Problems with the new ESTA

The US has just deployed a new weapon against those evil foreigners who hate our freedoms so much. Now we’re going to keep all you terrorists out by making it too annoying to enter the country.

Enter the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA). In a nutshell, almost all non-US citizens from visa-waiver countries (including Japan) have to register online before entering the US. You can read all about the details elsewhere.

I took a look at the Japanese version of the website and noticed some very large holes in the implementation.

• The translation is confusing and broken in parts. There were sentences that just cut off halfway through.

• Due to the details of Japanese text input on computers, you have to specifically tell users to enter single-byte characters in text forms, and actually enforce the this requirement with proper input validation because many people don’t really understand the difference. This is unless, of course, you’re prepared to handle double-byte alphanumerics on the back end. (Example: ABC123 is single-byte, ＡＢＣ１２３ is double-byte. More info on Wikipedia.)

  Anyway, the form tells you to enter your info in the Latin alphabet (rōmaji), but nowhere does it specify single-byte. I wanted to test the form to see how well it coped with double-byte characters, but I didn’t want the DHS knocking down my door in the middle of the night.

• The website is not designed with mobile access in mind (or so I assume; I couldn’t even connect to the site on my AU phone). Many, many Japanese people don’t have PCs, and do all their internet activities on their mobile phones with very limited browsers.
• The website does no geo sniffing and ignores preferred language settings, defaulting to English and throwing up a giant legalese JavaScript popup. Talk about unfriendly.

Ultimately I suspect that people will end up leaving all this bullshit to travel agents, and very few people will personally deal with the system on any level (unless that’s not allowed for some reason).

Even if they fix the above problems, I think that this is yet another highly unnecessary act of security theater that will accomplish nothing but to annoy people, waste tax dollars, and serve as another potential vector for personal information to be lost or stolen.

USA! USA! USA!

Romanizing Japanese addresses

There was a follup question to my previous post about Japanese place names. How do I write Japanese addresses in English?

The answer: I use full rōmaji, not dropping suffixes, and not translating anything. For example:

〒231-0017
神奈川県横浜市中区港町1丁目1番地

This would be

1-1 Minato-chō, Naka-ku
Yokohama-shi, Kanagawa-ken
231-0017

Some points on this:

• Translating certain elements into English, like “Kanagawa Prefecture,” “Naka Ward,” etc. is far too much trouble. “Naka Ward, City of Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture” has a lot of unnecessary verbiage.
  • Plus, this is Japan. Addresses should be written in Japanese (rōmaji is one of the officially recognized writing systems for Japanese, so no, I’m not advocating that the whole world learns kanji). If English addresses are allowed, then why not French, German, and so on? How many languages should a Japanese postal worker need to do his or her job?
• Some people remove suffixes like “-chō,” “-shi,” and “-ken,” but this creates consistency problems. There are lots of names that require the suffixes for disambiguation—the usual suspects (cities and prefectures that share names) and others (I live in Kanagawa-ku in Yokohama-shi in Kanagawa-ken). And sometimes the suffix is part of the name (like any 〜本町 -honchō), so you either have to neuter the place name or leave only some suffixes on.

So that’s the rationale. Now if you’d like some quick and to-the-point rules for romanizing addresses, here are the guidelines I wrote for Wikipedia:

Japanese addresses should be written “Western style”, where the order of specificity is ”specific” to ”general”, e.g.

{building number} {neighborhood}, {ku, city / town, district}, {prefecture}

For example, 愛媛県西宇和郡伊方町湊浦123番地 should be

123 Minatoura, Ikata-chō, Nishiuwa-gun, Ehime-ken

This is the opposite of Japanese style. Other things to note:

• Include, but do not translate, suffixes such as -ken, -shi, -chō, -gun.
• Drop 丁目 (chōme), 番地 (banchi), etc. and include only the numbers, hyphenated. E.g. 1丁目2番地3号室 should be ”1-2-3”.
  • Note that when the neighborhood’s name contains a number, the neighborhood should not be reduced to that number. E.g. 三番町 should be ”Sanban-chō”, not ”3”.
• Include 甲 (kō), 乙 (otsu), 耕地 (kōchi), etc. after the ”banchi” numbers.
• 大字 (ōaza) and 字 (aza) should be treated as prefixes to the ”neighborhood” part of the address.
• Linebreaks are not required between any address elements.

With all that said, however, I should note that the closest to an official recommendation would be whatever Japan Post uses. According to their English website, they seem to use the same system except they drop the suffixes on prefecture names.

Either way, I’m sure your mail will arrive.

On translating place names

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: Update: At some point Google’s maps were updated to drop “city” suffixes.

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).

A lukewarm reception

I did some freelance translation into Japanese, the exact thing a native English speaker usually shouldn’t do, for a friend of mine’s video game. Following some linkbacks to my blog, I found the one and only piece of feedback I’ve received from that job so far:

硫黄島が舞台ということで、相手になるのは日本軍。もちろん敵は日本語を話す。日本語音声の翻訳は[amake.us]なるプロジェクトが努め、イシカワタクミさんという方が声を担当しているお陰か、話している言葉はまとも。イシカワタクミさんの声に覇気があまり感じられないが、今までの洋ゲーに登場した日本語に比べればマシな方だろう。
「左舷に米軍を発見！」
「やっつけろぉー！」
「助けてくれぇー！」
「やつらぶっ倒した！」

English (my translation):

Since it’s set on Iwojima, you’re pit against the Japanese Army. Of course they speak Japanese. Perhaps since the Japanese voice translation was done by the [amake.us] project and a guy named Takumi Ishikawa provided the voice acting, the vocals are passable. Ishikawa’s voice doesn’t have much impact, but it’s decent Japanese when compared to other Western games up to this point.
“Americans on the port side!”
“Get ‘em!”
“Help!”
“We got ‘em good!”

That’s good, I suppose. Except none of the lines I translated involved “port” or the exact phrasing of “Get ‘em!” that the blogger uses. I’m the only one listed in the credits as a translator, so either the voice actor did some on-the-fly rewriting, or the blogger is misremembering what he heard in the game, or there’s a ghost-translator involved.

Spooky.

Overall the blogger pans the game for being way too short and boring, though the visual effects were nice.

Mii Contest Channel

The Mii Contest Channel arrived today for Japanese Wii owners. I thought it sounded stupid at first, but it’s actually kind of fun.

Mii-making contests are offered, such as the current “make Mario without a hat on” contest. Or, you can also submit your Miis to the channel for general purposes: People tag interesting Miis, and you can view the most popular ones for your region or for the world, in a grid or marching by. There are some really clever ones, like Darth Vader and the Terminator robot; you wouldn’t think such Miis would be possible, but there are some smart people out there who are good at twisting the limited Mii tools into recognizable caricatures.

I will award 80 million awesome points to whoever can guess what these Miis are:

Mystery Miis

(No looking at the filename!)

Captured…

…on film! Some random person caught me and M in a shot of the local train station. Weird.

M and I at JR Yawatahama

In other news, the copious photos of mountains and coastline that I’ve taken here in Ikata are finally up in Google Earth. Check it out. Most of the photos in the area are mine

Some sort of demographic

Owning a Wii and doing the Everybody Votes Channel in Japan is like peering into the lives and brains of Japanese people.

Did you know that only 29.5% of Japanese people wear wristwatches most of the time?

Err, make that 29.5% of Japanese people who own Wiis.

Oops, no, make that 29.5% of Japanese people who have Wiis and hooked them up to the internet.

Hmm, actually that’s 29.5% of Japanese people who have Wiis, hooked them up to the internet, and bothered to vote in the “Do you usually wear a wristwatch?” poll.

Well, I suppose it would be 29.5% of people in Japan who have Wiis, hooked them up to the internet, and bothered to vote in the “Do you usually wear a wristwatch?” poll.

Ok, let’s just say it’s 29.5% of respondents. I’m sure there’s a meaningful statistic in there somewhere.

Other recent poll results:

• 58.0% of respondents didn’t know that the “ABC song” and “Twinkle, twinkle little star” have the same melody.
• 49.% of respondents didn’t ride a bicycle even once during the last week.
• 61.3% of respondents (almost entirely in the Tokyo area) are currently living in the prefecture in which they were born.
• 77.8% of respondents have gone fishing.
• 54.5% of respondents think they had a dream last night.

What a time to be alive.

Color mii impressed

I’ve been making the most of my youth, living in the moment, sipping of the heady dew that is existence… playing video games.

I picked up Zelda: Twilight Princess when I got my Wii in April and promptly logged 45 hours or so, but never bothered finishing it. Until two weeks ago, that is, when I decided to lay down an ultimatum: No more buying video games until I finish the ones I have.

So I returned to Zelda, in a complete daze as to what the hell I was doing. Where is this dungeon? Who am I killing now? I need to find the Legendary Sword of what? How do I attack again? Oh right you shake this… oh wait no, that makes you fall of the edge into a bottomless pit.

In fits and starts I picked up where I left off, only to discover… horror of horrors! Graphical glitches left and right ruining my immersive game experience. There were white flecks appearing randomly all over the screen, technically known as “polygon tearing”. Apparently my Wii was a lemon, as this is apparently indicative of a bad video card.

So off it went for repair, with shipping paid by Nintendo. I sent it on Monday, got a confirmation email on Wednesday, and had a brand-new Wii back on Friday. Excellent customer service, Nintendo Japan! The only annoying part was having to re-download one-by-one (for free, of course) all of the Virtual Console games I had purchased.

Wii remote condom

On top of that, Nintendo recently began offering free Wii remote condoms because apparently some idiots can’t manage to keep their remotes from flying into the TV or their siblings’ brains while playing. I got mine yesterday, and while I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to buy these things, I suppose they’re nice to have. Remember kids: Always use protection.

Edit: Whoa, whoa! Hold the presses! I’ve just discovered that Nintendo is part of the vast, liberal, pro-gay, anti-God, evil pinko tree-hugger conspiracy that is threatening to molest your children and damn your mortal soul to an eternity of torment. No more video games for me, ever.

The Proposal

As promised, here’s a translation of one of my blog posts from mixi. It’s a true story, and is honestly the best thing that happened to me over the last year, which is profoundly sad.

This isn’t an exaggeration or a lie. Last Friday I was actually proposed to.

Since last year I’ve making the rounds at the local elementary schools teaching English. Recently I added daycare centers to the mix, and on Friday I had my first visit to the Ikata Daycare Center.

There I met a cute little four year old girl. In the middle of the playground, countless children swarmed about me. One of them grabbed my hand and said “Mr. A, let’s get married!” with a big smile on her face.

I was shocked speechless for a second, then asked, “How old are you?”

“I’m four!”

“Ok, we can get married in 20 years.”

She thought about this for a moment. “I’ll be five soon. When I turn five can we get married?”

“Haha, ok, let’s do that.”

One of the older boys was nearby listening in. Upon hearing this he scrunched up his face in shock and disgust. “What!? But, then, you’d have to kiss her!”

Right, like that’s the biggest problem with this situation…

I see her in the morning as I walk to work sometimes. She waves frantically with a big smile, and I can hear her scream my name from inside the car as they go by.

That’s me: A hit with the ladies, age 2 to 9.

I am alive

The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. I am alive and with all my limbs; no one I know was hurt in the bridge incident.

What little blogging I have been doing has been on mixi, in Japanese, so I figured no one who reads this one would care. Since I’m back home on vacation now, I may translate over some of the more interesting posts.

“What’s going on”, the short version:

• One year of JET down, one more to go. I’m not so enthusiastic this time around.
• I didn’t win any of the translation contests I entered.
• WarioWare: Smooth Moves is the shit.
• The best recent Japanese novel that probably won’t get translated to English is War with the Next Town Over (となり町戦争 Tonarimachi sensō). It was also made into a movie that probably won’t be released outside of Japan.
• I’ve run over 250 miles since I started using the Nike + iPod thingy last summer. My fastest 1-mile is 6’41″.
• Indulging my fetish for standardized testing, I took and passed Level 2 of the Japanese Kanji Aptitude Test (漢検2級 Kanken 2-kyū). That’s the highest level that most Japanese people ever bother getting. Now I have yet another way to alienate the locals.