a few words by darren wheeling...before
you begin |
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I've long been fascinated by Japanese
pop culture and after following it's nuances for several years
I couldn't avoid noticing how the English language has been 'adopted',
even to a limited degree, by their society. From shopping bags
to T-shirts, from electronics manuals to restaurant menus, from
street signs to television commercials, the use and misuse of
English in Japan is both startling and frequently amusing. Quite
often the confusion is created by the author resorting to literal
translation from the original Japanese text, thereby ensuring
sentence structure errors. Other times it's an innocent spelling
mistake, using phonetics incorrectly or simply dropping a letter
here and there. |
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Sometimes the switching of two similar
sounding letters can make the difference between a coherent unsurprising
message, and one that causes native English speakers to gasp.
For example when Douglas MacArthur's name was being bandied around
as a possible candidate for the presidency of the United States,
this immortal slogan was written across an enormous banner in
downtown Tokyo: "We Play For MacArthur's Erection".
In America this mistake most likely would've been spotted before
the banner was printed, but in Japan the absurdity of this message,
flaunted above streets full of waving Japanese, comes across
as innocent naivete. An honest mistake. Perhaps. |
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Other glaring oddities include less cohesive
ramblers like: "The Republic of Coffee Poem our Community"
and "Let's Sports Violent All Day Long". With
this clever and inventive deconstruction of the English language
these phrases become less thoughts and more an abstract string
of oddly chosen words. Therefore, with that in mind, they make
perfect captions for a series of abstract images. A virtual gallery
of absurd familiarity. All of the following captions are authentic
Japlish, for only the truth is funny. I hope you enjoy your bewildering
and eye-opening journey thru Japanized English and can accept
it in the spirit in which it is intended (that being the spirit
of "Milky Boy Kinki Bank"). Oh and don't worry about
getting lost along the way, it ends write where it began. |
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But first this warning: |
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