{"id":2898,"date":"2022-07-22T08:10:23","date_gmt":"2022-07-21T23:10:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ideainst.com\/blog\/?p=2898"},"modified":"2022-07-22T08:07:56","modified_gmt":"2022-07-21T23:07:56","slug":"the-peculiar-charm-of-engrish-why-japans-broken-english-continues-to-delight-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ideainst.com\/blog\/the-peculiar-charm-of-engrish-why-japans-broken-english-continues-to-delight-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"The Peculiar Charm of Engrish: Why Japan’s “Broken” English Continues to Delight the World"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics were supposed to bring a massive influx of international visitors to the Japanese capital. Although they were eventually forced to be held without overseas spectators due to the coronavirus pandemic, the leadup to the Games involved extensive preparations to accommodate foreign travelers, and a major aspect of this was updated English signage in train stations and other public facilities. Despite such efforts, incorrect or simply perplexing English translations still abound throughout Japan and even in the Tokyo metropolis. Why does Japan seem to struggle so much with English? The term \u201cEngrish,\u201d a reference to the difficulty that many native Japanese speakers experience in distinguishing between the \u201cl\u201d and \u201cr\u201d phonemes, is now well known in the English-speaking world. There are hundreds of blogs dedicated to cataloging amusing English phrases on menus, signs, and T-shirts. But this phenomenon is still poorly understood in the West, and not only in the literal sense.<\/p>\n

First, when examining the \u201cEngrish\u201d phenomenon, it is important to keep in mind that not all English text in Japan is created alike. That is to say, the vast majority of English text with which Japanese people interact in their day-to-day lives is not intended to be understandable to native English speakers. Sometimes English is used purely as a decorative element, in a manner comparable to how Chinese characters are incorporated into designs or tattoos in the West with little regard for their actual meanings. We\u2019ve all seen viral social media posts about someone who received a \u201ctraditional Asian tattoo\u201d of characters they thought meant \u201csamurai spirit,\u201d only to later discover that the true meaning was \u201cramen noodles.\u201d Similarly, English as a design element in Japan is not meant to serve any communicative function, but rather to convey an \u201cexotic\u201d or \u201ccosmopolitan\u201d impression, as in the example. Here, fragmented sentences are spliced together with no regard for the rules of English grammar, and actual English phrases are interspersed with Japanese words spelled out in the Latin script. The overall effect is zany and absurd, in the manner that foreign connoisseurs of \u201cEngrish\u201d have come to know and love.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Of course, there is plenty of English text in Japan that is aimed at actual English speakers, and this is where Engrish can become a communicative issue rather than an amusing cultural quirk. Take the restroom signage as an example. On an individual level, each Japanese word seems to be translated into an English one with a roughly equivalent meaning, yet the final result is nonsensical. It is hard to imagine how the original message of \u201cPress the button in the event of an emergency\u201d became so mangled, since \u201cin an emergency\u201d is a set phrase that even automatic translation engines should be able to recognize. We can probably place the blame here squarely on human error, and perhaps more specifically on overreliance on dictionaries. In rule-loving, by-the-book Japan, there is an unfortunate tendency to treat dictionaries as the Bible, with the first entry accepted as the most suitable word choice regardless of context. Hence, \u201cextreme\u201d rather than \u201cemergency.\u201dAnother difficulty arises from the vast grammatical differences between the English language and Japanese. In the latter, subjects and objects can frequently be omitted if evident from context. Thus, the Japanese sentence simply instructs the reader to \u201cpush\u201d and continues no references to a button. Add to this the unfortunate coincidence that \u201cpush it\u201d exists as an idiom in English, as in \u201cpush it to the limit,\u201d and a seemingly innocuous instruction is transformed into meme-worthy Engrish.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Finally, there is the third category of English in Japan, which constitutes a sort of gray area. Although it seems, on the surface at least, to be aimed at communicating with foreign speakers, its intended audience is actually native Japanese. The purpose of this kind of \u201cperformative English\u201d is to convey a message such as \u201cLook, foreign people frequent this shop!\u201d or \u201cSee, we are an internationally minded company!\u201d Japanese people themselves may not be able to distinguish it from the English in the second category. And thus, the English text and signage found in Japan really represent a spectrum, from the absurdist decorative English at one end to the genuine communicative English at the other. While the English as a design element may not follow any grammatical rules, the \u201cperformative English\u201d does follow certain rules, or rather conventions, that will make it recognizable as \u201cproper English\u201d to Japanese people. This can lead to phrasings that sound amusing to native English speakers, such as inappropriate use of the phrase \u201cLet\u2019s\u201d before a noun. It is related to the phenomenon of wasei-eigo<\/em> or \u201cMade in Japan English,\u201d in which English words are repurposed in new ways and with different grammatical functions, such as \u201cmy pace\u201d as an adjective to mean \u201cdoing things at one\u2019s own pace,\u201d or \u201cchallenge\u201d used generally as a verb to mean \u201ctrying\u201d or \u201cattempting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is something getting lost in translation? Certainly, but for the reasons explained above, it isn\u2019t entirely fair to call Engrish \u201cwrong\u201d or \u201cbroken\u201d English in all cases. It exists in a realm of its own, with its own peculiar logic, and perhaps that is why absurdist Engrish phrasings have won so many fans all over the world.<\/p>\n

\uff08\u65e5\u672c\u8a9e\u8a33\uff09<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

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\u4e0a\u8a18\u306e\u3088\u3046\u306b\u3001\u65e5\u672c\u306eEngrish\u306f\u4e00\u898b\u300c\u9593\u9055\u3063\u305f\u300d\u300c\u58ca\u308c\u305f\u300d\u82f1\u8a9e\u306e\u3088\u3046\u306b\u898b\u3048\u308b\u304c\u3001\u5b9f\u306f\u305d\u308c\u306a\u308a\u306e\u8ad6\u7406\u304c\u3042\u308b\u3002\u3060\u304b\u3089\u3053\u305d\u3001\u4e16\u754c\u4e2d\u3067\u591a\u304f\u306e\u30d5\u30a1\u30f3\u3092\u5f97\u3066\u3044\u308b\u306e\u3060\u308d\u3046\u3002<\/p>\n

\r\n\t

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\u682a\u5f0f\u4f1a\u793e\u30a4\u30c7\u30a2\u30fb\u30a4\u30f3\u30b9\u30c6\u30a3\u30c6\u30e5\u30fc\u30c8<\/a>\u3067\u306f\u3001\u4e16\u754c\u5404\u56fd\u8a9e\uff0880\u30ab\u56fd\u8a9e\u4ee5\u4e0a\uff09\u306e\u7ffb\u8a33\u3001\u7de8\u96c6\u3092\u4e2d\u5fc3\u306b
\u4f01\u753b\u30fb\u30c7\u30b6\u30a4\u30f3\u3001\u901a\u8a33\u7b49\u306e\u696d\u52d9\u3092\u884c\u3063\u3066\u3044\u307e\u3059\u3002<\/p>\r\n\t

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The 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics were supposed to bring a massive influx of international visitors to the Japanese capital. Although they were eventually forced to be held without overseas spectators due to the coronavirus pandemic, the leadup to the Games involved extensive preparations to accommodate foreign travelers, and a major aspect of this was updated English signage in train stations and other public facilities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2960,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[240,243,244,242],"class_list":["post-2898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-knowledge-and-education","tag-english","tag-engrish","tag-japan","tag-wasei-eigo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ideainst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ideainst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ideainst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ideainst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ideainst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2898"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.ideainst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2979,"href":"http:\/\/www.ideainst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2898\/revisions\/2979"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ideainst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ideainst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ideainst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ideainst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}