Category: For Colleague Professionals

The use of AI by translation-brokering agencies is quickly bringing to an end the career of freelance translating for agencies. Freelance Japanese-to-English translation is no longer a wise career choice. Only a tiny number of freelancers will survive.

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 by countless media, 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—certainly, 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.

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, …}

What cost relevance?

What should one think about an organization that purports to support and raise the status of professional translators when that organization runs webinars given by promoters of AI and sellers of AI products?

How about a purported translation organization that appears interested in holding events with academics—they probably don’t need to make a living by translating—who assume AI use in translation, even by individuals, is a given?

And what about a translation organization that holds a webinar extolling the virtues of professional translators taking on the exciting new task of fixing the output of AI?

Two of these organizations are in anglophone countries, and one is in Japan. They are not acting in the interest of their translator members, unless encouraging surrender to AI and to the promoters and users thereof is in the interest of professional translators. It clearly is not.

Has the battle for the relevance of translation by professionals been lost already? It appears that several purported translation organizations are already conceding defeat.

I suppose maintaining a facade of relevance for the translation organizations and the people who run them takes precedence over professional translator relevance.