Bonus link to make up for my measly little post today. Matt has a great explication of a passage from Akutagawa’s story “Rashōmon.” Definitely worth checking out. Great info in the comments as well.
Author Archives: Daniel
やらせて
Last Wednesday I forgot to include the most basic informal causative request pattern – やらせて (yarasete). “I wanna try!” “Let me have a turn!” I spent three years teaching and being neighbors with Japanese elementary school students, so it must have been them I really learned the pattern from and not the JHS English teacher as I claimed. There were two kids in particular who knocked on my door to play DS and they always wanted to use my DS…probably because they had already scratched up the screens on their own.
Sadly (and surprisingly) I can’t find a video demonstrating the proper intonation, but it should be super whiny with heavy emphasis on the や and せ. A less whiny version is useful when someone is bumbling and you know that you can do whatever it is better than they can. Just try not to show your frustration.
Monday Puzzle – What the clock are you talking about?!
Simple puzzle today. The Japanese for clockwise and counterclockwise is 時計回り and 反時計回り. What is another way to express these ideas without using the characters 右, 左, 西, or 東?
We’ll see how this one turns out. If it’s too easy or too difficult I’ll give another mini-puzzle next Monday or provide a hint of some sort.
The prize if you win? One can of 100% barley malt beer – e.g. Ebisu, Suntory Malts, Asahi Premium. (New rule: you must physically track me down and demand your beer to redeem it.)
Please do not post your answer in the comments. Send it to me via email or facebook. My email address is るぱんさんせい (romanized) at-mark gmail dot com.
Monday Puzzle – Can you handle it? – Answer
There are two bathrooms in my apartment – one off the main living room, and the other connected to the sink area in front of the shower. My roommates hardly ever use it, so it always sits in the back of our apartment unloved (except by my hairy ass). There is a funny little sign right above the handle:
So the correct answer was in the bathroom. Several people came up with the right location for the sign, but the winner this week is Akaki. He was the only one who came up with the correct derivation of the phrase – I misread a て as the question mark and the Japanese period as the question mark’s little dot. Nice work! I owe you a beer, Akaki!
号外 – もうちょっと聞かせてって言ったでしょう？
Matt added a couple of great comments to Wednesday’s post that are worthy of their own post.
Dude, I totally got dinged for calling -te the imperative form the other week. You’d better watch your back.
I just want to summarize the “miru 見る is controversial” thing for non-reading linguists: “miru” does indeed become “misaseru” if you add the “-saseru” ending according to modern rules. The controversy is whether it is acceptable to use this form instead of “miseru”, which is a separate verb meaning “show”. As far as I can tell there are two prongs to the controversy: (1) “misaseru” and “miseru” are equivalent, therefore the former is redundant, therefore it should not be used (you wouldn’t say “shisaseru” either, just “saseru”), and (2) “miseru” itself can be analyzed as “miru” + OJ causative suffix, therefore, “misaseru” is an ugly, modern usurper, functionally and semantically identical but aesthetically and morally inferior, and should be avoided. I’ve seen similar complaints about 着せる vs 着させる.
The counterarguments to the above include (1) to some speakers at least, they aren’t equivalent; everyone has “miseru” in their vocabulary, and the fact that some people also use “misaseru” indicates that for them it performs a function that “miseru” can’t, and (2) whatever, dude, living Japanese isn’t bound by your rules and regulations, and these forms sound fine to me.
Nice. I see how they are semi-redundant, but I also see the logic behind having them both – one is “you show it to me” and the other is “please allow me to see it.” Even in English the latter feels more かたい, which is why I think all three of the links bring up television “announcers”: people on television, especially the MCs for game shows, speak in keigo constantly. They are a dirty petri dish for the evolution of polite new linguistic terms (or at least terms that sound new/strange to everyday folk). Japanese people love arguing about this stuff. I heard lectures about 不思議な日本語 or whatever at three different midyear conferences during my stint as a JET, and at each one the speaker debunked some sort of new keigo usage.
さ、参りましょう. Matt then provided this great parallel which shows that these must be separate terms:
Incidentally the case for non-equivalence is more obvious with “kiseru” vs “kisaseru”. The former means “put clothing on someone” (e.g. a child) and the latter means “cause/allow someone to put clothing on”. Because there is an indirect object the difference is more stark, but then compare to “miseru” vs “misaseru” using a fanciful but parallel definition: “put something into someone’s visual cortex” vs “cause/allow someone to put something into their visual cortex”. The difference, or at least the possibility of some speakers keeping the two conceptually separate, becomes a little clearer.
Game Lingo – 決定
決定 (けってい) is generally a selectable icon on the screen or the action of one of the buttons on a video game controller. You use it to lock in settings or confirm selections, so it can be translated as “confirm” or “enter” depending on context. This is definitely a word that I’ve seen far more often since starting this job. I’m sure it gets used out in the real world (probably more along the lines of “come to a decision”), but I don’t think I ever had the opportunity to use it personally.
Causative Requests (Update)
Time for some serious old school How to Japonese now that Murakami madness is over.
Causative tense is not the easiest to get used to. Once you’ve mastered it, though, it’s really flexible. A couple of things to note before we get to today’s little trick:
– It’s important to remember that causative tense can just as easily mean “let/allow someone to do X” as it can “make someone do X.”
– In my very first set of posts, I introduced the 敬語 form 〜させていただきます. Basically this is just a fancy way to say 〜する. You can turn it into a formal request easily enough by saying 〜させていただけませんか or 〜させていただけませんでしょうか.
And now for today’s trick. There’s also a cool way to use the causative tense as an informal request. Normal requests take the form 〜してもいい or 〜していい, which literally means “Is it okay if I X?” Make that more normal English and you get “May I X?”
If you use the causative straight up – 〜させて – with a little rising intonation on the end, you can say, “Lemme do X.” You can make it even more casual by saying 〜さして, which is a slurred version and slightly easier to say. I remember hearing one of the English teachers I worked with use this. Whenever he was looking at papers or worksheets that the students were holding he would say, ちょっと見さして. “Let me take a look.” 見る is a fairly controversial case, apparently, but I think this works with most verbs. ちょっと食べさせて is an especially good one that will earn you some freebies from friends.
Update:
As requested, a version for linguists:
Standard causative is ~saseru. The perfective tense of this is ~saseta. The imperative form is ~sasete, which is often slurred to ~sashite (or ~sasite depending on the romanization you use). This is a great form for informal requests. You can change miru to misasete, or taberu to tabesasete if you want someone to “let you” take a look at something or have a taste of something. Important here to remember the flexibility of the causative tense.
Bonus update thought:
I think using させて・さして (sasete/sashite) on its own must always imply that the speaker wants to be let/made to do the action. If you’re trying to get someone to make or let someone else, then you probably need to use させてあげて・さしてあげて (sasete agete / sashite agete)? Hmm…when I think about it, させてあげてd (sasete agete) feels like it would always be “let” rather than “make.”
号外 – Puzzle Reminder
A reminder that puzzles run for two weeks. (I nearly forgot myself.) Also today is 教育体育の日. Go out and get ye some 教育体育.
Here is the link for the puzzle last week.
Game Lingo – 統一
統一 (とういつ) isn’t an in-game term per se, but it is a vital concept in video game translation and really all translation in general. It literally means “uniform” or “uniformity.” I personally think of it as “consistent” or “consistency.” This is common sense, but when translating you have to make sure that the spelling, word choices and style are consistent throughout a text.
You don’t want to have a character drinking “Cutty Sark Whiskey” in one scene and then “Cutty Sark Whisky” in another (the latter is correct). You don’t want to have “Oohashi-san” on one page (or any page, really) and then Ōhashi-san (there, that’s better) on another page. Proper nouns should always be kept consistent, and video game translation is an entirely different animal when it comes to proper nouns.
One place where 統一 rears its anal retentive head in video games is with controls. Almost every video game console uses the same little rocker pad, often shaped like a +, to control movement, but the terminology is different for different systems. The Nintendo DS uses “+Control Pad,” the Xbox “D-pad,” and the PlayStation®3 system “directional button.” Should players be pressing the “A button” or the “A Button”? Do they “tilt” or “press” or “tap” or “tap repeatedly” the button or control device?
Naming of the systems themselves is another place where terminology is often set by the companies. PlayStation uses the word “system” after every instance of Playstation®3 or PSP®, and they also include the restricted mark (no spaces before or after the 3). Nintendo lets you use “Nintendo DS” and also “DS.” Xbox 360 is not “XBox 360.”
Nintendo is by far the most picky, and failure to abide by their terminology guide can cause a company to lose millions if Nintendo of America or Europe finds fault with their game during the checking process and sends it back to the company. The company has to fix whatever problems there were (re-master the game) and make another appointment with NOA and NOE to have their game checked, possibly delaying the release of the game.
Japanese does have a high tolerance for repetition, way more so than English, so you should be flexible enough to realize that not every word needs to be 統一されている. Forget 様々, ignore など, realize that が・けど don’t always mean “but,” but also know where you have to maintain consistency even when it’s painful. There are tons of examples of translation so bad it’s good, but when a term gets set, sometimes it should stay that way. Metal Gear games use “sneaking mission” for 潜入任務, a lot of the Bubble Bobble (in the Japanese “Puzzle Bobble”) remakes use the same cheesy beginning (you loves it, I can tell), and Nintendo still doesn’t ever use “the” before Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection ever.
If you’re really serious about translating video games, one of the best things you can do to prepare is to read your video game manuals very carefully. There are also some websites you can look at. Notice what terms they are using. Start to catalog phrases and wordings that could be useful. Your command and consistency of English is just as important as your Japanese comprehension.
号外 – Herta Müller wins Nobel Prize
Herta Müller wins 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature.
See you guys back here next year for Murakami-palooza 2010.