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Comment by wodenokoto | Hacker News Reader

The first picture literally translate to "Please use the bathroom cleanly", where the translator pulled the word "urinate" from is anyones guess.

In the second picture, I believe that if you hanged "ha" to "ga" in Japanese, the translation would be correct. "ha/ga" are notoriously difficult for learners of Japanese (so it is with great fear I point towards differences in their meaning), but I wonder what mix-up caused the weird translation, since I doubt the translator had trouble understanding the Japanese text ....

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To the Japanese, languages such as English are legalistic and rudely direct and specific. Japanese tends to be ambiguous and the Japanese tend to not directly say what they mean, since that would be rude and exclude the listener. Translating Japanese to English usually requires creatively interpreting the meaning of the kanji characters and the intent of the writer. Teasing out the meaning of some complicated kanji can be difficult, so it seems pretty common to just make something up that sounds reasonable. I've worked on translations that were over 60% completely made up.

I agree that "please urinate with precision and elegance" is more direct than "please use the bathroom cleanly," but it's kind of funny that the translators assumed English speakers would expect the very direct version.

は(wa) is a case marker which makes something the topic of the sentence. Topic isn't strictly analogous to subject in English.

The verb is "not eat". If the topic was "children", then the topic would be the subject when translated ('Children は not eat' -> "Children [must] not eat"). But if the topic was, say, "candy", it would instead map onto object in English ('Candy は not eat' -> "[Someone must] not eat candy").

Perhaps the translator was not aware that this flexibility does not exist in English.

Can you provide a better translation for the whole "not eat" example? I'm still not sure what the intended meaning is.

Children and the elderly should refrain from eating.

I think it's some kind of food that might be risky for weaker people, e.g. children and old people.

In the video they had jello, maybe there's a choking hazard

"Small kids and elderly people: please don’t eat [these]."

Probably in front of mochi or some other choking hazard.

"Please do not eat, children and elderly."

Learning about は (wa) was my rabbit hole into Japanese particles and how there is not a super clear analogue in English. Apparently, sometimes western learners of Japanese think it’s some form of the verb “to be” which we use everywhere in American English (in British English, they tend to use more of “to have” than we do, which is kind of a running theme among western and southern European languages as well).

This is an interesting case where systems like Google translate break down because there is no clear meaning without context.

However when you learn about も (mo), another Japanese particle, it used very similarly to the word “too” or “also” in English, e.g. I (watashi) am also (mo) fine (genki desu).

There is also の (no) which indicates possession in the same way we use “of” or in other European languages, “de”, “di”, “von”, “van”.

I just find language endlessly fascinating.

> Children won't eat

> The Candy won't eat

Do you notice a difference?

There are many verbs where this has become possible recently (the code won't build?) but eat isn't one of them.

>The first picture literally translate to "Please use the bathroom cleanly", where the translator pulled the word "urinate" from is anyones guess.

I like to imagine some burned out English teacher taking on these jobs for a laugh.

Yes, unlike some of the others it really reads like something a native speaker would write

> where the translator pulled the word "urinate" from is anyones guess.

How do you use the bathroom?

With precision and elegance, naturally.

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