I studied Lakoff’s linguistic work back in undergrad, and he seems to be an intelligent, scientific person. Lately I’ve seen a few articles crop up in which he discusses his political opinions. These didn’t interest me too much until I hit this, a discussion about how our ideas of what families should be like can be extrapolated to explain our political views. Really interesting stuff.

The notion makes a lot of sense to me, and in some ways I feel like I already knew that, that I have even used the family model in conversation to explain my political views. It seems natural to do so.

I would be interested to know if Lakoff is correct about children with strict-family backgrounds growing up dysfunctional.

Koreans in the city of Busan, Jung-gu district, are outraged at the prospect of establishing a “Japanese Street” for the purpose of attracting foreign tourism. One striking comment on the Jung-gu district’s governmental website apparently stated, “I have never heard of an invaded country naming a street after its invader.”

Meanwhile in Okinawa, residents of Ginowan City are suing the Japanese government and the commander of the U.S. Marine air base in the Futenma area over noise pollution from flybys. Stated one plaintiff, 69-year-old Chuuji Chinen:

“I’m an optimist. Before the reversion to Japanese rule, we thought that would take 100 years, but we struggled on steadily and it only took 27 years. Other Asian countries managed to get rid of their colonial rulers. We are still like that, but we believe someday we will achieve the removal of all bases from Okinawa. And after that, they will be gone from all of Japan.”

Yes that’s right friends, Japan’s very own Puffy, singers of the Teen Titans themesong, are getting their very own show on Cartoon Network.

They will be speaking Japanese at the beginning and end of the show.

I need to get cable.

:D I couldn’t help myself.

http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/mar2004-daily/28-03-2004/metro/k3.htm

In anime, when a character makes an impassioned speech on a subject, other characters are often highly impressed and respond with comments like “Well said!” This occurrence has always intrigued me, as speech-making is not highly valued in American culture. I think the difference is that here, we are automatically suspicious of any claim a person makes. It doesn’t matter if it’s put well; if the content is off, we won’t approve. Because of this, the speeches of persons such as politicians aren’t seen as art forms, but as manipulations. Speechwriters have to focus not on writing clever turns of phrase, but instead conversational speech that sounds natural and unpracticed. This is still a form of crafting…but instead of crafting something unique, it’s crafting something that any average Joe on the street might say. Whether or not the loss of speech as an art in American culture is a good or bad thing, I can’t really say.

I am interested, though, in how these “well said” and “well put” Japanese speeches and writings get translated into English. Often they come out sounding ridiculously philosophical and vague. Take, for example, this mission statement from Ikenobo, the most prestigious of Japan’s ikebana, or traditional flower arranging, instructional institutions:

Ikenobo’s history of over 500 years is a history of searching for essential truth in the life of flowers and plants. Ikebana’s essence and wellspring exists in the human heart before an arrangement appears as form. If one has a beautiful heart, the form of ikebana will also be beautiful. Ikebana enriches both the spirit and our daily lives, and in so doing it brings deep meaning to the joy of being alive. This essential equation is unchanging, regardless of place or historic period. Through the study of ikebana our hearts become benevolent, and we are filled with admiration for nature and the love of humankind. Thus, the creation of a beautiful cultural tradition brings bright promise for the future, a promise especially important for us today.

In this block of text, there is a focus on the divine, the emotive, the beauty of the inner self and the connection among human beings and the natural world. This sort of philosophizing sounds just like what you’d expect concerning an art form–something that can easily be dismissed as “dreaming” or “idealism”. But this sort of truth-seeking and passion can be found in writings on widely-varied topics. While most larger companies apparently have hired English copy editors who tailor the spirit of the company’s mission statement into language that is meaningful and “correct” in terms of the expectations of native English speakers, many companies seem to simply be literally translating their mission statements, resulting in pieces like the above, or this blurb from Matsushita Electric Works:

We strive for the creation of new values, by pursuing user-friendliness and accomplishing high-tech mindset, driven by challenging spirits and full speed of actions.

This particular quote appears to be a merging of literally translated Japanese with English buzzwords like “user-friendliness” and “high-tech”. “Challenging spirits” is questionable to the English speaker. It’s easy for us to simply decide that it must mean they are enthusiastic about their work, but I feel that the choice of the word “spirits” speaks to some underlying, emotively-connected-inner-selves meaning for the Japanese. As I said, this appears to be a literal translation. If the closest English phrase is “challenging spirits” and not, say, “enthusiasm” or “high work ethic”, then I think there is more to it, something cultural.

I wanted to use the original Japanese page as reference and see what word they were actually using that became “challenging spirits”, but the Japanese page doesn’t seem to have a mission statement. Perhaps the idea of a mission statement is a Western one, but what the companies feel should go into a mission statement is tempered by culture.

Another good example of this apparent “buzzword + literal translation => mission statement” phenomenon is this piece from the JT Group‘s mission page:

In JT Brand-ing Declaration which is our new global-wide mission issued in April 2002, we promise to deliver ” irreplaceable delight” which means pleasurable surprises, something surpass your expectations, joy to all our stakeholders and to be an” irreplaceable company “.

JT Group specializes in tobacco, pharmaceuticals, and foods.

This is a pretty interesting article about the writing systems of China and Japan and how cultural identity is expressed through them. I love reading stuff like this. Since I started using Bloglines I get to see all kinds of news and information about Asia.

The article makes Japan’s notions of “insider” and “outsider” far more obvious by contrasting this mindset to that of China. It’s something that I’ve heard about and even felt, somewhere along the fringe of my consciousness, during my visits to Japan–though I probably always chalked that up to how I’ve never really fit in with the “in-group”. I always wondered, behind the smiling faces, generous gift-giving, and friendly laughter, whether any of the native Japanese I met thought anything of me at all, or if they were just going through the polite motions. I think when you suspect something in your gut like that, it’s worth looking at.

I’m not sure how this will affect my hopes to live in Japan, or if it will affect them at all. I, more than many people I know, understand the motions of politeness. Thinking about what can and can’t be said and done is second nature to me. I do it even though I wonder if I’m tainting my sincerity. I do it because I want to be civilized. And so I can understand, if not completely relate to, false friendship. I just wonder if it would hurt me too much to be subjected to it daily.

Of course, making sweeping generalizations about a population is dangerous, not to mention rude. While the “us vs. them” mentality may be a deep-rooted cultural phenomenon, I can’t simply assume that everyone I meet will subscribe to it.

On a more lighthearted note, I wanted to point out that Taipei Times needs a (better?) copy editor. See if you can spot the blatant error:

In the media, the names of Bush and Saddam are written in the characters reserved for foreign names. But so are the names of people of Japanese ancestry, like Alberto Fujimori, Peru’s deposed president, or Kazuo Ishiguro, the author of Remains of the Day, who left Japan at the age of five and is a British citizen. Their names could be written in kanji, but are instead written in kanji, in an established custom indicating that they are not truly Japanese.

Yeah, good job, guys. (The prose could use some tightening up, too…the bulk of the content of that paragraph was already produced earlier in the article, and the flailing, stumbling sentence structure needs to be taken out back and shot.)

via /.: Logitech’s child company 3DConnexion sells what are essentially mice for the user’s secondary hand. With the Spaceball 5000 (or one of the other devices), users can guide their projects around the screen by panning, rotating, and zooming, while the primary hand is free to select and modify. I can easily imagine how much happier this interface would have made me back when I was studying to be a mechanical engineer…

Eliminate tedious and repetitive steps that put unnecessary stress on your mouse hand. Users of 3Dconnexion motion controllers report up to a 30% increase in productivity and as little as half the repetitive mouse movement.

Here are all the applications it supports. Unfortunately, the thing costs $500…I don’t have a whole lot of use for it now, but it would be really cool to play with.

I’ve been working on a new design for this site, and I have a few ideas, but nothing has really congealed so far. Last night I worked for hours on a design based around a picture of a hotel downtown. The mass of brick was beautiful painted in the orange glow of the setting sun. It’s a neat picture, but I’m having trouble making it work with a blog design. To get the full impact, I had to make it a long, non-scrolling image, and that limits my options for other parts of the page.

This morning I woke up with an idea for an entirely different design, using the picture I’d wanted to use to begin with. It will involve a bit more design work, but it looks really pretty in my head. We’ll see how it comes out on the screen…

This is an interesting article. I’d like to read Kanehara-san’s book. Maybe I could make it a project to import it and work my way through it…it would be really difficult, but I might learn how to read Japanese a little faster/better that way. It’s always helpful to have something to practice on.

Knowing me, I’d buy the book and then never open it, though…