iiotenki

The Tony Hawk of Tokimeki Memorial

A most of the time Japanese>English game translator and writer and all the time dating sim wonk.



was watching a video about how i guess us 7/11 is trying to shift its model to be more like their japanese counterparts here (extremely overdue, imo) and anymore it feels like these companies are deliberately not hiring translators and interpreters to keep some of the japanese buzzwords feeling mystical and innovative because one of the people interviewed on the us side described how they're moving to a "tanpin kanrin" model and,

dawg,

anyone who knows even a modicum of business japanese will tell you that it's not remotely some untranslatable concept, it's literally two extremely common words put together just talking about managing stock at a per-item level rather than per-section like has apparently been common overseas

if i was translating an internal manual or something like i'm occasionally asked to, i would literally just write "individualized management" or some such and move on with my day, the japanese is not a term worth memeing internally to make yourselves feel special and cutting edge lmao

that would be like a japanese executive discovering the word "overtime" in english and purposely transcribing that in katakana to make its brand of putting in more hours sound like it's inspired by western innovation when it's a very familiar concept just dressed up in foreign packaging to make it sound forward thinking and out of the box

y'all, i'm begging you to knock it off with making every japanese term a loan word, it's just genuinely embarrassing to see as a professional translator


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in reply to @iiotenki's post:

I blame Toyota who spread, or at least served as a focal point for business management coaches to spread kanban, kaizen, and other easily translatable words into English. I get similar cases with other companies who specify certain terms to be spelled out in romaji in their glossaries (not that often though at least), and they definitely aren't going to pay attention to any protests I may have about the topic

But I want to see the eventual English usage of an English loanword in Japanese that's pronunciation is juuuust different enough to sound a bit off, by the western business world. Maybe "afutā sābisu" or "depāto". ...I want McDonalds to start trying to sell me "furaido poteto". This is a merry go round that has no brakes. It could get so much funnier. (Note: I do not actually want this.)