11.11.06
Nihongo wakaru?
One of the leading games magazines in the UK, gamestm really hasn’t learnt any lessons. Back in July, I posted them an email detailing all their dubious translations on their column by a Tim Rogers about a certain ‘Japanese lesson’ that he was writing about. Sadly, I didn’t get any replies – I just wrote to say that seeing they’re trying to teach my language to others, would they kindly stop mangling it much – reasonable, I thought, especially considering I pointed out which bits needed amendments.
Well, they’ve done it again, unsurprisingly. In one of the examples I read today (standing in WHSmith… no, I’m not buying a magazine that snubs such a well-intentioned email), they had inserted a phrase ‘janaissuyo’… which in proper (formal) Japanese would be rendered as ‘janaidesuyo’, and means ‘it is not’. To me, this is sacrilegious, almost. It’s like teaching some Japanese kids (in one of those jukus over there) to say ‘eh up, me duck’ instead of ‘how are you?’ or ‘hi’ or something more simple and in keeping with the general language rather than a somewhat weird localization. Or what about teaching some kids to say ‘och, aye’ (in proper Glaswegian accent, mind!) instead of ‘oh yes’ and such. Although ‘janaissuyo’ is not a particular localized phrase, it is nonetheless something that no self-respecting language teacher would tell his/her students, seeing that ‘lower’ form of language is considered somewhat like the Cockney accent, famous of London. Tsk, tsk… do your research if you’re going to have it published!
In all the Japanese sites today, the pages are filled with ‘how many lined up at which store in which city’ for the much awaited PS3 launch. Apparently, the queues were nearly as bad as that of the DSLites earlier this year, and most stores were sold out way before closing time. Ah the ever patriotic Japanese… :)
And WoW: Burning Crusade is due out January 16th next year, though as regards the Collector’s Edition, neither amazon nor play.com seem to have any signs of ‘pre-ordering’ as of yet. At least it’s not too long a wait now.