Are some things untranslatable? My video where I talk about my life and stuff: • Explanation Intro song: • Kadenza - Flight of th... Outro song: • Video Better explanation of the wa/ga distinction: nihonshock.com/2010/02/particl...
Oh i got one untranslatable thing for you. *Puns*. Each time a writer in a show or a book makes a character do a pun, a translator loses a year of their life. Yeah, try to explain to non-English speakes why Pinkie Pie laughed there, because in our language that was a normal conversation! And if you dare to try to make up something similar, the whole community bashes you for not following the original, even though it stops making sense in translation!
KinRedysko there's an episode of Spongebob in which Patrick gets a letter from his parents. one side had a note and the other side a letter. that only makes sense in English. I watched that video in Dutch and never got the point of that until I watched it in English
But from the other side puns give a space to translators to show their creativity and skill in both languages. For example, there are at least three published translations of Jabberwocky poem to Ukrainian (i'm sure that it is common situation also with other languages). Yes, it makes a translator to be a co-author, but you'll never be able to rid out of this.
Mauricio Elizondo in Dutch a note (music) is noot and a note (paper with text) is een briefje/notitie letter (1 character) is letter letter (with sentences) is een brief so that scene makes 0% sense if you don't know what it was translated from
KinRedysko I have an example: Stargate SG-1, the system lords wnt to make a polite discussion with earth for stop messing up with they evil plans of ruling their planets. So, Dr. Daniel Jackson makes a conferenve to Col. Jack O'Neill about the system lords that will be in the reunion. He says "The system lords will be Nirrti, Lord Zipacna and Yu". O'Neill says "Me?". "I said Yu. Not You" But in the spanish translation he says "Dije Yu. No Tu". BTW, other thing hard to translate are song lyrics, so you can fit the metric in the song.
My favorite Japanese word that has no English equivalent. Arigata-meiwaku: An act someone does for you that you didn’t want to have them do and tried to avoid having them do, but they went ahead anyway, determined to do you a favor, and then things went wrong and caused you a lot of trouble, yet in the end social conventions required you to express gratitude. This makes me laugh so much, what a hilarious situation. If you use google translate it translates "Arigatameiwaku" to "Thankfulness" but without all the other contextual meaning behind it.
It actually happens to me alot! Like people at church always want to go above and beyond to help others and sometimes ( lots of times) its doesnt en up working the way they intended. I can think of so many examples of people trying to do me a favor but i didnt want them to and it actually made things worse.
John McKay In Polish we have an idiomatic phrase "Uszczęśliwiać na siłę" - to forcefully make (one) happy and it seems to me to be close enough in meaning that you could easily rephrase the sentence while translating.
An example of having to explain the cultural meaning of something in a translation. In the Japanese novel "Snow Country" ( 雪国), there's a sentence describing a maid delivering a note to a guest at a mountain resort. It's the 1920s and old-fashioned Japanese manners are expected from the staff. 葉子は立ったまま郵便配達のような恰好に手を突き出したが、あわてて膝を突いた。 A literal translation would be: "Yoko, while standing, thrust out her hand in a posture like a postman, then awkwardly knelt down." Seidensticker's translation puts it like: "She thrust her hand out like a postman. Then, remembering her manners, she knelt down awkardly before him." The Japanese readers didn't need to be told that it was impolite not to kneel.
+Sworn to Secrecy "Yoko, while standing, thrust out her hand in a posture like a postman, then awkwardly knelt down." is as close to literal translation as I can get in English without sounding ungrammatical. It covers the intended meaning pretty well. Truly literally would be something like 葉子は Yoko 立ったまま stood-continuing 郵便配達 postman のような like 恰好に posture-in 手を hand 突き出した stuck out が、 but あわてて awkwardly 膝を knee 突いた propped So you can see how Siedensticker had to add the notion of "remembering her manners" and to clarify that she was kneeling down "before him", or Western readers aren't going to grasp the awkward etiquette of the scene.
8 лет назад
PutItAway101 Hmm... Is there a word for that? It's not exactly translation and it's not localization either.
You know whats really untranslatable? Humour, puns, jokes etc. Translators can get by just fine translating "chan" as "miss" but fall flat on their faces when they have to translate a joke. Either because the joke is a play on words, or because its culturally specific and makes no sense to foreign listeners. They either keep it the same and write a translators note at the top, or change the joke completely, as is often the case in dubs. Its strange because a joke can be perfectly "translated" word for word but would somehow lose the abstract concept of being funny, which is more important than the meaning itself.
Also, with regards to anime, I've usually only heard "-chan" and "-kun" being carried over (i.e. the characters are still called [name]-kun or [name]-chan in English) while "-san" is either carried over or translated as Sir/Mr./Ms./Mrs.
The translators for JaToku pull it off, either changing the pun entirely to something that makes sense in English- such as Daiyakun to Gemini in the OverTime subs for Mashin Sentai Kiramager (daiya-kun- little diamond, daiyaku- replacement actor; it's a little model made out of crystal that can become a duplicate of whoever holds its hand)- or just translating it as-is and leaving a translator's note.
As a native speaker of Japanese, I've never thought about the difference between が(ga) and は(wa) until I came across this video. Honestly, I would tell people to go with whatever feels right (as that's what I do) but I guess it won't really work for non-native speakers of Japanese... Also, "bou" or "bo" is almost never used in the sense of honorifics. I mean, I've never used in actual conversation before. Maybe in old Japanese but not in modern Japanese. I can say the same thing about sama, but it's at least more common then "bou" or "bo".
+武道館 As someone currently studying Japanese in University, I have to agree. There are times where I get corrected on は・が, but for the most part, you kind of get used to it the more you use the language. Just as well, the only time I've ever heard anyone say "sama" is either 皆様 or お客様.
+武道館 I hadn't heard of "bo" until this video. Granted, I've only watched some anime and the occasional live action feature film, worked with a few Japanese people, and visited Japan for a short time, but I didn't even know it was a thing. As for "sama", I hear it a lot in anime, but not so much in feature films, so I've always assumed it's not very practical. Sometimes I wonder how speaking "anime Japanese" in a serious (e.g. business) setting would sound to a native Japanese speaker. I only fear they'd be too polite to laugh.
timewave02012 Bo, is not used in modern Japanese. (only when referring to ancient Japanese) Sama is used but very rarely in things like formal letters and traditional marriage and such. Hope that helped.
+timewave02012 if you're in a business setting, you'd use business Japanese which is different from polite Japanese (in reference to normally spoken Japanese for the lack of a better word) which is different from casual Japanese which includes a lot of slang and differs from generation to generation, just like any other language.
There's an interesting thing with English words that were borrowed from French at two different times in two different forms (there's a very specific word to describe words like this, but I can't remember it) Example: English acquired a bunch of words related to "guard" from French, like "Guardian" and "Guarantee" Later in history, English acquired these words again, but with the 'G' mutated to a 'W': "Ward", "Warden" and "Warranty". These sets of three words basically mean the same things, and you probably never even noticed. If anyone knows the proper word describing this, I'd love to know it.
thetoobnoob the particular sound change you're talking about is phonotactical. "W" is harder to say than "Gw". I wonder if you could say the "w" was "velarised" to "Gw" or the reverse that it was "unvelarised" basically saying "g" and saying "Gw" seem to be easier that saying "w". The other cycle you see a lot with w is w to v.
I'm replying to a two year old comment, but I'm knowledgeable about this and it hasn't been answered. The English language got words from French twice, first from Norman French and later from Modern/Parisian French. The word "guardian" was likely once pronounced similar to this "Gwar-di-an." The letter "U" being pronounced like an English "W." One group stopped pronouncing the "W" sound, and the other stopped pronouncing the "G" sound. Both forms of the word are still present in Modern English, even if Modern French only has one. Another example is the words, "Hostel" and "Hotel." Modern French only has the word, "hôtel." The accent over the letter "O" indicates that in older forms of French, there was an "S" after it. See also, English "beast" French "bête."
It's actually the other way around, in Late Latin, /w/ mutated to /v/ or /b/. Then, Germanic warriors invaded lots of land, including France, parts of Italy and Spain, and brought lots of loanwords. Since some Germanic words began with /w/, the languages had to come with a close alternative, and then they used /gu/. Compare war (Germanic), to guerra (Spanish and Italian), and guerre (French).
may i please describe the supreme anger i feel when people say senpai is used for someone you love because im like 90% sure that sort of thing would never actually happen with japanese culture
Well, it kind of works. By calling someone "senpai" you declare them as your superior, put them in a higher social position to you. And, that sort of thing probably came from times in anime where someone likes an upperclassman, who for a multitude of reasons would necessarily be your senpai.
Yes, but that's a subjective thing. When people say senpai means "someone you love", they often will call people who are even younger than them senpai.
A somewhat accurate, if verbose, translation of Senpai is "someone I look up to but is close enough in the social hierarchy that deep bonds wouldn't be considered wierd" it signals you can and probably want to get along with that person, and also admire them in some way. Considering this, someone you love would fit the bill for what a "senpai" is, but it's too reductive as you pointed out. It's like saying "vegetables are carots".
@@mutedajar9687 It doesn't work at all but it's obvious where the misunderstanding comes from: people watching high school anime's which almost always involve someone's kouhai having a crush on them.
I suspected this would mostly be about keigo, but thanks for making it a varied linguistic bento! Most ga/wa behavior can be chalked up to the way Japanese structures information: subject of the immediate sentence vs the normal topic-comment structure. (Normal for Japanese, anyhow!) I wonder if the apparent "ga" emphasis comes from the fact that Japanese normally ditches subjects, not that "ga" makes the "wa" topic more important. Talking about lexical equivalence & linguistic relativity pricks a popular nerve. Possibly a rabbit hole worth going down... at least for the views. ;) Judging from your following, you could easily eclipse my old video on the topic. Good stuff!
When I studied Japanese I had a hard time understanding the difference between "wa" and "ga" until I read a particular sentence: Watashi wa ni mai kipu ga arimasu. When looking at a dictionary you'll find "arimasu" means "to be" for inanimate objects, like "desu" means "to be" for animate objects, but you'll also find "arimasu" sometimes means "to have", which is how it's being used in this example sentence, which means "I have two tickets". However, this doesn't make sense from an English perspective because "ni mai kipu", "two tickets", is the subject of the verb, and yet it's not the tickets that have something. What's happening, as far as I can tell, is the speaker is saying "two tickets exist", and giving himself as the topic of the sentence to give context that implies ownership. A "direct" translation of the sentence would look something like this: Relative to me two tickets exist. I never went far in my Japanese studies, so I don't know how well this example would help anyone understand how "wa" is used, but it did help me understand how the grammatical topic and the grammatical subject are different things.
Transformers And Power Rangers Toy Reviews This is very similar to how Turkish does possession. "Para var" means "There is money" "Param var" means "There is my money", ie. "I have money." I know there is supposes to be some linguistic connection between Turkish, Korean, Japanese and Finnish...
How do you integrate quoted non-translated statements from other languages, when writing in Arabic? For instance, "The ABC building is located behind the XYZ building". Suppose you intend to translate everything except "ABC" and "XYZ". Would ABC and XYZ each get reversed, or mirror imaged, such that you can read them in with the flow of the Arabic words? Or would they just stay the same as they are, such that the reader has to pause and reverse direction to read them?
Another thing I wonder, is how right-to-left languages originated? There is a clear advantage to writing toward your dominant hand, so that your writing doesn't smear as your hand passes it. So if a written language is built with the right-handed majority in mind, it would be written left-to-right. Could it be, that being a professional scribe was a niche profession commonly held by left-handed people? And therefore, left-handed scribes would write right-to-left, which works best for their in-group. Majority literacy is a relatively new concept, in the grand scale of history.
carultch - I'm sot sure how it works in Arabic, but in Hebrew (which is very similar) you would leave "ABC" and "XYZ" left-to-right. One theory to why they're written RTL is that it was easier for the Phoenicians to chisel stone tablets that way, which carried over into the Semitic languages. Nitro Indigo, yep. Numbers are written left-to-right.
One thing I find interesting about Japanese language is that there are entries in the dictionary, seem to be too meaningful that make the explanations appear reluctant. Some of the meanings are beautiful but some just seems beyond logic. Such as kigokochi: "the sensation when you put on clothes" kuidaore: "spending all of one's money on food and eating till one's gut explodes" tekuragari: "the shadow that made by your own hands when you trying to read" and the famous komorebi "sunshine filtering through the leaves of trees" which gave me this idea in the first place. I don't even know if these are considered as words but I feel fun and have been collecting them whenever I found one
That is exactly why kanji is good. tekuragari 手暗がり , look at the romaji, bunch of 26 letter gibberish and you understand nothing. Japanese text, hand, shadow, ka ri (maybe mask or something else or just a suffix). Even if a Japanese person never heard the word, he immediately knows what you mean. Why does English have the word "handwriting" but not the word "handshadow"? Too long of a single word to read.
Kigokochi (着心地) isn't really "the sensation when you put on clothes". It's just the way clothes feel on your body, meaning if something is comfortable to wear or not
Japanese has two different verbs for falling. One, taoreru, refers to someone/something that is standing on the ground going from vertical to horizontal, like if you trip while walking or chop down a tree. The other, ochiru, refers to something above the ground falling downwards, like a cup falling off the table.
As a Japanese guy, I don't think my language is "very complicated" or "technical" or that sort of stuff whatever. But if you ask me to explain how Japanese works in English, it would be so freaking hard. It's just impossible, because of cultural difference and .... You know, it's just TOTALLY different. I don't even know how to translate my self.
If his mind, that learned Japanese first, can go around and express itself in English, then I guess that even if Japanese is not translatable to English his Japanese-driven mind is, that what I meant.
@@FOLIPE You sound like you can only speak one language fluently. Just so you know, when people become fluent in new languages, their brain can do "code-switching" where it switches basically from the mind of a native speaker of one language to the mind of a native speaker of the other. My Russian friend is fluent in both Russian and English, so sometimes I do this little joke where I suddenly start speaking Russian in the middle of the conversation and she'll answer in Russian and then get very confused because she was trying to speak in English. (Yes I'm a sadist)
Japanese IS very complicated considering my first language is also an Asian language that takes speakers' relationship into account. Still, I find Japanese language highly complicated. Fortunately, the concept of linguistic gender doesn't exist in Japanese.
in australia, rather than studying european languages, i think japanese and mandarin are probably the most common langauges taught in schools because it's more relevant to us
How well do students end up speaking those two languages after their done with school? I wonder if the (perceived) relative difficulty of a language has any effect on the success of language learning with students.
@@tristanmoller9498 that's true. I don't know how well people speak the languages they learn in schools in other countries, but most people can probably get it to a conversational level in school and at the time of graduation I could read and write all katakana, hiragana and about 300 kanji. Ive heard that learning a language more different from your own will make it easier to learn other languages in the future too
@@cocoacoolness I believe your last point holds up, at least because being exposed to so wildly different features in a totally different language makes the student more open and more able to deal with different features in other languages, whether they be similar or not. Also seems legit that it's probably a little difficult to compare. At the end of the day, there are so many other factors involved in the success of students learning a new language than just the similarity of the language they learn to their native language anyways. Remains an interesting funfact though.
I have the general feeling that, the better I get in a language, the worse I can translate. I start to understand deeper meanings of some words that can just be described in another one. An example (even though that is still pretty basic, but this is the first I could think of): for me, the German word 'übersetzen' is rather word by word translation, while 'translating' is a very big word that brings across the entire action of translating. It brings across stuff like culture, social status, the context and comes up with an entirely different sentence, that brings across what you mean. Then again 'traduire' (French word, 'same' meaning) is just very simple. It means using short, percise and easily understandable words in order to get across the central message. I've started to observe this in every single language I've learnt to a pretty decent level. And now I can't translate anymore because for me the sentence I want to translate will never even end up close to the meaning of the translated sentence. I guess the fact that I instictively start to think in a certain language when trying to speak it doesn't help very much either ...
You shouldn't feel bad about it, I get the same thing. Its totally fine, being a polyglot is not and should not be synonymous with being a translator or interpreter. That's why they train for so long to be proficient in translating
Quick thing about the -sama honorific: Sama isn't really for those at a slightly or even decently sized position higher than the speaker, it's almost exclusively used in a more hyperbolic sense, for leaders, religious figures, or those a person holds in really, really high regard, relative to themselves.Sama is used in the words for old leader figures of Japan, like tono-sama and tennou-sama. However it'd probably never be used to describe a president or prime minister, meaning you'll probably never hear someone say Daitouryou-sama. Hell, you wouldn't even call your boss or the president of a company you work at -sama. In the case of religion you'd probably hear it in conjunction with kami or hotoke, referring to God and Buddha respectively. And lastly, you might call someone you hold on very high personal regard , but that's almost to the point of worship, like if they saved your life or something. Alternatively if you're really arrogant you might refer to yourself as ore-sama.
+Yinga I've heard it connected to parents quite a lot. In fact, probably more than any other usage. That doesn't really make any sense if what you described is true unless children are expected to be entirely obedient to their parents which doesn't seem to be entirely the case.
QuantumSeanyGlass In old Japanese, sure. I don't think any kid's spoken like that since the Meiji period though, or maybe even earlier. I've lived in Japan for 2 years, and grew up in a Japanese family, and I've never heard sama used for parents. Most kids address their parents as (o)tousan/(o)kasan, or just call them papa /mama. In the case of adults, they say chichi/haha, or use the aformentioned -san honorific at the end.
Yinga That's very interesting; thanks for sharing with me. By the way: I'm interested in japanese because, similar to why Xidnaf chose it, I like anime. I don't actually have any personal experience with japanese. I could be remembering something wrong.
@@jcr1g235 You can say that for anything to a certain extent. I don't think teaching programming in school is good, but learning it on your own if you want to is fine.
So Tae Kim grammar guide actually has a really good example to explain wa. So if some one ask to the group whats your favorite animals. I could respond "watashi wa inu desu", which translates literally as "I am a dog", but should translated as as from as for me it's a dog. Basic rule of thumb translate wa = as for topic.
Nick Mason well that's an incredibly stupid attitude have. Advice from fluent non-native speakers is incredibly useful, because unlike native speakers, learned the language in same way you're learning language and therefore no the pitfalls. In this particular example, this is the only resource that even tries explain the difference between topic and subject, and does a great job of doing so. The reason is most native speaking Japanese teaches are not trained linguist, and don't really understand the difference all that well themselves. This why every Japanese teacher has said I have had something to the effect, just memorize when to use what particle. But pass if you want without even taking look based solely on guys name, but I'm not sure why you're watching a video on by a white guy on the subject.
+Nick Mason Korean is actually pretty grammatically similar to Japanese. In fact, it's so similar that often as-is translations make perfect sense in both.
+mage davee So, according to Tae Kim (I also have his app, but I must admit I don't use it super often) - は is more or less equal to 는, and が is more or less equal to 가? I also get really confused about this difference in Korean, which mostly stems from the fact that I learned it for 6 years by myself, and then when I went to formally study it, I had a Dutch guy teaching the class, and whatever he told us, the next year we had native speakers and they told us the opposite. So now I'm just really confused about which one I was taught wrongly, lol. I guess sometimes these sorts of differences are learned through usage over time, not something you can easily explain in a book or lecture. There's plenty of grammar I don't fully understand in Korean, but I know how to use it and I know when it sounds "wrong."
the origin of "sen pai/先輩/せんぱい" is Chinese word "前（qianちあん）辈（beiべい）” or "先（xianしあん）辈(bei)". the literal meaning is "former generation" or "elder peer". It's just a polite way of referring to someone senior to you (in school, at work, or in other fields, not necessarily older than you).
Family relationships are the first thing that came up in my mind when talking about unstranslatability. In Chinese (my native language), there are two different words for the older brother and the younger brother, four different words for mother's sister, mother's sister-in-law, father's sister and father's sister-in-law, also four different words for four grandparents. So when translating news about Obama's Aunt into Chinese, a news editor has really to do some research about their relationship to figure out which word to use for her. In other situations like novels where there's no way to find out the true relationship, a translator has to assume one (for example grandfather in English --> 祖父 or 爷爷 / father's father in Chinese)
Another great example of this is Quechua's two past tenses. Quechua is the modern descendant of the Incan language, and it has two past tenses, one for things you've experienced and one for things you've heard about. So to use one (I think) vulgar example, "akarqan" means "I saw him/her shit", whereas "akasqan" means "I heard that he/she shat".
+Whym Yeah, in Turkish that's called evidentiality. You use -ti for things you've experienced and -miş for things you haven't. So, for a less vulgar example, "söylemek" means "to say", so "Buyu söyledi" means "I witnessed him/her/it saying that" where "Buyu söylemiş" means "It seems he/she/it said that".
As a German who does a fair amount of translating into English, the most common issue I come up against is translating German _Abtönungspartikeln_/modal particles. They're these little words that get sprinkled throughout the sentence in normal speech (though much less in formal writing) and that kind of...express how the speaker feels about the information conveyed. And what they expect the _listener_ to think about it. Or what they expect them to know already. And a bunch of other things. And English has no direct equivalents for any of them basically, so if the nuance is important you have to completely rephrase everything, and sometimes even that doesn't help because what's one one-syllable word in German would require an entire phrase in English and sound really unnatural in context. They're also the last thing that non-native speakers of German learn to use correctly, typically. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_modal_particle
The Abtönungspartikeln are indeed difficult to translate, but I would say that some prefixes in certain words are even more difficult to translate, for example: probieren&ausprobieren. Do you know any tricks on that? Or like a good website with explanatios, etc...? Cheers
These have caused me so much trouble. They change the feeling, connotation etc but a non-native speaker has trouble figuring out when they are modal particles and when they are just particles that behave normally.
Gustavo Kenzo Miyamoto Most of the time, verbs with different prefixes in German will correspond either to verb + postposition in English, or English will use different roots entirely. Often you can also find a latinate verb in English that's constructed the same way as the German word (dazwischengehen > to intervene, from Latin inter-venire, literally "to go between"). With verbs of motion this is usually straightforward (fallen > to fall, abfallen > to fall off), but when the prefix indicates something like punctuality or iterativity, there may not be a good English equivalent :/
As a semi-non-native speaker of German (living in Germany for 14 years, am 29) I never knew those are a separate grammatical category! But I have no trouble using them (translating - be it into English or into my native Russian - is a totally different issue though).
The way I've always looked at wa and ga is that wa is used when the word in question could be omitted from the sentence entirely without losing any meaning. For example: Watashi wa Wiru desu. Translates to I am Will Wiru desu has the exact same meaning, despite omitting the topic "I" However, if someone was in a room and asked "Who is Will" The only answer I should give is: Watashi ga Wiru desu. If "Watashi ga" is eliminated from the sentence, then it may not hold the same contextual meaning. Not the greatest example, but I think it's the easiest one to understand.
+Will Truth/Deceit In that particular example, you can actually also respond with just "watashi ga" or "wiru desu" :P A more common response would probably be "watashi desu", though.
Yndostrui I simply provided an easier example to understand for English speakers who've never learned anything about Japanese. In reality it's rare that the wa/ga distinction comes up in conversation in everyday Japanese life. I hope that clears up what my intent was.
+Will Truth/Deceit Using the example Watashi wa wiru Will wa dare? Watashi ga. For those who didn't learn Japanese, I usually tell them to generally see it as が emphasizing the word in front of が [私が is emphasizing on Me], and は is emphasizing the back [Statement understood as "Will is my name" than the direct translation "My name is Will" because you are emphasizing "Will" ].
albinoasesino Yeah, it's nuance in the language. Really I don't take it too seriously since most learners seem to fret about it more than any native speaker I've heard cares.
i think you can learn so much about japanese culture through their language. Something about the fact that everyone thanks eachother for their hard work as a goodbye just tells me a little something about how their society works
I actually noticed something more or less untranslateable in an anime I was watching (anime nerd, guilty as charged). One character just shouted out to another as he ran off from a bar and said "行ってきます！” And the subber translated it as "See you later." And that's more or less what it literally means. However, what the translation missed was that you only say 行ってきます when leaving home. In other words, he had begun to think of the bar as his home. Now yes, I do agree that you can translate everything, given time, but as you saw, it took me a whole paragraph to "translate" one line. When that happens, I call it untranslatable.
Paul Gibby This is not true, it literally just means that you are going and coming back. It is a commonly said when leaving home, but that is not the only situation it can be used in.
I wasn't actually expecting you to talk about honorifics. There were several things I thought you were going to talk about but didn't. Since you talked about faces I thought you were going to talk about Honne and Tatemae. Honne being more of your personal thoughts and desires while Tatemae is what you display publicly. Also since you brought up politeness I thought you were going to talk about things like keigo and how Japanese has different levels of politeness depending on how formal you need to be.
Hi, I hardly ever comment on videos, but this one is really relevant to me. I am currently teaching in Japan and have studied Japanese for far too long compared to my weak grasp of the language. That aside, a good example of an 'untranslatable' phrase between languages is actually one of the first phrases most people learn in a Japanese class: 'yoroshiku onegaishimasu'. This is generally taught in the set 'introduction conversation' after one has exchanged initial greetings and names. Japanese textbooks often translate it as 'Nice to meet you' or 'Please take care of me'. While 'Please take care of me' is probably closer to the actual meaning, neither one can translate the phrase at all. Breaking it down into its...er...semantics, 'yoroshiku' can be translated as 'goodly', while 'onegaishimasu' is a polite version of 'Please'. Thus, a direct semantic translation of 'yoroshiku onegaishimasu' would be 'goodly please'....A bit odd, isn't it? But, the fun starts here. 'Yoroshiku onegaishimasu' is a quite versatile phrase. It's used in first introductions, at the beginning of projects or work days, or between friends and family! A personal workday example would be when I pass by a school I will be teaching at later in the day. The teachers will see me and after exchanging 'Good morning', they usually will say 'yoroshiku onegaishimasu'. They won't say this, however, when I see them on days that I am not working at that school, with the exception of when they stop me in order to explain the structure of my next school day there. At that point, since we have discussed a future lesson plan, they will say 'yoroshiku onegaishimasu'. Doesn't matter how close I am to any of my teachers, if I am teaching a class with them that day or we have discussed a future lesson plan, our interactions will always end with 'yoroshiku onegaishimasu'. Now, with families and friends. This one threw me into a loop. I was asked one day how to translate 'korekara yoroshiku onegaishimasu'. 'Korekaramo' literally means 'here from also' and can be translated as 'from this point, as well'/'Let's continue...' With that in mind, this phrase came up in a class where my students were making cards for people they know. 'Korekaramo yoroshiku onegaishimasu' is a set phrase commonly used, seemingly, when situations have changed. The speaker may be graduating, had a change of heart that leads to a new direction in their relationship with the recipient, ect, ect. So, how do we translate this into English? If the recipient is a friend, it could mean something like, 'Let's continue our friendship', or 'Please, let us continue caring for each other as friends'. Regardless, when this phrase is used between friends, there seems to be a context familiar to English speakers. Imagine writing in your friend's yearbook right before graduation. You may write something like, 'Let's stay friends after graduation!'. 'korekaramo yoroshiku onegaishimasu' works like that between friends. But, some of my students wanted to write that concept in English to their family. When is the last time you've said, 'Let's continue working together' or 'Let's continue being family' to your parents or siblings? We...just don't say that. At least, not in a common situation. Maybe if we are in business with our family members or working hard on some kind of project together. In short, 'yoroshiku onegaishimasu' does not have a direct equivalent in English. Depending on the context in which it's used, its meaning changes. And, in the case of 'korekaramo yoroshiku onegaishimasu', there is no conceptual equivalent in English. Xidnaf, thank you so much for your video! Japanese is brimming with untranslatable phrases, which, to me, makes it so fun to learn. You did a great job breaking down the honorifics and the 'honne-tatemae' dilemma in Japanese society (inner feelings- outer face). You also did a great job with 'wa' and 'ga', though, admittedly, I now need to review the differences. Continue doing your research and sharing it with us all.
I would put the untranslatability of Japanese vis a vis English into sociolinguistics more than pragmatics. The whole face things shows this in spades. The phrase 'tatemae ga ii' (Her outside face is good) contrasts with the English criticism of being double faced, which is never a positive thing. I think the whole suffix 'chan' and 'san' thing can be represented or omitted easily by a translator. Anyway, I liked the video - seems like you're doing good analytical practice for your future as a linguist.
When I took Japanese, I had a hard time translating some of my own thoughts into japanese because I tend to think and communicate in terms of lots of double negatives or strange constructions that even sound a little weird but mostly make sense from one english speaker to another. The first real impasse I came to was when we had to say what our plans for an upcoming break were. The truthful answer was that "I plan to do nothing". I couldn't think of how to translate that, because the only construction I could think of more closely represented the phrase "I don't have any plans". But that wasn't true. I had made plans. I was going to do nothing. There's a lot of different things you could say that would get across some semblance of the idea. There are easy ways to say "I plan to stay at home" or "I plan to sit" or "I plan to not meet any obligations". But nothing really matches the non-specificity and intentional laziness as "I plan to do nothing". And when I gave up trying to figure it out myself and just asked my teacher (who knew a fair amount of english) how to say it in japanese, and after explaining that "no, it's not that I don't have any plans, it's that my plan is to do nothing.", she gave up. But even attempting to convey this idea at all doesn't really fly in japanese culture. Because part of the reason we were answering this question was so that it could be used in response to an invitation, and your apparent plans were a way to decline the invitation. It's considered proper to come up with an excuse or claim you have plans even when you don't rather than saying "I don't want to go" which might be very rude. So, if some one asked you "Hey, wanna come to this party" and you said "I can't, I've got a lot of nothing to get done at home", it'd be like a rude half-euphemism like "I've got a bun in the uterus" or "one-eyed trouser penis".
it fascinates me how many times the functioning of society hinges on two people lying to each other and pretending as if they both don't know about the lie. Although, nice lies do also communicate "I still want to have a harmonious relationship with you" without all the unnecessary meanings, so maybe it's just our languages still need a lot of improving before it's possible to be honest but respectful at the same time.
let's be real, responding to an invitation with "I can't, I've got a lot of nothing to get done at home" is incredibly rude in English too. I guess from a pragmatic perspective, you can translate the feeling by saying something like "興味ねん" (I'm not interested) or "時間の無駄なんです" (It would be a waste of time [to hang out with you]), or you could translate the laziness by saying something like "楽しい事しか何もするつもりはない" (I have no plans to do anything but pleasurable things), but the core issue is your original phrase is in essence, a joke riffing on the listener understanding and expecting the English phrases "I have plans" and/or "I've got a lot to do," and language jokes can never translate directly.
@@gahllib In english, I'd just say "No thanks." or "Yeah, I probably won't make it." instead of making up some excuse about my plans. Or "I'll let you know if I decide to come.".
'Kun' isn't only used with males, it can be used with females, too. And as a Japanese teacher I can tell you, Japanese does have many things that are hard to translate or impossible to convey, the combination of gobis (yo, na, wa, zo) and mix of register like using the vulgar negative form of a verb: tabenee and adding ssu to sound colloquially formal at the same time tabenee ssu yo (食べねーっすよ) are impossible to directly translate. Japanese has so many abstract words and auxiliary words (e.g., -morau, -yaru, -itadaku, -kureru) to add subtle meanings. I like to compare JP and English to ice creams. English is a plain vanilla ice cream while Japanese has many flavors like chocolate, strawberry, blueberry, lemon. Japanese is worth studying just for how different it is from Indo-European languages, and that's thanks to its culture and centuries of isolation.
The interesting thing is, where i come from (Finland) Politeness is important in a sense, but we don't imply it in the same way when it comes to speech. It's more about things such as tone of voice. If you don't really hear what someone says, you don't need to say: Anteeksi, mitä sanoitkaan? (Excuse me, what did you say again?) Or something like that, instead you can just say: Mitä? (What? The "some" form of what, what plural because one object of question would be "mikä") And it's completely acceptable. Another example is the common word in other languages, please. Finnish doesn't specifically have a translation for "please" (even though some people say "pliis" which is slang and that word is dying off) There is the suffix: tko/isitko/siko/ko/sitko/inkö/inko and probably some other forms i don't remember, but depending on the context you'd pick one of those and slap it on the end of the verb in question, lets take for example the word "voida" (being able to) you add "sitko" to the basic form of "voida", "voi" (which also is a form of he/she/it is able to) to make "voisitko" and that is: could you. So in a way some of those things translate very interestingly. In addition to that, if you would like to be more polite you can always say "pahoittelen" ("my apologies" is probably the best translation i can give, "pahoittelen" is a form of the verb "pahoitteleminen" or in general speech "pahoittelu" which doesn't have an english translation) or "anteeksi" (excuse me or sorry) before you ask someone to do something, but it is in no situation necessary. Therefore, when in english you might say: Excuse me, could i pass through here? to a stranger, you would only really need to say: Anteeksi, pääsisinkö läpi? In finnish. (Pääsisinkö is the pleading or being able to suffix of the word "päästä" or "to get to be able to" or "to get to") However, the "anteeksi" is usually not necessary in this context. Please tell me if you agree on this next one. In english, if you order something (for this example, let's say starbucks coffee) you'd ask: Could i get a double espresso? (please) While in Finnish, you would just say: Minä otan (or just otan) tuplaespresson. Which translates to: I'm taking a double espresso. I guess now you know more about Finnish. (Please reply i want to know your thoughts) (also there's a useful word in Finnish; "Arki" which means any day from monday to friday, so the days that are not the weekend, can also refer to working days or days that don't have holiday)
+noporian For "Excuse me, could i pass through here?" it's equally as polite to just say "Excuse me" and have the situation dictate the need. As for your Starbucks example, no one is polite there ;) The barista may or may not ask what you would like, and in either case you would just say what you are ordering: "Venti pumpkin spice latte." Now, if you are in a very nice restaurant with important company, you might say "I'll have the espresso, please," although it's equally polite to just say, "An espresso, please," and you could even leave off the please if you use a polite tone and body language. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on Finnish :)
+Anonymous User also to adf theres this increased use of the suffix "in/i/isi/etc" which in the term "ottaisin tuplaespresson" means "i would take a double espresso"
Oh god... the Hadena version may sound ridiculous, but that really was a faithful rendition of actual Hadena translations. You know, as opposed to gg/Commie/Coalguys, who did such translations only when they wanted to troll people. Like, gg's Hidan no Aria is a modern masterpiece that must be enjoyed by everybody. Especially the 9th episode.
I’m taking a Japanese class, and it’s really opened my eyes to how complicated and different languages can get and gotten me interested in linguistics. Learning Spanish or German, it basically seemed like word substitution but learning a language not related to your own is a completely different experience.
I can't believe that I'm revisiting this video five years later to prepare for my study in semantics and pragmatics. You've really inspired me. Huge thanks!
This was awesome! so cool to see someone talk about stuff like speech acts and explain them in this way, not just reading it in papers at school. subbed!
Things like は (wa), の (no), に (ni) as you mentioned are called particles. There is way more but they all do different things to alter the sentence structure. There is a whole bunch like も(mo) や (ya) で (de), and if you learn them all ,it makes it 2x easier to distinguish what the person is talking about. Example : か(ka) is used at the end of a sentence to indicate it was a question. 何時ですが (nanji desuka) - What time is it?
Congrats! You're video was awesome and I just realized you're not just a linguistics lover, but also a anime/manga lover! It really freaks me out to explain to my students the differences between wa and ga, sometimes I think I'll never do it.
I know something in German which is pretty hard to translate (in english): The Difference between Du and Sie (Siezen und Duzen), because they mean technically the same, but we use them in 2 Different ways.
The English "You" is the original "Sie". But originally English did have a "du" - namely "thou". Then everybody decided to be polite, and it got lost. The difference is there in many languages. But in most languages the formal word is the variant of the *second* person plural, not - as in German - the third one. Why is it "Sie" and not "Ihr" in German? Funilly, "Ihr" existed once too, but was reserved to royalty (and still remained in the words like "Eure Majestät", that is "Your Majesty").
In English the third person singular is used to address a person when one feels that that person is so superior that one should not address them directly. A waiter will often say "Would the gentleman care to order?" when addressing a customer, rather than saying "Would you like to order?" In Portuguese one uses second person singular, second person plural, and third person in increasing order of politeness.
Translation question for y'all. This story I'm reading and want to translate into Japanese, has a character called Makemnoit ( "make 'em know it"). She's an evil witch who curses a princess into having no gravity. Would I be better off just transliterating into katakana: 「メイケムノーイット」or trying to incorporate kanji like 「知」or some phrase into a Japanese name to get the pun across?
Just found this channel and I love it! You illuminate parts of culture that most people aren't even aware exist, let alone have unconscious influence on.
My native language is Finnish yet I am nearly fluent in English (especially passive language such as listening and reading) and I have tried learning Japanese and Mandarin, and I feel it has made my Finnish more innovative and flexible. And I have taught Finnish to an American and after translating probably thousands of sentences or ideas he found in Finnish books or internet I have noticed that some tones and ideas are really hard to translate into any pretty format but it can be done. One Finnish sentence may need two or three English sentences and a reference to a rulebook to be successfully explained but it can be done. Nevertheless nuances are really hard to get right so I am kinda 50-50 with the people who say things like Koran can only be fully understood if read in its original archaic Arabic form. The translator might do a really good job but he might forget some minor difference in the way of thinking so if a person tries to understand how the text relates to something else or doesn't know the full context he might get it wrong, he would need a native bifluent person to explain it to him in that specific case.
Hi Xidnaf! Would you consider doing a video on lesser known languages families like Northwest Circassian, and maybe do a video on languages isolates, like Basque? Thank you very much Xidnaf-San.
Dude, you have a solid channel going! You have my full support, and I will definitely share your channel with anyone I think may even find it remotely interesting!! I just stumbled upon your stuff earlier today and I've already binge watched it all! I look forward to your future content! Best of luck to you, and God bless!
At a conference I was attending one English-speaking presenter cracked a joke. Even the Japanese getting the simultaneous translation, laughed. Later, I asked one of the Japanese how the joke had been translated. He told me that the translator had explained that it was impossible to render it in Japanese and that he had merely told them when to laugh.
"So much thank you" (hahaha) for this video! I'm brazilian, so my mother language is 'brazilian portuguese'. But I live on a region of Brazil with a expressive japanese-brazilian comunity, and I already studied japanese language. I did it fot fun, like someone learning Klingon. But this wa / ga has haunted me over the years, and I have no one to discuss about it. I'm puzzled by this issue, like you. It's the first 'language barrier' of my life. Your toughts over this subject are precious to me. It's nice to know that you lived and understood my problem! Thank you again.
We're alike in many ways, I'm Brazilian, I don't live in a Japanese-Brazilian community tho, I'm just trying to learn Japanese because I'm really interested in it, but, man, this wa/ga thing doesn't make sense at all to me, I'm at the very beginning so I'm just trying to ignore its existence, but day by day I feel like having to deal with it is inevitable! Btw, you commented 4 years ago, do you feel like it's more natural to you now?
Nevermind it. I know how timeconsuming it is to animate just 60 seconds of footage let alone 8 minutes. I just thought i say "i see what you did there ;)". But thank you for replying and keep up the good work (because i enjoy your vids)!
This is such a cool video. Thank you for explaining these concepts! I've never really been able to formally learn linguistics, so I'm glad folks like you do videos like these. :)
thank you for all of these videos Xidnaf-sensei! :) I've been working on developing a linguist character for my novel and your videos have been incredibly helpful.
I'm tripping about because I understand a lot of your content and while I am learning new things I am surprised and ecstatic to know there are others that I can relate to concerning perspectives and thought processes. Idk maybe it's the weed but I am so happy to have found the perfect channel that can quench my thirst for sensical explanations of abstract ideas.
+Kimberly Adams Korean and Japanese are very similar, yes? Although Japanese has no 받침 except for an "N," which makes it sound very different. SO. MANY. VOWELS... And syllables.
+togruta4 Ive heard koreans may take offense if their language is compared to Japanese, swearing that the 2 are completely different. Thats just what I heard though. I know the similarities of vocabulary and grammar but what I said is just some cultural rumor :/
Kimberly Adams its because of the lasting resentment since the Japanese occupation of Korea for 35 years... many koreans (probably mostly older ones) might not view japan favorably. But most young people even in asia are open minded enough to like other cultures these days :))
Just watched a couple of your videos and really liked them. As a somewhat bilingual (English-Japanese) person I find the hardest thing to translate or to get my Japanese friends/students/coworkers to understand is よろしく [yoroshiku]. Depending on the context I translate it directly as "give me your consideration" or "keep me in your favor" but who actually says those things in modern English! It always brings up a great teaching point which is.... you don't need to say "yoroshiku"... at all! And yes I know it *feels* strange to not say "yoroshiku." It took me a long time to drop the subject in Japanese because it felt weird not saying "I" or "you" at the beginning of a sentence. Keep up the good work!
I don't quite get the difference between ~은/는 and ~이/가 in Korean either. One is supposed to indicate comparison, and the other just stating a fact but with emphasis in the word it was attached to, but...
Yeah it's basically the same thing as the Japanese 'wa' and 'ga'. It's so weird seeing people struggling with this because it comes to us so naturally. But then I'm struggling to explain it and it's just so amazing that I'm used to something I can't even explain.
은/는 are like "An." "An apple is red." 이/가 are specific, "The." "The apple is red." A post I read also indicated that 이/가 indicates something you & the listener know - so apples in general (사과는) are red, but THIS apple here (사과가) is green!
I'm currently studying Korean and this video gave me a much clearer understanding of the functions of Korean's own topic marker "는/은 (nun/un)." This concept was very well explained in the video, and, even if not perfect in the eyes of native speakers, really elucidated the idea for me in my own studies. Thank you very much!
A good way to handle topic markers is "regarding" for exmaple: "I am popular" in korean would have the topic marker on I, this directlly translates to "regarding me, I am popular"
I disagree with the notion that some ideas can't be translated. All languages are built to refer to the same physical, persistent reality. It may be difficult to translate the associations and insinuations of a given piece of language, but that's more in the wordplay department. Like, you wouldn't expect to be able to translate a rhyme either. I don't think the marriage example really works. Let me demonstrate through a similar example. Say I'm talking about a banana split and I want to translate what I'm saying. However, the language I'm translating into doesn't have a word for banana or ice cream, and certainly not for banana split. Does that make the idea untranslatable? Of course not. I just have to explain what those things are and offer some substitute words to use. Fundamentally, this is the same as the marriage example. Just because a word for something doesn't already exist in a language, doesn't mean it's totally incomprehensible.
JoeJoeTater The point wasn't really that there are ideas that are untranslatable, just that there are things that people can say that are untranslatable (besides just "wordplay"). Namely, that there are some speech acts which are untranslatable. In the marriage example, what I ment was that the phrase "I do," in the context of marriage, would be untranslatable into a language without a concept of marriage. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that you might be able to translate ideas, but you can't always translate things and wind up with words that "do" the same thing as they did in the original culture.
JoeJoeTater Tha't because aren't complete untranslatable, just doen't exist a direct-termn translation. There a re a plenty words for that. Take german Shandenfreude, wich is getting joy of other suffering, Palegg, from norweigan, wich is whatever you can put between buns to make a sandwich, Apapachar, from mexican spanish, wich is comforting someone by hugging and necking very near, Gurfa, from arabic, wich is the amount of water you can hold in your hands, etc.
***** en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_language#Recent_controversy Also, we don't distinguish between blue-green and yellow-green, without clunky workarounds, does that mean that in languages that do make the distinction you can't translate it into English? Also, you should be happy to learn that the Slot H can be Ø, and then there is a subslot H1, which allows for expression of "past/present" while Slob B carries two distinct futures, "future/somewhere" and "future/elsewhere" Oh, and Slot B also has a past marker. Numbers greater than two is an odd thing about languages. There's basically always "none, one, many". But a complex counting system takes time to develop, and some tribes have no need to worry about exact numbers. But when trading things for other things, you can set it out 2 bullets for every pelt. That's how trading has always been done with cultures whose languages do not contain any numbers beyond 1, and thus everything else becomes "two".
Xidnaf How are you differentiating between an "idea" and "things that people say?" Those seem like the same thing to me. Like, the marriage thing is actually one of the simplest imaginable conversations. Q: "Do you take Suchandsuch to be your lawfully wedded SO?" A: "I do" is basically Q: "Take?" A: "Take." I assume that you're referring to the ritual of specifically saying "I do," rather than just "yes." But, are you saying that it's the cultural significance of the ritual "I do" that can't be translated? I mean, I'm pretty sure it can be explained in any language.
Though I could think of some examples in Klingon, a really good example of limited translatability is the Spanish word "decir", meaning "say" and "tell", meaning native speakers learning English often get "to say" and "to tell" mixed up like how English speakers can get "ser" and "estar" confused. It also depends on culture (like your wedding example). Wendover Productions brought up how Ludwig Wittgenstein said, "if a lion could speak, we wouldn't understand him". [Also, this would be a great video (especially if you're willing to collaborate)]
On my own stuff like this would blow my mind with pure boring, which is why I love all of you people who can make it so interesting! Thank you so much and keep up the good work
***** Well, yeah, I mean, that would be the literal word-for-word translation, but "I have hunger" doesn't make any sense in English. That's part of why I chose it actually: it demonstrates how, even if you can't translate something literally and still have the same meaning, you can still get the meaning across if you translate it more creatively.
YESSS A NEW XIDNAF! And yes, you can have words like that. There are Hebrew words that really don't just translate without having to explain it in two or three sentences.
***** sure, but you can still translate them, it just takes a long time! same can be said for a lot of english words into english, too--good luck explaining "selfie" or "microphone" or "semester" without getting a little verbose!
I don't mean words like "selfie", I mean words like דווקא (davka) and סתם (stam). They have meanings that _can_ translate, but don't. While they aren't really like Wa and Ga (though, I still don't understand if they are words) they don't translate since they make no sense in other languages (well, maybe just in English, since that is the only other language I speak fluently). I'd say it's similar to the way there are multiple inuit words describing snow - each has a lot of context "infused" into it, and without being culturally knowledgeable, you can't translate it. Kind of like -san.
Langfocus I feel like in some instances it's harder to explain "stam" and in others "davka". Stam has way too many meanings to properly explain once, while davka is just... odd.
***** en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%93%D7%95%D7%95%D7%A7%D7%90, en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%A1%D7%AA%D7%9D ;) also, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_words_for_snow ; inuit langauges just have a very "combination-heavy" language structure, so they have a lot of works for *everything*, not just snow; heck, english even has a lot of words for snow, too. anyways, what the hebrew words you gave seem to be are pragmatic phrases, which serve to keep conversation going. since these phrases lack a lot of semantic meaning, sure they are hard to translate semantically, but if you describe their usage (ie, you use X to introduce a dissenting opinion) you can still translate them. as for cultural words, sure, a lot of context are infused in them, but the same goes for *our* cultural words--like selfie, or semester. culture obviously is a big part in understanding *any* language, but you can still translate the word, one again, with its pragmatic meaning--ie, "san" is used to refer to X person when you, the speaker, are Y person. everything is translatable to every other language--even if you need a whole book!--since every human language is capable of expressing every human thought.
Seth Thompson I'm not really sure I understood you, but in any case- there are more than three meanings for "stam" and that's what I'm saying. It's very hard to translate it.
Took German for 4 years in high school, and it was pretty fun and similar to English. I took Southern Lushootseed (indigenous language of Seattle and surrounding area) in college for a quarter to help in my studies of my own tribes language, Siksiká (Blackfoot language). Both are way different from anything I’ve been exposed to before and it feels like I have to use a whole different part of my brain sometimes. It’s super interesting
That's really cool that you've studied some Native American languages! What has been your experience with learning them if you don't mind me asking? I'm kinda curious about them, but wouldn't really know where to start with learning one (or even which one to study)
i first saw this video around 2 years ago and at that time i just picked up japanese. over these years i've learnt japanese quite a bit. i still struggle to speak it myself, but i have no problem listening to it (like whilst watching an anime) or even reading it. though, after 2 years, the point of this video still stands. i feel like i'll be able to speak it properly, like a native would, only if i were to live in japan and assimilate japanese culture and way-of-life for a few years. up until japanese all languages that i knew (or kinda knew) were european, or indo-european. this video hits a nail really well - language differs by a ton once you cross this "cultural" line and move from one continent to another.
Mediantor Just English, really. Maybe also Spanish, depending on how you count. I can never focus on one language long enough to REALLY learn it. There are about a dozen languages where I've learned about the grammar and memorized a few dozens words before moving on and forgetting all of it.
Xidnaf by the way I'm Thai. I'm not a linguist but I love linguistics (especially Phonetics). If you need help with Thai, feel free to discuss it with me. You seem to use Thai as example a lot.
Hey Xidnaf, love your videos! One question though, have you ever considered making a video on any of the finno-ugric (uralic) languages? Their quite interesting and I'm sure you find something to discuss.
The Wa-Ga distinction as what I learned in a chinese textbook was that wa is used when the subject is what's already been known to the person spoken to, while the ga is used when the object is known to the person spoken to.
Even Italian has three distinctions: Questo/Questa: This (near to the speaker) Quello/Quella: That (far from the speaker and the one who ears) Codesto/Codesta (the less used): (something near to the one who ears) There are even other distinctions, but very few people still use them.
