Comments on: ノート ≠ Note

By: ジュリアン

ジュリアン — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 17:35:05 +0000

Actually, the ending might have been more along the lines of 「お使いになりますよう、お客様のご協力をお願い申し上げます。」敬語 is not my strong suit.

By: ジュリアン

ジュリアン — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 17:33:32 +0000

It drives me nuts every time the shopping center in front of the nearest station announces, 「自転車及びバイクで来られているお客様は駐輪場をお使いください。」Those customers who have come by [pedal] bike or by [motor] bike, please use the parking area for two-wheeled vehicles.

By: Durf

Durf — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 01:53:53 +0000

Thanks as always for the interesting posts on your homepage. Wait, what?

By: Daniel

Daniel — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 00:20:53 +0000

Yeah, “Death Note” is definitely punchy, but every time I hear it, I just imagine my junior high school students saying, “This is a note.” Uggg. I want to brain that translator with one of my Starbucks mugs.

By: g lass

g lass — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 10:34:08 +0000

And then you’ve got interesting situations where グラス is the thing you drink out of and ガラス the stuff windows are made out of. I wonder how that happened.

By: Blue Shoe

Blue Shoe — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 10:19:40 +0000

Interesting point about Death Note – never thought about that.

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 08:37:13 +0000

Problem is that “Death Note” is a nice two-syllable phrase — there was already a bunch of nicely balanced romaji art too. You could always argue that although it’s actually a death notebook, you use it to write death notes.

What really aroused controversy with that translation was whether to translate the (anti-)hero’s name as Light or Raito. Seriously.

By: Will

Will — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 03:14:16 +0000

It might be the fact that I’ve heard the phrase “Death Note” for so long and before I started learning Japanese, the inaccuracy doesn’t bother me too much. It’s short and sweet; packs a punch. Of course if it had been Death Notebook the whole time, I probably wouldn’t think that way. And I don’t even have to check google images to know that your photos are better.

That’s hilarious about the khaki pants, I never knew that.

By: g dawg

g dawg — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 00:47:14 +0000

And he’s right, too! Khaki, you see, sounds rather like ‘cacky’, which where I come from means ‘shitty’ ( in the scatological sense. See definition 6: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Cacky).

By: Daniel

Daniel — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 23:25:35 +0000

Very true. My English friends thought “khaki pants” was one of the funniest American phrases ever invented.