Sunday, 13 April 2008
Half Arsed English Translations
One of the most frustrating things about being an English speaking person in Japan is encountering half arsed English translations that has been edited or adapted for "English speakers". A lot of the time in Japan instead of having an English translation available of the Japanese content (whether it be a road sign, pamphlet or newspaper) those behind the scenes seem to edit the content and actually change it depending on what they think English speakers would be interested in.
This becomes very apparent in road signs where there'll be a good 20 words in Japanese and only a 1 or 2 word "translation" in English under it.
It becomes obvious when dealing with a lot of Japanese companies who seem to think that all their customers in Japan speak and read Japanese and if they want an English version of their content they must be investors from overseas or general tourists.
Take Sumitomo Mitsui's Official Website for example. It has information on branch locations within Japan, internet banking information, contact information... basic customer service stuff. However if you look at the English Sumitomo Mitsui Page you'll find no support whatsoever for English speaking customers in Japan. While it's great that they list Sumitomo branches all around the world you have to wonder why they don't list branches within Japan where the company is based!
Today I've been after information on branches near where I work on the Denintoshi line and to get that information I had to use Google's translation tools to translate their page (a lot of which wouldn't translate due to their image use) and then call a Japanese customer support number and ask (in Japanese) for an English speaker.
All of this was completely unnecessary and has me wondering how many other non Japanese speaking bankers in Japan have been screwed over this way.
A perfect example of this "I can't be bothered spending an extra 5 minutes to translate the rest of this into English" is Japanese ATMs. The usual ATM here will show you about 20 options on the touch screen ranging from transfers, wiring, deposits, updates, etc. Hit the English translation option and you get 2, maybe three if you're lucky: Deposit & Withdrawl.
Like this site? Subscribe to my site feed or email newsletter to get our updates as soon as they're online.
Labels: japan
posted by Brad at
11:46 AM
5 Comments:
Links to this post:
Previous Posts
-
Starbucks Mug Japan 2008
Working in Japan
Did Japan Change YOU?
How to Speak Japanese
How to Get Your Balls Grabbed in Japan
Make Money With SponsoredReviews.com
Macha Kit Kat
Love in Japan
Doing a Link Exchange
Australia / Japan Apologies
Welcome. My name's Brad and I'm about to start my fifth year in Tokyo, Japan though lately I've found that that defines me as badly as saying I'm from Sydney, Australia.
Seriously dude, I know what you mean!
woah..that's pretty annoying :/ I like it how in Hong Kong there's a fair amount of English translation to things in Chinese.. I felt hopeless in Japan, lol.ifdduvh
err..ignore those weird letters at the end of the comment. It was the spam filter word verification, haha.
It's kind of shocking when Japan is the richest country in Asia (apparently). You have to wonder where all the money goes that the companies make here.
Yep! I'm with you there!
The site that really annoyed me was the official EIKEN site! I had been asked to prepare a couple of girls for the Junior EIKEN so of course needed to know what they would be tested on. The site had obviously used some basic translation software and made no sense. It's just so stupid!