On translating place names

Posted: November 21st, 2008 | Author: amake | Filed under: Diatribes, Japan, Translation | Tags: LinkedIn | 9 Comments »

This post has a lot more to do with my previous job as CIR in Ikata than it does with my current job translating video games. Nevertheless, I’ve thought a lot about this subject, and some people may find it useful, so here we go.

One of my pet peeves in Japan is the way Japanese place names (cities, towns, mountains, rivers, etc.) are written in English, particularly on street signs and maps. There are really two issues to deal with here: Municipality names, and tautological names. Let’s start with municipality names.

First, some background: In Japan, there are three official designations for municipalities, in ascending order of size:

• Village (村 mura)
• Town (町 machi or chō)
• City (市 shi)

My pet peeve is when “City” (or “Town” or “Village”) is appended to the city name. For instance, a street sign for 横浜市 (Yokohama-shi) will say “Yokohama City.” This is bad. Unfortunately even Google has recently started down this path:

Why is it bad? Well, the actual place name (地名 chimei) is “Yokohama.” Yes, the 市 means city, but in English we don’t append “city” to a place name unless “city” is actually part of the name, like Kansas City. For almost all Japanese cities, “city” is not, and should not, be part of the name. The only exception is cities which share the name of their surrounding prefecture, such as Shizuoka, Aomori, Chiba, etc. Like Kansas City, these should be “Shizuoka City,” etc., for disambiguation purposes.

And the same goes double for towns. I worked in “Ikata Town” for two years, and the phrase made me cringe every time. To the best of my knowledge, “town” is never a suffix in the English language, outside of a few special examples like “Chinatown.” Village doesn’t sound quite so bad, but it should also not be appended.

To reiterate, “city,” “town,” and “village” should not be appended to municipality names. If you’re not already convinced, here are some supporting points:

• The distinction between the Japanese legal definitions of “city,” “town,” and “village” is irrelevant to English speakers. Anyone who is aware of the difference can already read the Japanese.
• It just sounds bad. For instance, you never see “Minneapolis City,” even though the Japanese rendering (ミネアポリス市) has the same 市 suffix. A vote for “Yokohama City” is a vote for “Minneapolis City.”

Of course sometimes you need to refer to a municipal government by name, or need to distinguish between a town and a city of the same name. In that case, use “City of” as a prefix, as in City of Kansas City, City of Minneapolis, etc. “Town of” and “Village of,” as prefixes, also work nicely.

Second issue: Tautological names. A tautological place name is a name in which two or more parts of the name are synonymous. I don’t like them because they’re redundant. For example, I remember going to a waterfall in Shizuoka with an English name written as “Shiraitonotaki Falls.” The Japanese name is 白糸の滝 (Shiraito no taki), where taki means “waterfall.” So “Shiraitonotaki Falls” really means “Shiraito Falls Falls.” This is bad.

In general, I remove suffixes (eliminate redundancies) when translating names like these. However, sometimes the suffixes form an integral part of the name, such as the Mount Gassan (月山 Gassan) or Kamegaike Pond (亀ヶ池 Kamegaike). Some names become too short* when the suffix is removed, such as the Arakawa River (荒川 Arakawa). For these, I leave the name tautological in deference to aesthetic appeal.

*”Too short” is ill defined. As a barometer, I look at how many characters remain in the name after removing the suffix. If only one character remains, it’s too short.

Let’s switch gears and think about why bad translations, like “Yokohama City,” are made. I suspect it goes like this:

1. Japanese person with little or no English ability is nevertheless tasked with coming up with the English for something or other. He or she thinks, “市 = city, so ‘Yokohama City’ must be right!” No native English speaker is consulted.
2. The above creates a precedent, and the phrase “Yokohama City” spreads like a plague onto all sorts of pamphlets, signs, materials, etc., often as part of a logo or easily-overlooked fine print. Since the pamphlet, sign, etc. is written mostly in Japanese, no native English speaker is consulted.
3. By the time a native English speaker (perhaps a JET) arrives on the scene, a huge amount of precedent already exists in the form of Japanese materials, or perhaps English materials of overall shoddy quality. He or she changes “Yokohama City” to “City of Yokohama” or just “Yokohama,” and gets a complaint from someone higher up the food chain. “Well, I guess ‘Yokohama City’ isn’t so bad,” he or she sighs, taking solace in the fact that at least the pamphlet is now comprehensible.

I urge JETs and anyone else in a position to determine official English names: Please consider my arguments above and create an English manual of style for your office if you don’t already have one. Take a look at the one I made for Ikata if you’d like some ideas. Even if you disagree with me, a manual of style is essential for keeping translations consistent (even if they’re consistently bad).

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