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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That history has followed the term into the Japanese language, where the expression \u77ee\u661f 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the age of the word police, however, the demotion of Pluto to the status of dwarf planet<\/em> presented an opportunity for the authorities (at least here in Japan) to make allow the politics of correctness to intrude into language. The result is that the term is treated differently between Japanese and English.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whereas \u77ee\u661f is still apparently accepted for dwarf star in Japanese,\u77ee\u60d1\u661f for dwarf planet is avoided, surely for fear that the word police would coming knocking on the door of offensive transgressors. The NAOJ website gives a nod to the dwarf planet use in English, but avoids mention of \u77ee\u60d1\u661f in Japanese, preferring to use the safer English term dwarf planet in running Japanese text, rather than use the dreaded \u77ee character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One example, from a FAQ page of the NAOJ website:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u592a\u967d\u7cfb\u306edwarf planet\u3068\u306f\u3001\u300c\u592a\u967d\u306e\u5468\u308a\u3092\u56de\u308a\u300d\u300c\u5341\u5206\u5927\u304d\u306a\u8cea\u91cf\u3092\u6301\u3064\u305f\u3081\u306b\u81ea\u5df1\u91cd\u529b\u304c\u56fa\u4f53\u3068\u3057\u3066\u306e\u529b\u3088\u308a\u3082\u52dd\u308b\u7d50\u679c\u3001\u91cd\u529b\u5e73\u8861\u5f62\u72b6\uff08\u307b\u307c\u7403\u72b6\uff09\u3092\u6301\u3061\u300d\u300c\u305d\u306e\u8ecc\u9053\u8fd1\u304f\u304b\u3089\u4ed6\u306e\u5929\u4f53\u304c\u6392\u9664\u3055\u308c\u3066\u3044\u306a\u3044\u300d\u300c\u885b\u661f\u3067\u306a\u3044\u300d\u5929\u4f53\u3067\u3042\u308b\u3002<\/p>\n\n\n\n [from https:\/\/www.nao.ac.jp\/faq\/a0508.html<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another method used to avoid \u77ee is to call these dwarf planets \u6e96\u60d1\u661f.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I guess the only thing that language realists can be thankful for is that the language revisionists have not yet banned \u77ee\u661f 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<\/em> in JA-EN translation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 … Continue reading “\u77ee in the world is this happening? All dwarfs are not created (or translated) equally.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[246],"tags":[253,251,252,6],"class_list":["post-1757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ja-en-translation-notes","tag-astronomy","tag-dwarf","tag-planet","tag-translation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirameki-translation.co.jp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirameki-translation.co.jp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirameki-translation.co.jp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirameki-translation.co.jp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirameki-translation.co.jp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1757"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kirameki-translation.co.jp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1758,"href":"https:\/\/kirameki-translation.co.jp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1757\/revisions\/1758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirameki-translation.co.jp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirameki-translation.co.jp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirameki-translation.co.jp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}