i want you to imagine you've just opened
your very own restaurant
and you've put everything into it time
money blood sweat and tears
and then a few weeks after the grand
opening of your beloved restaurant you
start to receive
reviews online like this terrible
the clerk is sticky i don't want to even
have one star
it is not worth the star all you can
drink lasts without salads
salads are scraps of sack i went there
at 10
30 p.m but when i tried to replace rice
it was said there was no more grass
on the tenth day of every month we can
eat puffy ramen with [ __ ] up
on the 10th day of every month we can
eat puppy ramen with 500 yen on pig bone
day
the store here is dirty and my parents
don't love it
should i clean the store if it's a
proper store there is no meal at all
it really is a scam level store
impressive chemical ramen with a great
chemical seasoning
all of the pottery is delicious with
delicate taste
and cannot be said as a delicious
category the sound in the store is too
high
even earplugs bang come in when i park
to the next parking lot i was told by an
old lady here and i didn't know what i
was saying but i was angry
very unpleasant uh yeah i think i'll uh
i think i'll close my imaginary
restaurant
[Music]
now these eyebrow raising remarks aren't
the ramblings of the insane they are in
fact
japanese reviews they've been auto
translated by google
into english with often confusing and
alarming results
but clearly something has gone horribly
wrong during the translation phase
of the review which is hardly a surprise
given translating between japanese and
english can be notoriously
difficult as any new learner of japanese
will tell you admittedly in my first
year of living in japan i relied on
google translate a lot more than i'd
care to admit
though i soon discovered while it's
fairly reliable for individual words or
simple sentences
the longer the sentences get the quicker
they fall apart and the more you sound
like a
deranged madman so today in this video i
thought we could go through some of
these reviews and uncover where it went
wrong
and why translating japanese sentences
into english leads
to the specter of puppy ramen and sticky
clerks
a sentence i never hope to say out loud
again
we'll also hear the most common mistake
that new learners of japanese make
and because i wanted to include the
insights of a native japanese speaker
for better or worse we'll be hearing
from my good friend ryotaro who's fluent
in japanese and english having lived
overseas
in an extensive list of exotic lands
including america the uk
germany australia and narnia as a
disclaimer it's important to point out
that
some translations are beyond all hope
like this shirt i bought down 100 yen
store today
which says in big english words your
comrades is glad
your comrades is glad who are my
comrades why are they so glad
powerful philosophical questions for
another time but i like to imagine
that is the exact kind of phrase that a
russian
general would say to their troops to to
get them fired up to get them motivated
i'm starting to wonder if the 100 yen
store just makes these weird
english shirts just because they know
there's a british weirdo
that will come in and literally buy
anything no matter what english you
print on it
clearly the strategy's working right
then let's dive into
some google translate reviews it was a
pity that we quit smoking i managed to
fill my
stomach when i parked to the next
parking lot i was told by an old lady
here and i didn't know what i was saying
but i was angry
very unpleasant yeah i think my brain
just crashed
as you look through these reviews though
it quickly becomes clear that they're
all failing for the same reason
and it's actually the same thing that
trips up learners of japanese early on
in everyday japanese you don't need to
explicitly state the subject so for
example
if i want to say i went to tokyo i would
say tokyo
literally tokyo towards went notice how
that phrase i didn't say the word i
though i didn't refer to myself
because you don't need to in japanese
now you could do you could say watashi
tokyo master but it's not needed because
it's pretty obvious who's going to tokyo
here i'm the one speaking
i'm the only one in the room uh you can
kind of understand it from the context
right
but this is one of the hardest things to
wrap your head around when you first
start learning
japanese that you don't need to say i
you he
she they and this is where google
translate has tripped up on all three
of these examples so for the first one
it was a pity that we quit smoking
i managed to fill my stomach but the
original japanese sentence actually says
what a shame it became non-smoking
somehow i filled myself up
aka the restaurant in question became
non-smoking but nevertheless our beloved
reviewer was able to fill their stomach
and
stuff themselves with food but not
before awarding only one star
though let's face it any restaurant that
ban smoking should at least receive one
more bonus star
now the sentence literally says became
non-smoking what a shame
somehow stomach filled up so there's no
clear subject google translate had to
take a guess had to
fill in the gaps and in this case rather
than choose the restaurant because it
didn't have the context of
where the review was left it just
guessed that it was the reviewer or in
this case
we same goes for the next one when i
parked in the next parking lot
i was told by an old lady here and i
didn't know what i was saying but i was
angry
very unpleasant i'll get a headache just
reading that honestly but the original
sentence says
i parked in the car park next to the
restaurant and an elderly looking woman
said something that i didn't understand
but she had an angry expression
it was unpleasant in all honesty it
sounds less like a review
and more like the start of a low budget
horror film
why was she angry what was going down in
that car park we'll never find out we'll
never know
but in the japanese sentence the
reviewer doesn't say
i once they don't say watashiwa or bakua
the only subject she explicitly states
is the old woman from here from the cafe
and given it's a long sentence requiring
a lot of guesswork google has
unsurprisingly struggled to keep up
though to be fair it did guess
three out of five of the pronouns
correctly so that's the first reason and
arguably the main reason why these auto
translations go so
spectacularly wrong speaking japanese
relies way more heavily
on context one key tip to new learners
of japanese is to avoid using pronouns
altogether you he or she anata korea
kannador they all kind of sound
rude and impersonal and i wouldn't
recommend using them at all
for more on this important point though
i'll hand you over to risottoro
when i hear um someone foreign uh saying
anata
or watashiwa uh you i then i will say uh
amateur
[Laughter]
in english you always have to say i do
this or
you do you or you we we don't really say
that it's quite obvious that who you're
talking to because
if the person is in front of you it's
quite quite clear that you're talking to
that person you can so you can drop you
or you can drop i so be like um do you
speak english
but if you're a first time learner of
japanese
you tend to say anata
then like so i could easily see that
person is just learning japanese because
he doesn't drop he didn't drop the um
the subject
so what if the tip is that you always
that you drop the subject if you're
talking
if you clear that like who you're
talking to and also
do not use pronouns such as
she don't use that we always use the
name
like you know kriswa just use the name
and that's the tip i got a lot of
belly terrible the clerk is sticky on
the tenth day of every month we can eat
puppy ramen
oh an utter train wreck but why
i got a lot of belly and i can't exactly
help it given i can't go outside at the
moment so bloody hot
actually it says which means i had a
good meal
but literally interpreted it does say a
full stomach
i received the japanese language is ripe
with metaphors particularly
your stomach when it comes to hunger for
example if you're hungry you'd say
literally stomach empty and if you're
full after a nice big meal of puppy
ramen
you would say pie stomach is full
and it seems google tripped up on that
metaphor even if it is an everyday
japanese phrase
which takes us to the second point while
these translations go wrong
the vocabulary the words themselves
maybe it's a word that doesn't exist in
english or a metaphor
or concept that can't literally be
translated uh
example terrible the clerk is sticky i
don't want to even have one star
to be fair who could honestly say they'd
award any stars to a restaurant if they
encountered
a sticky clerk the good news is judging
by the original review
they might not have been so sticky after
all terrible
it says the staff tried to look cool i
don't want to give them a single star
the reason this went wrong is the verb
doesn't really exist in english
the verb is character which means to
make oneself look cool
which doesn't really exist in english we
don't have a single word that can that
can explain that concept
how do we get from that to sticky well
if you look up the word character
there is a kanji you can use for it and
that kanji can mean to adhere to or to
stick to
hence the word sticky and thus we've
solved the mystery of the sticky clerk
thank god however the really scary
translations are the ones where google
has just conjured up words out of thin
air on the 10th day of every month we
can eat puppy ramen with 500 yen on pig
bone day
pig bone day why does that conjure up
images of david cameron
oh yeah
now this is sinister because at no point
in the sentence is there any mention
of puppies or dogs or animals where did
the word puppy come from the sentence
literally says on the tenth day of every
month on pork broth day
you can eat open ramen 500 yen open
being the name of the restaurant
now somehow google turned opesham into
puppies and i don't know how
and i've even sent this to a
professional translator a friend who's
not reactor but another native speaker
of japanese
and they don't have a clue either they
just think it's a glitch with google it
just pulled the word puppy
out of nowhere terrifying is it a
sinister conspiracy by google to create
puppy ramen
definitely it definitely is
for me though one of the most
interesting aspects of learning a new
language
is discovering words and concepts that
don't exist in your native tongue
and in the case of japanese there are
quite a few everyday words that
can't literally be translated into
english for example whenever you meet
someone
in japan for the first time you end your
kind of personal introduction
with the phrase yoroshiku onegaishimasu
which means please have favor upon me
that's the easiest way
i can say it but imagine going up to
someone in the uk or the u.s
and saying hi there i'm chris please
have favor upon me
might be a quick way to lose friends but
it's a testament to the sheer politeness
of the japanese language that you're
either
apologizing or saying thank you to
someone in advance of something that may
or may not even happen
in the near future let's see if we can
break ryotaro by getting him
to translate it what about the words for
the phrase
um it's um um
i don't know how do you say that in
english
uh nice to meet you i'm the person
who's playing a game with you and i'm
honored to
see you here or something like that but
it doesn't exist in english i'm a tour
on the flip side there's also words that
don't exist in japanese like
brother how do you say in japanese do
you have any brothers
the kyodai means siblings siblings yeah
so what's the word for brother
uh depending on which brother you're
talking about elder brother or younger
brother just my brother
there is no there is no such word for
just a brother how many words are there
for brother in japanese
i think like four or five i guess i mean
i can think of
to be honest as much as we've mocked
google translate today and
kind of exposed its shortcomings it is
surprisingly good
a lot of the time and at the very least
you're able to have a rough idea of
what's being said and that's what most
people want or need at the end of the
day
but google translate is able to do
something effortlessly that most new
learners of japanese really
struggle to do which is flip the
japanese sentence around and reconstruct
it
to make it sound like english in english
we have subject verb object
i went to the station in japanese they
have subject object verb
i station went and honestly it took me
months to wrap my head around this and
to kind of rewire
my thinking it might look easy on a
simple sentence but it gets more
complicated as that sentence gets bigger
for example
the person eating ice cream walked
towards the station now in japanese that
would be
ice cream
literally ice cream eating person
regarding
the station in the direction of walk
towards and that is why your brain will
crash if you try to think
literally between japanese and english
if you translate it in your head
and it's why thinking fluently in
japanese early on is pretty difficult to
do
but fortunately as the weeks and months
roll on and you keep studying you keep
practicing speaking
your brain does start to rewire itself
and it's one of the most stressful
and rewarding experiences you can have
but it's a tough thing to explain and
that
is why we've got ryotero when you when
you're translating between english and
japanese
yeah what's the thought process like
what there is no thought pluses at all
because
it's like a drawer when i speak japanese
my
japanese drawer is open and my english
drawer is closed
and when i speak english the japanese
draw is closed then english
draws opens but when i speak the
language i'm not
so confident of for instance when i
speak german
or when i speak italian um both
languages i'm not really confident
um chances are that two drawers open at
the same time and it gets all mixed up
so what have we learned today we've
learned that google translate isn't that
bad at translating as long as it's a
simple sentence and as long as the
subject is clear
and we've learned that ryotaro has an
obsession with drawers
if you have any more questions on
learning the japanese language do far
away
in the comments below and do check out
the playlist on the abroad japan channel
of all the
japanese learning content there's quite
a lot of useful stuff there for new
beginners and learners for more behind
the scenes content check out the abroad
japan patreon but for now guys as always
many thanks for watching
i'll see you next time as for me it's
pig bone day so i'm off to a scam level
store to get some chemical ramen
with my comrades they're all very glad
because they love pig bone day
i love friday action
one two [ __ ] there's still a shadow
okay all right ready
what three two one waving
one two three
four five six
seven eight nine