue] session

Example

Hello, my name is [name], I’ll be your interpreter today. Everything that is said here will be interpreted and will be kept confidential. Please speak directly to each other*, and as concisely as possible. For accuracy, I will interpret in the first person. I may need to interrupt you.

Extra options include something like:

• If there’s anything you don’t want interpreted, please refrain from saying it. I have an obligation to interpret everything.
• If you don’t understand something I interpret, please say so.**

Translation companies are fussy about details

My translation tutor told us they’re really picky about punctuation and grammar. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

As far as concepts go, that’s about all I got in the first couple of weeks. Aside from this it was theory and stuff about how to use translating tools.

*Politeness problems

When I wrote the draft of this post, I wrote ‘please speak clearly’ as ‘hakkirito hanashite kudasai’ using the ‘te’ form in Japanese, but my proofreader suggested a slightly more polite/respectful/customer-directed style, ‘o-hanashi kudasai.’

When interpreting, after using this more respectful speech style, is it OK to go back to plain old everyday polite speech with ‘te’ form? Not weird?

I’m not sure I’d be able to hold up an interaction using kenjo-go (‘humble speech’) or sonkei-go (‘honorific speech’) with my current Japanese. It’s not that I don’t understand it. I’ve had plenty of exposure to sonkei-go as a customer, just never had to actually produce it myself. And kenjo-go comes up on the news every time Abe talks so I hear that a lot. But for both, without study and practise, there’s no way I’d be able to use them properly. I’d be mixing them up and confusing everything.

Interpreters’ speaking abilities aside, if the person speaking English isn’t using a very polite and formal tone, it would be inaccurate to do so in interpreting for them.

So… as the ‘interpreter’s voice’ maybe it’s best to err on the side of being more polite? At least, when talking to a Japanese client.

Oh dear.

**Another Japanese friend read this self-intro for me and completely rewrote it, making it more formal on the whole and probably a heap more correct. But I didn’t want to include that in this post because it’s already too long. Another time.

Next time (yes! It’s already planned!)

• Australian lifestyle preventing the spread of the coronavirus
• Learned since Week 2: Interpreting and acting
  

通訳と翻訳の講座の第１、２週学んだことを書きます！（今のところ、第３週終わった）

大体直接的な通訳が間接的のよりいいということ

この方がより早くて簡単だから。

例えば

直接

Aさん：頭痛い。

通訳さん：I’ve got a headache.

間接

Aさん：頭痛い。

通訳さん：She says she’s got a headache.

できない場合もある。（電話とか）

毎回、プロフェッショナルとしての自己紹介と通訳のやり方を通訳前の言語両方で行うこと（会話・対話？のとき）

いろんな通訳に話したら、「いや、そんなことしてる暇ないよ」と言ってるけれど。

例えば

こんにちは、私は（自分の名前）、今日通訳する者です。この場で話されたことは全て通訳し、もちろん口外しません。お互い直接的に、できるだけ簡潔にお話し下さい*。

正確のため、私は一人称で通訳します。また、遮ることがあります。

あとは+α、例えば：

• 通訳して欲しくないことがあれば、発言を控えてください。ここで発言されたことは全て通訳する義務がありますので。
• もし私が通訳したことがわからなかったら、お聞きください。**

翻訳の会社は規律にうるさいこと

句読点、文法のことで厳しくてうるさい、ということを、先生に言われました。それはあまり驚くべきじゃないだろうけどね。

概念的に、それで以上。他は練習、やり方の理論（セオリー）、翻訳支援ツールの使い方。

＊敬語悩み

私は今のブログ記事の下書きを書いたときに、「はっきりと話してください。」と私が書いたけど、直してくれた人が「はっきりとお話しください」に直してくれた。

通訳するとき、一回、もし私がこういう話し方になって、（謙譲語？尊敬語のレベルではないよね？「お話しください」）後から普通の丁寧語のて形「してください」、「行きます、います」とかに戻ってもいいのかな？おかしくない？

今の私は話しているとき、自分から謙譲語でも尊敬語でも発するのをずっと続けられるかは微妙。理解できないわけじゃなくてね。もちろん私が客だったときにいつも言われてたけれども、自分から発する必要だったことがないと思う。謙譲語も、いつもニュースで安倍首相が使ってるからそこで聞いてるけど、私自身が使ったことなくて、勉強も練習もしなければ、正しく使えるはずがない。混じったり混乱したりするでしょう。

通訳者が尊敬語、謙譲語を使えるかどうかはともかく、訳す英語はそこまで丁寧じゃなかったら、訳す逆に使うのも不正確になる。

だから…自分通訳者の声としてもっと丁寧な話し方がいいかな？日本人のお客さんに話すとき。

やばいね。

**もう一人の日本人の友達はこの自己紹介をみて、改めて書き直してくれた！でももう長いから今日ここに投稿するのをやめた。また今度にしよう。

次回！

（そう！もう決まってる！）

• オーストラリアでのコロナウィルスが広がるのを予防する生活
• 第２週以来学んだこと：通訳と演技

Bilingual Bij 1/日本語タイム１

English below

やばいやばい！！

来週から、翻訳と通訳の勉強が始まる。コースが始まる。講座始まる。課程始まる。まだ全然知ってる日本語の言葉が足りないはず！日本語能力試験でダメだった語彙はまだ絶対だめ！通訳も今の自分は合格できないかも！できるとしてもギリギリのはずで、絶対大変！パニックだ！

もう2ヶ月オーストラリアにいて、最近ちょっとだけ狂ってきてた。この2ヶ月時間たっぷりあってたくさん勉強しようと思ったけど、その時間をかけてバイトも探して結構応募して、面接受かった。その仕事は臨時というか、代用教員？代理の教師で、すぐレッスンに呼ばれた。その後、翌週呼ばれて行けなくて、それから二週間何も連絡なくて他のバイトを探していて、応募しても無視されたり、断られたりしてた。しばらく落ち込んできて、センターリンクというオーストラリアの支援センターの支援を申し込みむことにした。低所得者のための薬、病院、公共交通機関の割引も申し込むことにした。

フルタイムの学生は働く時間がないから、そういうオーストラリア国民を支援する制度がある。快適に暮らすことはできるほどではないけど。基本的に、所得の限度があって、それを超える人はこの、学生のための支援をもらうことはできない。というわけでフルタイムで勉強しながら働けてる人はもらえないけど、もちろんみんな請求したいから、申し込みで嘘つく人が結構いるらしい。だから申請のプロセスは複雑で分かりづらいし、申請するとき、色々立証証明する必要がある。

このプロセスの一つはフォーム。そのフォームの一つはModiAという、所得 (income)と資産(assets)が何がどのくらい有るかを申告するフォーム。

一人一人の事情はそれぞれ違うから、申請のフォームは色々ある。例えば私の場合、何年か前、祖父母にtrustというお金もらった。祖父母が私たち孫が小さい時に、特別な銀行口座を開いて、その中に大人になった私たちがもらえるように預金した。今調べたら日本語で「委託金」だった。この委託金あれば、ModiAに書く上、委託金のフォームも提出しないといけない。フォームの名前はModPT。ModPTをやるために、委託金の情報がもちろん必要だけど私たちの委託金はプレゼントだったから、私はその情報を持ってなかった。持ってたのは受託者 (trustee)、という人、つまり、私たちの親戚（の二人。多分普通は一人だと思うけど）。その親戚に連絡して、探してもらわないといけなくて、その親戚も色々正しい書き方とかその委託金を作った弁護士さんに電話で相談しないといけなかったらしい。

そして、この間、私が音楽活動で仕事やってたから、それもフォームが必要。趣味で私は合唱で歌うことが好きだから、1ヶ月前、あるメルボルンの合唱団のオーディションを受けた。合唱団の指揮者の人に「今度の日曜日、教会の礼拝で、歌ってくれないか？」と誘われた。謝礼金は○○ドルで。その教会では、私がオーディションを受けた合唱団ではなかったけれど、拝礼で何か稼ぐ期待もしてなかったから喜んで引き受けた。

でも、教会に請求書を出すために私の会社としてオーストラリアの企業登録簿に登録しないといけない。これは意外と簡単なんだったけど、センターリンクでの申請のフォームを書くときに、企業の詳細の書類が要る。または他のフォームで書いて、やっぱり必要な書類が分からなくて、センターリンクに電話かけたけど繋がらなかった。別のセンターリンクの番号を見つけたけど、その番号にかけると、人間の声ではなくてロボットの声が出て、自分の個人番号、生年月日とか入力すれば、ロボットにダメだと言われたら、とりあえず

諦めた。あとでまた最初の番号に何回かかけた後、繋がって、30分待待たれたけど、その後人間と話すことができて、フォームについて聞けた。

二週間後、割引の申請を出せた。もらえるお金の申請はパートナーのフォームもやらないといけなくて、それを完成させるために、パートナーの給与明細の2ヶ月分、そして銀行口座の残高の証拠も必要だから、給与明細はすぐとってくれてたけど銀行の明細は一週間かかるらしいから、それをまだ待ってる。

こういうことばかりやって、多分誰でもちょっと落ち込んだり、頭が変にる気がするでしょう。

とにかくやりたかったほど勉強はできてないね。そのために今やばいやばい、何かしなきゃ！と思って、これを書いてみた。

いつもこのブログで、オーストラリアと日本を比べてるんだけど、こういうお金のことは（嬉しいことに！）する必要だったことがない。

日本で、学生時代の学費や日常生活、家賃とかは全部バイトで稼ぐお金で払うのは無理でしょう。だいたい親が払ってくれてるかな？なぜか、深くまで考えたことがない。実家に住んでる人が多いと思うけど、それは全員ではない。みんな結構、大学受験のために高校で大変勉強するでしょう？それは、いい大学に進学するためでしょう？で、それはいい会社に入って、給料の高い仕事できて、自分の未来の子供がいい学校に行けるように、いい大学に進学できるように、などなど…？だからだいたい親は全部払うパターンなのかな？日本人の読んでくれてる人、教えてください！

あ。あと、フルタイムではない学生というのはあり得る？

やっぱり、これを書いて辞書何回も使ったり知らない単語が結構必要だった。特に通訳で使いたくなりそうな言葉が出るよね…書くことがいい練習でしょう！

今まで知らなかった単語：

• 課程
• 代用教員（聞いたことがある気がした）
• 資産　（知ってたけど使ったことなかった）
• 支援：ラジオニュースで何回も使われたのを聞いてるけど自分から初めてで、使い方に自信がまだない
• 特定的
• 低所得ーー＞収入の使い分け？
• 立証するーー＞一番自然な使い方じゃなかったらしい
• 預金
• 申告する
• 委託金
• 所得と収入の使い分け？
• 受託者ーー＞英語でも使ったことなかった、今年まで
• 指揮者ーー＞何回か調べたことあり、何回調べても全然思い出せない！
• 依頼
• 謝礼
• 請求書ーー＞何回か使ったこともあるのに思い出せないやつだな。
• 引き受ける
• 細目詳細ーー＞使い分け？？
• 「は」と「が」の使い分けはまだ難しい。

結構勉強になったみたい！

手伝ってくれた人に：ありがとう❤️

Wahhh!! S**ts**t!!*

Starting next week, my translating and interpreting [study] starts. The course starts. The lectures start. (This was me trying to find the most appropriate word for a university course.) I still have nowhere near enough language! The vocab that was no good in the JLPT** is still no good! I might not be able to pass interpreting! Even if I can it’ll be a near thing and definitely a lot of hard work! PANIC!

I’ve been back in Australia for 2 months and recently felt I was going slightly mad. Having plenty of time over the 2 months I intended to do a heap of study, but ended up using the time job-hunting and I did get an interview. The work is of the temporary variety, as a casual relief teacher, and I was called in to do a lesson almost immediately after the interview. After that, the following week I got a request but couldn’t go, and for the next 2 weeks there was no contact from the school. I kept looking for other work, and all my applications were going ignored or rejected. This left me feeling a bit down in the mouth and decided to apply for a Centrelink student payment (Centrelink is the Australian government support centre for people with low incomes). I also decided to apply for a low income health care card, where you can get discounts on medicines, medical fees, and public transport.

Australia has a system where full-time students, not having the time to work much, can receive a support payment – if they’re Australian citizens. Not that it’s enough to live comfortably on. Basically, if your income is over a certain threshold, you can’t get the student payment. This means that full-time students who are managing to work at the same time can’t claim the payment, but of course everyone wants to, so apparently there are quite a few people who lie in these applications. Because of this, the application process is complex and difficult, and you have to prove everything you write.

One part of the process is forms. One of the forms is called ModiA, a form to declare your income and assets.

Depending on your circumstances, there are different forms you need to do. For example in my case, I received money from a trust several years ago from my grandparents. When we children were small, our grandparents created this trust for us to receive money as a present when we grew up. If you have or are involved in a trust, as well as declaring so on the ModiA, you have to complete a trust form, whose name is ModPT. In order to do the ModPT, naturally you need the information about the trust, but we kids received our trust money as a present, so we didn’t have that information. The person who did was in our case the trustee, which in our case is 2 of our relatives (I think it’s probably more common to have one trustee?). So I contacted them and had to have them look around to try and find the information, and in the end they had to ask the trust’s lawyer to get the right information to help fill in the form and attach the right documents.

During this time, I was doing a bit of music work, so there was a form about that. I’ve always liked singing in choirs, so about a month ago I auditioned for one. The conductor asked if I would sing in a church service the following Sunday, for XX dollars. Having not expected any financial gain out of this audition, I happily accepted, but to invoice the church I had to register as a business with the Australian Business Register. This was surprisingly easy, but then the Centrelink application needed all the details of the business. I started filling in the ‘I have a business’ form, but having only just begun to operate as a business about a week before I started the application, I didn’t have or know how to do the paperwork you’re supposed to attach, so I called Centrelink. The number didn’t connect. I found another number and called that, and a robot answered and asked for my customer number and date of birth, after which it told me I couldn’t use the service. I gave up for a bit. Then calling the first number again, after calling a few times it connected to the point where I got to hold for 30 minutes and then got to talk to a human and ask my questions.

2 weeks later, I was able to submit the application for the health care card. The student payment requires a partner form, which needs my partner’s payslips from the last 2 months and a bank statement showing account details and balance. He was able to get the payslips easily enough but the bank statement takes a week apparently, so we’re still waiting for that to be able to get the partner form in.

Spending all your time doing this sort of thing, maybe anyone would feel a bit gloomy and mental. Anyway, I haven’t got around to doing all the study I wanted to. That’s why I thought ‘oh no oh no, I need to do something!’ and wrote this.

Usually on this blog, I compare Japan and Australia, but happily, I’ve never had to deal with with these kinds of money issues in Japan.

In Japan for students, the costs of uni fees, everyday living and rent and stuff must be impossible to pay with what students earn at their part-time jobs. Do parents usually cover most of those costs? For some reason, I’ve never thought that much about it. I think a lot of students live at home with their parents, but not everyone. Everyone studies their head off at high school for the university entrance exams, right? And that’s to get into a good university, right? The point of which is to get a good, high-paying job in a decent company, so that you can pay for your future children’s education so they can get into a good uni etc.? So do parents generally pay uni costs? If you know, please let me know!

Oh. And is there such a thing as studying in a non-full-time capacity in Japan?

In writing this post there were quite a few words I needed that I didn’t know, or didn’t know how to use, and I referred to a dictionary many times. Especially in interpreting, there are going to be lots of words coming up like that… Writing is probably great practice.

Here are the words I didn’t know/haven’t really used before:

• 課程 – かてい – course (of study)
• 代用教員 – だいようきょういん – this was what the dictionary said was ‘substitute teacher’ but  apparently 代理の、だいりの、is a bit more natural and 教員 is a bit formal compared to the tone I’m going for so I used 教師、きょうし, which I haven’t even checked with my proofreader.
• 資産 – しさん– asset(s) – I knew this one but had never used it myself
• 支援：– しえん – support (funding) – I’ve heard this used on the radio news a fair bit but this was the first time for me to use it myself so I wasn’t totally sure about it, but apparently it was right
• 特定的 – とくていてき – specific, designated, purpose-made – apparently this didn’t work here. I need example sentences, dictionary.
• 低所得 –ていしょとく – low income. What’s the difference between 所得income and 収入income?
• 立証する　– to prove – again, apparently wasn’t very natural usage and 証明、しょうめい, was better
• 預金 – よきん – deposit. Seen this at the ATM probably hundreds of times but never remember the reading because I’ve never used it myself until now
• 申告する – しんこくする– declare (tax etc.)
• 委託金 –いたくきん – a trust fund
• 受託者–いたくしゃ – a trustee. This year is probably the first time I’ve used this in English
• 指揮者 – しきしゃ – I’ve looked this word up a few times, but no matter how many times I do I can never remember it when I want it!
• 依頼 – いらい – a request. I’ve known this word a long time but never been able to use it correctly, including in this post. I tried using it to say how the conductor asked me to sing at the church because I wasn’t sure if ‘invite’ would work there, but apparently invite was actually fine.
• 謝礼 – しゃれい –  a fee, the kind a person/company charges for a service (not school fees)
• 請求書– せいきゅうしょ– invoice. I’ve actually used this a number of times but still can’t remember it.
• 引き受ける –ひきうける – accept, take on
• 細目 – さいもく– details/particulars vs 詳細 – しょうさい – details/particulars??
• Still haven’t nailed the difference in usage between「は」and「が」subject markers.

So this was probably quite a useful study exercise!

Thanks to my helper in this post ❤️

*(Note: The Japanese word I used here isn’t exactly a swear/curse word but for the spirit of what I wanted to convey, this seemed closest.)

**In the December JLPT I came very close to passing.

Not lost, just wandering in translation

I read a great Japan Times article today about how translation is not always given the care and attention it deserves. The article refers in particular to English signage in Japan but also mentions that often, for longer pieces of text too, people are often not asking the best person for the job. For signs, a native check will generally take care of most glaring errors, and for longer pieces of text you want someone who writes well in the target language (i.e. English) as well as understanding Japanese and being able to check the original text for its meaning. The lack of native checking seems to suggest that it’s not considered that important? And maybe shows a disregard for languages other than Japanese.

The part of me that gets Japanese as my ‘secret’ identity on Facebook quizzes thinks, ‘Well, maybe they’re too scared to talk to a native speaker or don’t know where to find one or how to get them to check their signs,’ and the rest of me thinks, ‘And this is the result.’

While reading this article made me consider the serious issue that it is, it also reminded me of some of the signs I saw on my recent travels around Hokkaido. They were mostly harmless, I thought, and got a chuckle or two.

This is the most potentially harmful one, where katakana strikes again. This time the loan word is from Dutch. It means something like ‘evacuation ramp’ or ladder. I think it’s an emergency exit, though whether there’s an actual ramp or what, I don’t know. Seen in a hotel in Tomakomai.

The only actual error here is ‘the spirit of toilet’ – should be ‘toilet spirit’ or ‘the spirit of the toilet.’ I just liked it.

Seen in a market in Otaru

‘Please note that your feet is slippery enough’ – seen at Nikka Whisky Distillery, Yoichi.

‘Dangeraus! Don’t walk on the Blue Pond’ …Even if you can. It’s dangeraus.

Also at the Blue Pond

This last one is from a service area a few years ago, but it’s too relevant not to share here now. An example of why semantics and pragmatics is important and is a fun thing to study.

Seen in Osaka

I’m still here. This blog is still here. Watch this space, more posts coming again soon!

In the meantime, have a picture I liked.

Anyone want to try a more natural translation? I mean, this one’s cute though.

The accent

A Japanese friend reckons he’s going to learn an Australian accent from this video. 

While not all Australians speak (or look) like this one, he’s definitely the real deal, or should I say a dinkum Aussie? Dunno what happened to his teeth, but he reminds me of Nek Minute (who is actually from New Zealand).

Nek Minute dude is your stereotypical bogan, which apparently I haven’t mentioned before. How..? Bogan is a really Australian word. If you try to describe it in English, it’s closest to chav in Britain, or redneck or white trash in North America, so says Wiki (and I agree). Bogan is a derogatory term and a popular concept in Australian contemporary culture. If you try to go off Nek Minute, you might think you have to be missing teeth and wearing a singlet tan to be a bogan, but Kath and Kim, popular TV characters, are also pretty bogan.

Bogans Kim and Kath. Especially Kim (on the left), who has fewer endearing qualities.

By the way, the underpants man from the first video above doesn’t seem to be a bogan, in my opinion. His physical appearance might make you think he’s one but he just seems way too nice, too likeable. I especially like how the Today host says something about superheroes wearing their undies on the outside so he must be one, and he’s flat out against it because that’s ALL he had on.

As for the accent and Australian English, well, as I briefly mentioned, not all Australians sound the same. To a lesser extent, it’s similar to how not all British people or American people sound the same. Australian accents vary less by region than by other demographics… educational background, ethnic background, social groups etc. I also know that within myself and others in my family, our accent varies depending on our surroundings. To use my sociolinguistic terms, we converge our accents towards, or diverge from, those of our interlocutors depending on how we want to perform our identity. Or in more layperson’s terms, I sound more Australian (my accent gets ‘broader’) when I’m with other Australians, especially when I want to create a closeness with others I perceive as having a broader Australian accent, i.e. like Underpants Man. But my American friends in Japan will tell you I don’t sound that much like him. Right?

I’ve also noticed, being in an international kind of environment over a few years, that occasionally I do pronounce Rs where as an Australian, I shouldn’t. I’ve been trying to tell myself that it’s when I’ve been planning to say something where anyone WOULD pronounce it, and then changed the utterance halfway through, like

‘We were at the supermarket’ and changed it to

‘We were tossing up between whether to go with Italian dressing or sesame.’

In the word were, in the first sentence, anyone who speaks Australian English natively will naturally pronounce the R unless there’s a good reason not to, but in the second, nobody will (unless there’s a good reason to).

Romaji ローマ字

This post is about romaji: what it is and isn’t. More about what it isn’t than what it is.

Romaji ローマ字 (‘Rome letter’) is: a way of writing Japanese using Roman letters 

It is not:

• -standardised
• -English
• -a complete way to read and write Japanese

And here I’ll go into some more detail.

Romaji is a way to read and write Japanese using Roman letters

It’s useful for words like Asahi, wagyu and Tokyo – Japanese things that people around the world want to talk about and use those words more or less as they are, with an approximation of Japanese sounds, rather than translating them. ‘Morning sun,’ ‘Japanese cow’ and ‘Eastern metropolis’ don’t have quite the same ring, I guess.

Romaji is not standardised

There are some romaji spellings that are widely accepted and known in English-speaking countries, such as Osaka, Kyoto, Tokyo, sushi, cha, sayonara, Mt Fuji, etc.

Here are a few spellings you might see for those words in various schools in Japan.

Oosaka, Ôsaka, Ōsaka, Ohsaka

Kyouto, Kyôto, Kyohto

Toukyou, Tôkyô, Tōkyō, Tohkyoh

sushi, susi

cha, tya

sayonara – sayounara, sayônara, sayōnara, sayohnara

Mt Fuji, Mt Huji

And while we’re at it, romaji could also be roomaji, rohmaji, rômaji or rōmaji. And tempura could be, in alternate-Romaji-land, tenpura. 

So which spellings are correct? Well, that’s the problem – it depends who you ask. I believe the romaji taught in most (??) middle and high schools is Hepburn. Which version of it also depends on the school, or maybe the teachers in the school, or maybe the Board of Education.

The Hepburn Romanisation system, a.k.a. ヘボン式ローマ字 hebonshiki romaji. Image: this romaji middle school page. Found via Google.

Even if teachers dedicate themselves faithfully to one particular version of Hepburn, it’s hard to stop the kids referring to the Kunrei – or is it Nihon? – charts of romaji in the back of their 108-yen notebooks. And whatever their homeroom teacher taught them 3 years ago in primary school, which was almost certainly not Hepburn, though they might have learned it at extra-curricular English lessons.

In romaji, tuki and tsuki sound the same.

My parents went to Shikoku last year and then brought back some omiyage custard cakes called hime no tuki. We talked about how it probably means ‘princess of the moon.’ Dad noticed that when read out loud,  the Japanese speakers in the room seemed to add an S after the T in tuki. Having painstakingly learned all the syllables in Japanese, Dad had learned tsu but not tu – what’s tu? Just another way of writing tsu. Because everyone knows that if you combine T and U an S sound will have to come in between, because that’s how Japanese works. Unless you don’t know Japanese. Which means you don’t know other things too, like that di, ji and zi all sound the same in Japanese and so do zu and du.

Actually, there is a good reason to keep du and di instead of just using zu and ji all the time, and that is typing. Perhaps the reason students learn romaji so long before they start learning to write and read other languages is so that they can use it to type. And if you want to type ぢ, the only way to do it is di, because ji will come out as じ every time. It’s important for spelling.

A non-Hepburn romaji chart. Image: Wisdom Bag, Yahoo JP

In the middle school where I most recently was an ALT, I don’t know which version of Hepburn they were teaching, but in the previous school it must have been some version of traditional as opposed to modified, because they learned a rule that the letter N had to change to M if it came before a bilabial consonant like P, B or M. This means, for example, that shinbun would be written as shimbun. It weirded me out when they had to write sanma さんま as samma, because you would only know how to read that if you either 1) speak a language with geminates like Italian’s ‘mamma’ with the long M or 2) already have an understanding of Japanese phonology. You need to know some Japanese phonology, too, to know that the U in shinbun or shimbun doesn’t sound like the U in the English ‘bun’ but more like the ‘oo’ in ‘toot.’ If you know no Italian or Japanese, depending on your variety of English you might read samma さんま to rhyme with stammer or Gramma (as in Grandma). This brings me to my next point.

Romaji is not English

If you are reading this post in English, then this might seem pretty obvious. To a Japanese kid (or adult) who learns romaji in about grade 3, way before they officially learn the alphabet in grade 6 or year 7, it’s not so clear-cut. When they see the letters in the alphabet it’s natural to try to read them as they were first taught, as in romaji. If you learned at 8 years old that the thing you know as チョーク is spelled tyôku, as opposed to chôku or another spelling, it’s going to be much easier to recognise and remember that than chalk. Even if you do copy out chalk 5 or 10 times in your notebook, it’s not going to stick anywhere near half as much as tyôku did. Even though it might not sound all that different, one is going to be much more comfortable, familiar and immediate than the other.

I believe this contributes to obstacles in language-learning. Much like katakana, I have mixed feelings/opinions about romaji – more about its teaching and usage than its existence. It can be a great tool for Japanese language users and non-Japanese language users to communicate. So in theory, all that should be necessary for it to trap fewer people should be something like, English teachers saying at the start of Year 7 English, hey kids, welcome to English. Let’s practice the alphabet and learn some PHONICS (hello, last year’s junior high school! To be fair, some schools do, but it’s not standardised either) and before we can properly start that, let’s take a moment to recognise that romaji and English are not the same thing, despite having a similar physical appearance. Their biggest difference is the fact that romaji is Japanese, and English is not.

Romaji is not a complete way to read and write Japanese

You may have noticed the word ‘probably’ used to talk about the meaning of the name of the custard cake package shown above. Well, hime usually means ‘princess’ (姫、ひめ), but it’s also the old name for ‘hawfinch’ (鴲 ,ひめ), which is a kind of bird. Who knows, though, it could also be the verb stem for himeru (秘める) ‘to hide.’ Then there’s the possibility that the E was supposed to be a long one, as in himei, which can mean ‘an inscription’ or ‘a scream.’ All this information is stuff that native speakers know from context or from reading the kanji, much as native speakers of English know the difference between ‘know’ and ‘no.’ But if you take away spelling and context, there’s no way to know.

When I was about high school age, I remember watching Inuyasha with my siblings. We were constantly perplexed by the name of Inuyasha’s sword, Tessaiga (鉄砕牙、てっさいが). The person doing the subtitles had transcribed the little tsu (っ) into the romaji in the subtitles* so we were reading ‘Tetsusaiga’ while hearing TESSAIGAAAAA!!! and trying to hear the extra tsu. Drove me nuts for years. Eventually I looked it up on the Internet – might have been doing some research for this blog, actually! – and discovered that it hadn’t been only us who had been troubled by this.

Even foreigners who speak Japanese fluently – even Japanese people, actually – can look kind of dumb sometimes if a Japanese name is written only in romaji. It can mean the difference between your name meaning Big-field or Little-field.

大野さん Ôno-san/Ohno-san/Oono-san ‘Ms./Mr. Big-field’

小野さん Ono-san ‘Ms./Mr. Little-field.’

In the above examples, I’ve used 3 different ways of showing that the first O is long in the Big-field name. But because it’s not standardised, students of English may learn any one of these spellings or may be taught not to indicate vowel length at all, because it’s ‘not what people are doing these days.’ The length of vowel sounds doesn’t usually affect much in English other than to give you an accent. It can affect meaning in minimal pairs like ‘ship’ and ‘sheep’ but it’s not only the length that distinguishes these words. In Japanese, though, as you see above, it can change the meaning of words. It’s the difference between snow (雪, ゆき, yuki) and courage (勇気, ゆうき, yuuki). Yuki can also be a boy’s name or a girl’s name, depending on the length of the U.

These aren’t necessarily world-changing issues, but they can create what are surely at least partially avoidable obstacles to effective communication. It has probably come up in studies. Naturally, I have the power to whinge about it, but no solution. That being said, I think standardisation would be a start, and within that, I don’t think it should be left up to the will of the writer (as it is on this page) whether they want to indicate the length of a vowel or not. That’s information that can help people understand more about your language, Japan. And if what people see and hear is consistent, it will make more sense.

*Romaji in the English subtitles: By this I mean that they’d left the sword name in Japanese, writing it in romaji rather than translating the meaning. Someone must have decided ‘Tetsusaiga’ was easier to read repeatedly than ‘Iron-Crushing-Fang.’

Semantics in translation, Part 1: formalities

Some things don’t translate well between languages. This seems so widely known that I’m reluctant to write it. Everyone knows it, right?

Well, for one thing, I’m not sure that everybody does; at least, not in a way that they have experienced it and know it from the inside out. And some kids don’t know it, because it’s something most people learn at some point, whether by experience or from hearing/reading it somewhere. So I was going to do this post about this, but it started getting pretty long so it has become the first part of a series.

Between any two languages there are things you can’t translate. I learned about this for the first time when I was learning French: it sort of seeped in slowly from when I started learning it at school, and then hit more front-on once I went to France. I was quite dismayed to be told that French people don’t use vraiment the same way we use really in English and I’d been throwing it out all over the place and making myself look like an idiot for about 3 weeks (well, adding to my appearance of idiocy). I’ve written about this before, I recall.

Consider that English and French are closely related. But there are still plenty of differences in the way they express ideas: the mechanics of the language are different; the usage is different; actually that’s probably the bulk of it. There are expressions like there is/are and il y a used similarly, where you could translate il y a to ‘he there has’ – which probably makes about as much sense as ‘there is’ if you actually think about existential there. Where is? Another might be the way French (and Romance languages in general?) uses have where English uses be: j’ai froid ‘I have cold’ vs. ‘I’m cold,’ or elle a 12 ans ‘she has 12 years’ vs ‘she’s 12.’ Another would be one like je veux que tu m’aides, ‘I want that you help me’ as opposed to ‘I want you to help me.’ These are quite small things, but they show how languages perceive/talk about things differently – or at least how my English-speaking brain sees them as different.

So here are a few between the unrelated (except for loan words) languages of English and Japanese.

‘Bless you!’

This doesn’t exist in Japanese. They don’t say anything when people sneeze. So it’s a good way to confuse Japanese school kids 🙂

‘Hello.’ ‘Hi.’

Japanese is very decisive about what expression is appropriate on what occasion, and they don’t have one like ‘hello’ that works anytime. I mentioned this in a post about ceremony a while ago.

I found French easy in this regard – for greetings at the start of an encounter, you could use either bonjour or bonsoir, good day or good evening, and then to close an encounter there would be à plus (tard), see you later, or bonne nuit, goodnight, or à jeudi, see you on Thursday, or au revoir, ‘until we see each other again.’ As far as I know French doesn’t use bonjour to say ‘this encounter is over’ in the way we might have once used ‘Good day’ or these days, ‘have a good day.’

Image: quickmeme

In Japanese for expressions that can be used the same way as ‘hello,’ you’ve got おはよう（ございます）ohayou (gozaimasu), こんにちは konnichiwa, こんばんは konbanwa, ‘good morning,’ ‘good day,’ ‘good evening,’ and then a few other heavily socialised expressions like オス osu, which is typically used by boys on baseball teams, so kids think it’s funny to try to get foreigners to say it. The ‘good morning’ option is actually a very formal way of saying ‘It’s early’ and is also used for people clocking in for work, whatever time their shift starts. Apparently this is because it’s got a masu on it and is therefore polite and appropriately formal, where as the other time-based greetings don’t. Greeting people, especially with ohayou gozaimasu, seems more important as a formalised ritual in Japanese than in English, whether you are intending to actually talk to someone or not.

Goodbye options are also different to English: じゃ(ね) ja (ne), ‘well then,’ じゃまたね ja mata ne ‘well, see you again,’ また来週・年 mata raishu/nen ‘see you again next week/year etc.’ バイバイ baibai ‘bye-bye’ or さようなら sayonara, used for ‘goodbye’ but according to this interesting post, actually means something more like ‘if that’s the way it’s going to be’ and is quite final, more like ‘farewell.’ It’s usually not used every day, except by the occasional special needs student who works on their own hours and comes to the staff room to tell the teachers they’re going home. It’s relatively formal.

It can be a bit stressful for foreigners trying to greet people in Japanese, because there is a large chance you will choose the wrong greeting for the time of day and be corrected or laughed at. On the other hand, as the only native English speaker in the room, it often seems awkward and too much trouble to tell your class and teacher not to say ‘good morning’ to you at 11:45am because although it’s technically still morning, it’s weird unless someone has just woken up. In the same way as ohayo is, people. And it would be even weirder to say ‘good afternoon’ in this case, because noon is still in the future.

お疲れ様 Otsukare sama 

As mentioned in a previous post, this literally means ‘you must be tired.’ However, while I wrote that it’s used as a response to ‘sorry for leaving before you,’ I don’t think I wrote how it can be used as a way to say hello. If it’s not the first time you’ve seen someone that day, and you’ve already said good morning once or twice to them, and you have to go into their office, or you are re-encountering them for whatever reason that day, お疲れ様です otsukare sama desu is used in the same way you might use ‘hello’ to acknowledge someone’s presence or to announce your own. If the school vice principal or someone important is leaving the office on some work business, you can use お疲れ様です otsukare sama desu sort of like ‘see you later.’ It’s different to お疲れ様でした otsukare sama deshita because the latter implies that the person leaving has finished work for the day, whereas the vice principal is going to a meeting or something and still has work to do.

I’m pretty sure we don’t have things like this in English.

‘How are you?’

It’s surprisingly hard to explain how ‘how are you’ is used in English to a Japanese person. When it’s taught in schools, it’s seen as an opportunity to teach and practice words that talk about feelings, like ‘hungry,’ ‘angry,’ ‘sleepy,’ ‘cold,’ ‘sad’ or ‘happy.’ How often do you use these to answer when someone asks how you are?

Yet it should be easy if you think about the fact that it’s mostly used as a social courtesy, to convey that you care about your interlocutor and how they’re feeling this particular day, or how they’re travelling in life. It’s a total pretence when we talk to most people we don’t know, e.g. when shop assistants use it, but it’s just a habit for most people. Of course, people use it genuinely too, especially when it’s a family member or close friend they haven’t seen in a while and they are concerned about the physical or emotional health of the person.

Social courtesies are the bread and butter of Japanese phrases, but ‘how are you’ just isn’t a concept that’s used very much. If you haven’t seen someone in a while, it’s normal to ask about it, but the ‘how’ part isn’t part of the question. The phrase that gets used is （お）元気（ですか）？ (o) genki (desu ka)? and could be translated literally as ‘original mood?’ but works out pragmatically to something more like ‘Are you well?’ I think this isn’t typical in most varieties of English, but I’m aware of British people saying ‘you right?’ for a short version of ‘are you all right?’ in a way that’s a nicety, rather than a show of concern. And it means you can answer ‘yes’ for the question ‘how are you?’. French has both, with ça va? (Goes it?) or comment ça va? (How goes it?) And you can answer oui, ça va (yes, it goes) or ça va bien (it goes well). French uses them all the time, much like English.

Sometimes Japanese teachers explain ‘how are you?’ as ‘how is your condition?’ 調子はどう？which is well understood, but it’s not something that Japanese people usually say to each other.

Students whose English teachers don’t speak that much English in class are regularly stumped and panic-freeze if they encounter a foreigner who asks how they are, and have no idea what to say, much as in the situation where they have sneezed and said foreigner says ‘Bless you.’

くれる・あげる・くださる kureru/ageru/kudasaru

One of the ways you can see the famed considerateness coming through in the Japanese language is the way that when someone does something that could be considered a kindness towards someone else, you have to point this out in the way you describe the action. I’m not joking when I say have to, it’s mandatory. If I forget to include it when I’m talking, the nearest Japanese person always corrects me. The closest to this in English that I can think of is ‘do someone the favour of verb-ing’ or ‘be kind enough to’ or in some uses ‘give.’ The first two of these are only used on special occasions in English.

Examples would be:

• She gave me a book. 彼女が（私に）本をくれた。 kanojo ga (watashi ni) hon wo kureta.
• Our parents are doing us the favour of bringing us up. 私たちの親は育ててくださっている。 Watashitachi no oya ha sodatete kudasatteiru.
• At least listen to what he’s saying. せめても彼の言っていることを聞いてあげて。Semetemo kare no itteiru koto wo kiite agete.

The other day one of my students tried to translate the second of the above sentences into English and came up with ‘Our parents give bring us up.’ In the Japanese, it’s inherent that they are doing you a favour, but in English if you want to say that you have to state it more overtly.

I don’t have a conclusion for today’s post as such, but maybe you could make the inference that Japanese cares when people do things for each other, but not about how they are, haha. This post is also a bit of a shout-out to Rina, who requested something about my linguistic journey. These thoughts are part of it.

As always, thanks for being kind enough to read. Until next we meet, have a nice week.