Author: William Lise

Long-term (49-plus years) resident of Japan. Former electrical engineer and have been translating and interpreting for over four decades.

JA-EN Translation Note 003: 矮 in the world is this happening? All dwarfs are not created (or translated) equally.

In the field of astronomy, the term dwarf star has a long history. That history dates back far before the word police would raise their eyebrows and raise a fuss about dwarf being offensive. Perhaps little person star would be more acceptable.

That history has followed the term into the Japanese language, where the expression 矮星 has long been used and is still used to refer to dwarf stars, including on numerous pages of the website of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.

In the age of the word police, however, the demotion of Pluto to the status of dwarf planet presented an opportunity for the authorities (at least here in Japan) to allow the ideology of political correctness to intrude into language. The result is that the term is treated differently between Japanese and English.

Whereas 矮星 is still apparently accepted for dwarf star in Japanese,矮惑星 for dwarf planet is avoided, surely for fear that the word police would coming knocking on the door of the transgressors. The NAOJ website gives a nod to the dwarf planet use in English, but avoids mention of 矮惑星 in Japanese, preferring to use the safer English term dwarf planet in running Japanese text, rather than use the dreaded 矮 character. In English, it is not the fault of the NAOJ.

One example, from a FAQ page of the NAOJ website:

太陽系のdwarf planetとは、「太陽の周りを回り」「十分大きな質量を持つために自己重力が固体としての力よりも勝る結果、重力平衡形状（ほぼ球状）を持ち」「その軌道近くから他の天体が排除されていない」「衛星でない」天体である。

Another method used to avoid 矮 is to call these dwarf planets 準惑星.

I guess the only thing that language realists can be thankful for is that the language revisionists have not yet banned 矮星 for dwarf star, but perhaps the day will come when we will see that character banned in dwarf stars as well. Time will tell. In any event, I would render these planets as dwarf planets in JA-EN translation.

JA-EN Translation Note 002: LRT joins SNS as a Latin-orthography Japanese Logogram

SNS has for years been used as the Japanese logogram for the Japanese word エスエヌエス (ESUENUESU), which is the commonly used Japanese term for social media.

I suspect that few Japanese users of the initialism SNS realize what it stands for, and it should be no surprise that few native English speakers use the initialism, although strictly speaking it does have an origin that can be initialized as SNS. But to everyday walking-around people, it’s social media.

The pronunciation of the Japanese logogram SNS as the Japanese word ESUENUESU is now accepted, is used almost universally, and can even be seen on government websites, without explanation. For example, on a government page aimed at providing guidance to children in using social media, we find “SNS（エスエヌエス）を使うときの注意”.

Enter LRT, which to many in-the-know native English speakers is the initialism for light rail transit. The recent introduction into Japan of this tram-like system has caused LRT to pop up frequently in the news, and accidents involving run-ins with cars have recently boosted its frequency of occurrence in the media.

As far as I can tell, and certainly on various Japanese-language NHK and Nikkei media, the initialism LRT is voiced as エルアールティ(ERUAARUTEI), and is most often followed with a gloss (both in print and orally) of 次世代型路面電車. Well, yes, it could be called that (“next-generation streetcar”), but readers and listeners are not given any hint as to what LRT stands for in its original language. This makes LRT a logogram for the Japanese expression 次世代型路面電車, and there is no chance of any significant number of native Japanese speakers ever learning what LRT actually stands for, nor will they think of anything but 次世代型路面電車 when they see or hear the Japanese logogram LRT. But that’s just fine, because LRT is Japanese.

I would advise English translators to gloss LRT with its expansion in parentheses—at least on the first occurrence—and to never use SNS unless you are addressing or writing for an audience that would recognize it, and that is quite rare outside of Japan.

JA-EN Translation Note 001: Beware of ファイ/φ/Φ and アール/R, False Friends from ISO-Conforming Drawings

ファイ/φ/Φ

It appears that a technology problem in rendering the ISO drawing symbol for diameter, ∅, has resulted in people thinking that the character is the Greek letter phi and this symbol is actually rendered variously and uniformly incorrectly in running Japanese text as φ (lower-case Greek letter phi), Φ (upper-case Greek letter phi), or ファイ. All of these renderings are wrong. The correct character is ∅, which is evoked in HTML by ∅ and in Unicode by U+2300.

Although both ファイ and some of the above-noted symbols (mostly the incorrect ones) are used in running Japan text in place of the word diameter, this is simply wrong in English, even if you use the correct symbol, ∅. Use the word diameter in running text and the abbreviation DIA in drawings in cases in which the ISO symbol ∅ would not be understood (probably mostly in the US).

None of the bogus symbols should appear in running English text.

Examples:

  • φ5の棒 {a 5-mm-diameter rod}

In an ISO-conforming drawing of that rod, of course, the dimension could be indicated as ∅5.

アール/R

Here we have not a special character problem, but simply a misunderstanding the R (and its katakana rendering アール) can and should be used to mean radius. R is the ISO drawing symbol for radius and has little proper use elsewhere. In a drawing, R10 means a radius of 10 mm, when we understand that a common dimensional unit in drawings is that dimensions, unless otherwise indicated, are in millimeters. Some Japanese authors will even use R as a faux unit. When asked, they might explain it as ミリ直径. This is wrong and results by combining R with a drawing convention that, unless otherwise noted, dimensions are in millimeters.

R should not be used in English to simply replace the word radius in running text.

Examples:

  • コーナーにアールをつける。{Round off the corner(s).}
  • Rは小さすぎるので、… {Because the radius is too small, …}