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As a german I have to say that the german language gets butchered at least as much as the english language in Anime. It's so painful, although understandable, of course. Asuka (most german name ever) is supposed to be german and Komm süsser (I understand they don't have the ß on their keyboards) Tod is actually a german phrase. Legend of the Galactic Heroes does that too all the time =( As do Bleach and AoT. I mean, I don't expect anyone on german TV to be able to speak proper japanese either, then again they don't try.

You would think they can afford one native speaker to check it for mistakes. But I suppose there is nothing to be done about the pronounciation issue^^

Sometimes anime writer's know what they're doing, for fun.

This English lesson was in Nurse Witch Komugi R a couple of ep's back:

"Love is like a booger.
You pick and pick at it,
then when you get it,
you wonder how to get rid of it."

And the pronunciation was good enough to amaze the other students.
Very Happy

vanfanel wrote:

I have beheld with my own eyes a sailboating goods store called "Break Wind," a beauty parlor called "Snob," a bar called "Punched Birth," a liquor store simply called "Booze," and a cancer treatment center called "Chemotopia."

But since turnabout's fair play, a little googling on Japanese sites will also turn up a wealth of photos showing Japanese T-shirts worn by or marketed to non-Japanese, including slogans like:

糞 - poop
変態 - pervert
痔 - hemorrhoids
自己嫌悪 - self-loathing
痴漢注意 - beware of gropers
今の主流:出来ちゃった結婚 - the current mainstream: shotgun wedding
婚活 - actively seeking a spouse
日本人彼女募集 - seeking a Japanese girlfriend
毎日が地獄です - every day is hell
やわらか冷凍 - soft frozen (?)
尊皇攘夷 - Revere the Emperor, Expel the Foreign Barbarians Sad

<a political slogan used by anti-Shogunate revolutionaries in the mid-19th century--try wearing that one to Immigration when it's time to renew your visa!)

One more I saw at a con: 私は愚かなアメリカ人です。何でも買う。 - I'm a stupid American. I'll buy anything. Was the dealer providing a translation? Of course not!

I have a shirt that says "I don't understand Japanese." Occasionally someone will get curious and ask me what my shirt says. I look down, pause, and say "I don't understand Japanese." The best and most honest response to that I get is "...then why did you buy the shirt?" Once they figure out I'm messing with them, it's a big hit. The worst is when they just walk away (thinking I must be an idiot) and I have to call back to them to explain.

The gaming podcasts right after TGS are always a very special time. Some of the IGN gang visited a bar that was run by a videogame-loving Ex-Yakuza (who else has lavish tattoos in Japan?) and they communicated through videogame titles and memes only. The barkeeper flipped out, after they showed him of photo of them with Miyamoto, and all started to knock back drunks so hard that they barely managed to get the plane back... But everyone´s iPhone fueled Engrish was sufficient enough to sustain an hours long drinking fest which lead to one of the funnies web anekdotes i had the fortune to listen to (on multiple shows no less). Engrish has it´s time and place is all i am trying to say. IGN´s Japan adventure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCE8N_ZSRRg (The bar talk is after 1h min14, right after the crazy prostitution talk...)

My favorite Aztec god is Quetzalcoatl to get on that LoGH conversation. Lol.

Not to mention that it goes the other way too, but you are less likely to see it because English speaking countries are much less likely to include Japanese in their media, and unless you speak Japanese (or at least familiar with how it sounds), you're not likely to notice. There's tons of examples of English speakers butchering a few lines, like Sean Connery is a riot in the movie Rising Sun, but also in the historical fiction novel Shogun by James Clavell about the events leading up to the battle of Sekigahara, the Japanese in there is just butchered.

BVerfG wrote:

You would think they can afford one native speaker to check it for mistakes. But I suppose there is nothing to be done about the pronounciation issue^^

I think the problem there is twofold: The first is that it's way harder to do good research on how to use a language than it is for normal research for accuracy, like how cities look or moons of Saturn or something. The second is that if they DO get someone who claims to be good at German for accuracy, how can they trust this person?

There was a worst-case scenario my parents used to tell me where someone my father knew had gone to court as a witness but couldn't speak English so she had an interpreter. It turns out she didn't know her native language as much as she thought, as when asked to identify the car, she described its color as the word for "bronze" rather than "silver" and got the wrong person arrested and imprisoned for it. My father was furious when he found out about it several years later, but she was too proud to acknowledge her mistake.

In Brazil English is also often used in casual talk, people usually throw one English word or two in some cases mainly due to the American cultural influence. For example, the word "feeling" is often used by some people in respect to stuff like: "the speech by Y has the "feeling" of some other guy X's talk"

Although in Brazil people speak English with perhaps a lighter or more neutral accent than in Japan. Psycho Pass the movie had some incredibly heavy accent involved.

Nom De Plume De Fanboy wrote:

Sometimes anime writer's know what they're doing, for fun.

This English lesson was in Nurse Witch Komugi R a couple of ep's back:

"Love is like a booger.
You pick and pick at it,
then when you get it,
you wonder how to get rid of it."

And the pronunciation was good enough to amaze the other students.
Very Happy

But it was clear that no one knew what was actually being said. Wink

BTW, this is the real reason for Englrish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X403uwWbyzo

Does Yano of Bokura ga Ita's 'translation' of "She was so beautiful I wanted to make friend with her" count as Engrish?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvcKuuxUDcQ (a little 'inappropriate language' warning)

I remembered Funimation had a typo in episode nine of Date A Live in both the english subtitles and in the english dub: Which Kurumi said "Dalet" which is a hebrew letter, in the Funimation version they put in Daletto, the japanese pronunciation.

Sometimes even when there's a fluent speaker they still use Engrish. I used to be--and still am, to be honest--a big fan of the Japanese Post-Hardcore band Foreground Eclipse. Their albums and song titles are all in perfect English, and they're pretty complex phrases to: Seated With Liquor, Dear, Are You Getting Sober?, Tears Will Become Melodies Tonight, Calm Eyes Fixed on Me, Screaming, etc.

FE has two vocalists: Teto does screaming vocals all in English (I haven't ever actually heard this guy speak Japanese!). His vocals are all fluent and in one song he talks normally and appears to have a British accent. Merami is the singer, and her English is...not very good. It's all grammatically correct, but even with a fluent speaker in the same band her pronunciation is pretty iffy. It's a lot better than most Japanese, in that I can tell what she's saying, but holy shit is her accent thick.

Also, on a complete side note: My mom has become completely addicted to K-Pop and K-dramas, and I can safely say that Koreans are a million times better than the Japanese at English. There's a lot in their songs but you can usually figure out what they're saying and they don't even have much of an accent!

^^^
The L/R issue, at least, is a language specific problem. Japanese has the worst version of the problem. Other Asian languages might favor one over the other but few have the neutral l/r sound Japanese does.

Consider the "Bruce Lee/Blue Three" joke in Azumanga Daioh (Osaka voices her confusion about Bruce Lee and asks "What happened to Blue One and Blue Two?") and think about how many "Lee's" and Li's" you have heard of in Southeast Asia, particularly in Korea. If you can use one of the vowel sounds well, you're not going to have as much difficulty distinguishing them and acclimating to using the other.

So yeah, at least with the l/r issue, K-Pop would naturally have less issues.

I can think of at least two occasions where I had to read the Japanese subtitles to figure out what was being said in English: "Sky Crawlers" (plane scenes, which are actually realistic to how pilots and air traffic controllers talk to each other) and "Terror in Resonance" (Five's lines).

DJStarstryker wrote:

myskaros wrote:

"Let's hospital!"

Japan (not just anime) uses that that a lot: "let's [noun]."

"Let's Communication!"

Lord Geo wrote:

Ah, yes, lyrics so Engrishy that Geneon actually put "translated" lyrics for that OP in the song subtitles in parentheses, alongside the Engrish.

I've seen that more recently for the Gatchaman Crowds OP ^^;
[official lyrics]

grooven wrote:

I'd beg to differ on the Japanese language provided in our education.

That's fine, as long as you don't beg to differ with the fictional world presented by Justin where mandatory Japanese is taught to the same standard as English is in Japan.
Because it is fictional.

BVerfG wrote:

As a german I have to say that the german language gets butchered at least as much as the english language in Anime ... Legend of the Galactic Heroes does that too all the time ...

To be fair while half the cast of LoGH were space Germans and their names were challenging, they at least committed to universally butchering languages.

Shiroi Hane wrote:

"Let's Communication!"

My personal favourite use of that one is as a series title, LET'S & GO

[Edit]: removed unnecessary nested quotes. Please read the quoting guidelines. Errinundra.

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