Another Dubious Milestone

[setsuled]

Yesterday came the news that Japan has fallen even further from its already low ranking in English proficiency. It ranks 92 out of a list of 112 countries where English is not the primary language. Notably, it ranks far below South Korea, which is at number 50. Since the difficulty for Korean speakers in learning English is comparable for a

Comments

[matrixmann]

Already think about that they generally convert a popular English loanword into their writing system. - of course with word endings adapted to their language (they don't leave it the original way).
I don't know, do I try to give an example...?

Errr... I'll take a few things from the Suicoden game series because I know them.

Like, in the first game, the decisive rune that people are after - in English it's called "Soul-Eater".
In the Japanese version of the game, they write it like this: ソウルイーター .
(Spoken this should be: "Sooru-iitaa".)

One can see, even in the orginal wording they must have had an English term in mind, but it's executed as the Japanese language would require/form it as a loanword.

I don't knw if it's a general thing, but I find, in this game series, all types of loan words or names of character are written in Katakana, not in the traditional Japanese Hiragana alphabet.
Well, that's probably because a lot of characters have names of non-japanese origin. So it's easier to write them all like this...

Other specifics I realized in between: Japanese knows no L-Sound. In loanwords, it gets converted to syllables starting with "r". (In gmaes, this makes it a bit hard for the translator to recognize in names, if they originally even inted an "r" in the charakters name or it if's just converted.<9
SAme with "V"-sounds.Those are all converted to "B"-syllables. For example, the character "Valeria" in Suikoden 2 is written as "Bareria" in the original Japanese version.(Looking like this: バレリア)
- In this case, it's easy to recognize the intended name, but what about words where it's not that obvious?

The game series even has such a translation trouble where you can't really convert the Japnese original naming into proper English.
This is in game Nr. 4, where the main character is named "Razro" in the original Japanese version (looking like this: ラズロ), but fact "Lazlo" is actually an existing name, originating in Europe.
Also, it's the better take for all who don't speak Japanese asn play the US-Version. (Eruope didn't receive a release of the game here.)

The charater is depictured as an orphan, or at least he doesn't know himself for sure who his parents are, and he was named like this because he was found out in the sea near a town named "Razril" in the English version. ("Razuriru" spoken in Japanese: ラズリル)

- Well, I think it's recognizable what the dilemma is with it.
The charakter was named with a referrence to the place he was found near.
In Japanese, this plays out - in English, it doesn't.
Because both names can't be transcribed to the alphabet that a lot of worldwide languages use with the same sound at the beginning of the name. "Razril" sounds like it's what the intention was, and it's no problem for those who speak no Japanese (lettng it stat with an "L" as "Lazril" would sound strange), but "Lazlo" is the transcription in which the name of the main character really makes sense and doesn't sound strange.

The choice of both names appears to have been taken a bit poorly originally. (Game Nr. 4 also isn't the best of the series, just saying.)