Bus stop?
Originally uploaded by nofrills.
The wall in front of まんぷく食堂, with a bus stop that is not for real.
Right under Chaplin's The Great Dictator, there is a "Defend Article No 9 of Japan's constitution" poster.
Showing posts with label 有楽町. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 有楽町. Show all posts
2 April 2007
Bus stop?
Bus stop?
Originally uploaded by nofrills.
The wall with posters
The wall with posters
Originally uploaded by nofrills.
This is the wall, seen from まんぷく食堂, where you can dine and drink.
The upper half of the wall is like mini-museum for classic films, and the lower half is an ordinary advertising space for films, theatres and music.
An old comedy film poster
An old comedy film poster
Originally uploaded by nofrills.
On the same wall as this poster.
The film is one of the 社長シリーズ (1956-70), a classic comedy series.
Yet another cinema poster
Yet another cinema poster
Originally uploaded by nofrills.
On the same wall as this poster.
The film is 極道罷り通る (1972), and I've never seen this film either. The leading actor is 若山富三郎 (1929-1992), whose younger brother was also a famous actor, 勝新太郎. The youngest man on the left is 菅原文太.
Another old cinema poster
Another old cinema poster
Originally uploaded by nofrills.
On the same wall as this poster. I wish I could have got a sharper image, but excuse me because it was too dark, and I had had some booze.
The film is 実録安藤組 (1973), a yakuza (gang) film based on a real story. I've never seen this film, but my father and uncles did in the 1970s.
An old cinema poster
An old cinema poster
Originally uploaded by nofrills.
An old cinema poster found at Yurakucho. This is 菅原文太 (Sugawara Bunta), a famous actor. The Wikipedia has an English entry as well as Japanese. The film is one of the Yakuza films he starred around 1970.
The wall is filled with these old posters, intended to be a mini-museum, and I have some more pictures, which will be added here in the next few days.
If you are interested, the mini-museum wall is here, in front of まんぷく食堂. The 食堂 itself feels like a museum, but it was too crowded when we went, so we took our seats outside of the 食堂, looking at the posters.
An old political poster - when it was marginal
An old political poster - when it was marginal
Originally uploaded by nofrills.
An old political poster found on the same wall as the cinema posters, but this does not belong to the "mini museum" project, I believe. Until 1990 or so, Yurakucho area was a sort of "Speakers Corner" for nationalists, and that is why this area has so many posters like this.
I particularly find this poster weird. The message is "Ammend the Article No 9 of the Constitution, for Japan to be a real independent state." You know now it's on the agenda of our government (Shinzo Abe's government), very officially. At the national diet, debates are going on - I don't know if we really can call it "debates". Something that used to be very marginal is now very official.
* I am in no way related to them or their political agenda. This is only photography.
24 March 2007
Freedom of speech, frozen in time
Freedom of speech, frozen in time
Originally uploaded by nofrills.
Old political posters found in Hibiya/Yurakucho area, Tokyo.
* This is only photography. I am in no way related to them. I never support their political views.
Freedom of speech, frozen in time
Freedom of speech, frozen in time
Originally uploaded by nofrills.
Old political posters found in Hibiya/Yurakucho area, Tokyo.
* This is only photography. I am in no way related to them. I never support their political views.
Freedom of speech, frozen in time
Freedom of speech, frozen in time
Originally uploaded by nofrills.
Old political posters found in Hibiya/Yurakucho area, Tokyo.
* This is only photography. I am in no way related to them. I never support their political views.
Freedom of speech, frozen in time
Freedom of speech, frozen in time
Originally uploaded by nofrills.
Old political posters found in Hibiya/Yurakucho area, Tokyo.
* This is only photography. I am in no way related to them. I never support their political views.
Where's his/her English teacher?!
Where's his/her English teacher?!
Originally uploaded by nofrills.
言語としては限りなく意味不明に近いメッセージであるばかりでなく、「３単現のs」を堂々と忘れておりますがな・・・有楽町のマリオンの斜向かいのような場所にあるビルにて発見。I never get upset with this sort of grammar mistake, but in fact this is found in Ginza/Yurakucho area ... where posh people want to buy their fashionable things, and where there are so many overseas visitors. And this poster was everywhere in the building (shopping mall) just opposite of Marion Tower. If only they had paid 1,000 yen or so to have this slogan checked! I know they seldom hire a translator or an English teacher for this kind of "small" jobs, but please do somthing to stop this sort of 恥ずかしい mistakes, especially in a place like Ginza/Yurakucho area!!!
... And I get a comment by a flickr user, who tried to translate my Japanese text with Google translator. Well, in fact, the Google translator is the last choice for the Japanese language. My reply to the comment is:
Well, in fact, google translator for English and Japanese is still in Beta itself. As far as I know, there are several other better machine translation engines out there. I only try out the English to Japanese translations (not J to E), but I wrote in September 2006, and in February 2006 on my blog (in Japanese).
Whether they are cr@p or not ... it depends on what you want to translate. You can't really "translate" the spoken Japanese language with translation engines. Imagine when you write "your kind" instead of "you are kind" and put it on the machine translator. Even if it's in French, Spanish or German (Indo-European languages), the result would be funny.
Basically, what makes machine translations difficult is that English and Japanese have almost nothing in common linguistically. Moreover, my description above in Japanese is written in "spoken" style - slangish, and has a lot in our cultural/sub-cultural context (the phrases like 限りなく, and 意味不明). I know there are differences between "written" and "spoken" English, but in the Japanese language, the difference is far bigger. I tried to explain about this here (in English), only a little bit.
And they don't seem to know our abbreviations. For instance, "３単現" is short for "３人称単数現在", which is "third person, singular, present". The google returned this as "s of 3 single realities", as a result of a mistranslation of "現" - the machine took it for "現実 reality", not "現在 present". (Basically "現" means "real", and the theory is that something present is something real.)
This sort of confusion is often with English speakers who are learning Japanese, or who know a bit of Japanese. The other day I heard Al Gore speaking in a TV program. He was saying "In Japanese, 危機 means not only crisis but also chance because the kanji 機 means chance." Interesting, but I'm afraid it's not linguistically correct. In this case, 機 means "occasion", not "chance". If it's 機会, the same kanji means "chance". And the same 機 is used in the word 機械, which means "machine" or "machinery".
By the way, the phrase here in the picture, "It enjoy spring", seems to be from machine translation of "春を楽しむ", but if it had been so, well, a machine wouldn't have dropped the "s" in "it enjoys" (third person singular). And every Japanese learns English in the compulsory edication, and the "s" is one of the first things we learn. So it's a shame that nobody corrected this error here, even though there must have been at least three people concerned (the copy-writer and/or the designer, someone at the printing factory, and the manager at this building).
Anyway I performed some machine translations of "春を楽しむ", just for fun. (Note that I omitted the subject in the original sentence. This is our normal way of talking/writing.)
- Google result: The spring is enjoyed.
- Altavista result: The spring is enjoyed.
- Yahoo Japan result: I enjoy spring.
- infoseek result: I enjoy spring.
- excite result: It enjoys springing.
Human translation (by me):
- Enjoy spring!
- Enjoy springtime!
- Spring has come!
- Everybody loves spring!
- Why not love spring!
- It's spring so spend yer f***ing money! :-P
If I were the copywriter, I would have used "Everybody loves spring!" but it would have been rejected by the management because it is "too difficult ('love' is sort of polysemic)", and I would have gone insane. In most cases, English (or Engrish) phrases on the street are not for the "message". They just want something that plays an "eye-catching role". The word "enjoy" is very catchy, and being cachy is everything, with nothing else wanted.
About the "difficulty" of J to E translation in general, read this thread and below in flickr OiJ group.
23 March 2007
またホッピー
またホッピー
Originally uploaded by nofrills.
Yurakucho/Hibiya area, called ガード下, Tokyo, Japan.
I believe this もつやき bar is where chillhiro took this beautiful picture of Tokyo life.
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