Anime?

[Taffeta]

It's basically impossible to change it in the Bleach context, it's written into the narrative and there's also a nice scene in the manga where it's illustrated as well.

Let's be straight about this, the character means, basically, 'all things' and the Japanese use it to mark temples on maps. It's not a bad character at all, although in written Japanese they mostly use a different one for 'ban' now, probably for Reasons of international stupidity.  (I mean, the thing it gets confused with was also a symbol stolen from another culture, and mangled horribly ><)

More importantly it's the shape of the guard on the main character's sword. That's in a lot of scenes. It's not something that can be changed, or should be changed. Changing it feeds those misunderstandings, it doesn't educate them.

I think the reaction I mention came from someone seeing a raw manga chapter for the first time though. The top shinigami technique in Bleach is 'bankai', written with that character. Cue ignorance hysteria.

...I feel like if you want to watch something, educate yourself about it a little bit before going into crazy mode? At least find out what it is, what it means and why it's there before jumping to conclusions, you know?

...And that basically concludes my problems with cultural ignorance vis a vis anime

[Ponyfan]

I believe Viz used the original names for everyone in Sailor Moon (have they got up to Stars? I'd be interested to see what they did for Tin Nyanko's name, if they'd keep that as-is or translated it to Tin Kitty or something).

Viz has dubbed Stars. I’m pretty sure they kept it as Tin Nyanko.

Ponyfan

[Pokeyonekenobie]

Funimation, RightStuf, and Sentai Filmworks are all having holiday sales right now.  Check them out (and be sure to compare prices because sometimes one of the sites will have a better price)! 

RightStuff is adding new things every week and I think they added Sailor Moon seasons this week.

[Zapper]

Speaking of cultural ignorance, I noticed certain anime have an obsession with German names that are old and unpopular like Wolfgang, Reiner/Rainer, Klaus and so on. They can't even pronounce them, so its doubly funny to me when some anime like Attack on Titan have songs that are sung in German by Japanese singers struggling and fabricating nonsense words. Just hire a German to write/perform a song for you if you so desperately need it. Yet German voice actors get pooped on by fans if they can't 100% pronounce a Japanese name. Like "Sasuke" should be "Sasske" but who cares? The Japanese voices totally butcher German names. Double standard

I also dislike their love for SS uniforms. Nobody can tell me they just like how they look and have no clue what they represented. They had their own fascist regime they could draw inspo from instead.

[banditpony]

"Why do they always set it in Japan? Wouldn't it be more awesome set in the States?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uU8YaBqr7E
awesome....

haha, j/k. For those who don't know, this is an OAV promotion for a 80s manga that was set in NYC. It's so interesting to me that they chose to do the whole thing in English...

[Taffeta]

I'm unashamedly one of the people who will happily poop on (lovely phrasing, Zapper!) voice artists for not TRYING to pronounce the Japanese name properly (obv. in English, I am not gonna go near the German). But a: I speak Japanese and b: I hate when the Japanese use Western names as well, so I'm not a hypocrite.

I don't know if you are familiar with Kyou Kara Maou! but a lot of the characters have "Germanic" names, which at times are so problematic people actually don't know what they really are or how they are meant to be written/spelt/pronounced or whatever. So you see many many different versions. So I just gave up on what the name was 'meant' to be and went with 'what the katakana said it was' and pretended like they were entirely invented new names for the series .

There are a lot of very annoying Western names in series like FMA, FMP and others as well.

Even in Daiya - where there are not many names, albeit there is Chris (Kurisu) and Carlos (alternated between Karulo and Karulosu), there are a ton of very interestingly pronounced baseball terms (English words) that have very odd Japanese usage or pronunciation. (Still trying to work out why a RBI is a 'Timely').

But yeah.

I am going to rip holes in people for not trying to pronounce the Japanese names correctly. Because in fairness there's a lot more mockery online on the internet about 'Engrish' and Japanese people being mocked for their pronunciation of English words (I may have to dig out the infamous lolling on the froor raffing clip to illustrate my point). It seems to me the opposite hypocrisy in the English fandom that it's fine to mock Japanese pronunciations but most people doing the mocking haven't yet mastered the difference between kawaii and kowai and still add syllables when they really don't need them.

I don't watch dubs so this is a bit academic, especially since I also don't watch Naruto...but I would think more of a voice artist who says Sasske, even if it's with an English accent, than one who says Sasookay because they're too lazy to find out how a name should be pronounced.

Honestly, though, I think this is latent trauma from 38 years correcting (or giving up) on getting people to correctly spell and pronounce my name. It means I take these things very seriously...it's just a matter of respect imo to at least TRY.

[Ponyfan]

I’ve never been able to figure out why in the Yona dub the characters always pronounce Jaeha as “Gee-ha” instead of “Jay-ha”  I can overlook Sinha as “Shin-ah” a bit more because I’ve seen it spelled both ways.  To be honest though “Gee-ha” didn’t bother me before I watched the ovas and found out it wasn’t the correct pronunciation.


Ponyfan

[banditpony]

I'm more forgiving when people mispronounce names wrong, with the exception of mild ignorance. Sometimes our brains don't work the way we want them to. 

I'm always impressed when someone takes the time to learn another language, even if they aren't perfect at it. Sure, there are some people who don't try. But some people try, and still mess up. Some people's brains just aren't wired correctly for it.

[ editing out my story because I didn't mean to offend ]

[Taffeta]

I've never been rude to someone for mispronouncing or misspelling my name either - both happens with frightening regularity - but I feel like there are times when the mispronouncing or spelling is rude in itself, for example if they're replying to an email in which it's written and they still spell it the 'standard' way, as though I don't know how to spell my own name. Yeah, this has been a long trauma for me. In primary school I got punished by a teacher for writing my full correct name on a schoolbook. I still don't know why...

...On topic, on Jaeha and Sinha - I think there's the added problem here that Yona is set in a fictionalised ancient Korean society, so you have Koreanish names in a Japanese medium being put into an English dub. Yuk.

I still follow my 'what the katakana says' rule for names like that, but I don't suppose they are correct in Korea. But...they are Japanese characters. So...

It's like in NeoAngelique, there's Bernard and Rene, but they are pronounced Berunaru and Lunay/Runay. So to me they're Berunaru and Runay if I'm talking about them...but spelt Bernard and Rene in English!

...Sinha has multiple spellings. Actually, in the katakana, Shina would be more correct, because Japanese doesn't have a 'si' sound. But in Korean they have si and ssi (which I think is more of a shi sound? My Korean is very base level xD) so it's not clear which is right in this context.

I got used to writing Sinha but I guess if I am saying it out loud it is probably most like how the Japanese seiyuu pronounce it in the dub. Again following the rule of the original work.

On another note, I don't like that the English versions of FUshigi Yuugi and Saiunkoku changed the Japanese names to Chinese ones, even though both are set in Chinese worlds and thus the Chinese names would make more sense in a global context. I also know the writer of Saiunkoku ASKED them to do this in English. And yet I still am stuck on the original text and so I can't adjust. Yuugi is worse as it's all the names - characters, places, everything - whereas I think in Saiunkoku it's only sometimes, such as making the main character's surname Hong not Kou to prevent a clash with another family called Kou.

[banditpony]

I would like to say that I was not accusing you of being rude. It's just the phrase you used "I am going to rip holes in people for not trying to pronounce the Japanese names correctly." sounds aggressive.

I just don't have that aggression in me, that's all. I don't rip holes into people for mispronouncing things if they are ignorant or not. I understand that speaking another language can be difficult.

I'm not a linguist, and I don't try to be. I'm also not a teacher. I know the way we hear, and the way we speak, is not only tied to where we grew up, but how our brain functions. I think sometimes people forget about how the brain functions is a part of hearing/speaking.

And as I said -- I had my name mispronounced, and written wrong my whole life.

Awhile back... my ex-boss's boss would say my name wrong. It was so awkward, because then other people who didn't know me yet also started saying my name wrong. But here's the thing, other people (including my boss) would say my name correctly to her. Somehow it just didn't sink in. Was it it rude? Maybe. But who am I to judge if her brain failed to remember my name (like how my grandma might mess up my name), or she just really didn't care to be mindful about it. I kinda think she didn't care about it but

ETA:
Our experiences are our own. What I say shouldn't take away how you feel about when someone says your name wrong. As I said, the way I take it now is that person isn't familiar with me, or has an reason they can't say it right... and I can't control that, so I try not to dwell on it. Your emotions, and how you feel, are valid to you. And I'm trying to convince you to feel a different way.

[Taffeta]

I would like to say that I was not accusing you of being rude. It's just the phrase you used "I am going to rip holes in people for not trying to pronounce the Japanese names correctly." sounds aggressive.

As you said, I'm entitled to my own point of view and you are entitled to yours. I just felt like you were moralising when you randomly started talking about being rude to inlaws. That has literally no connection to the bit of my post you just cited. It felt like you were making some assumptions in what I said, which were not there. And I really hate when people do that. I would never be rude to anyone for mispronouncing my name. I just used the example to illustrate that I find it annoying and so understand when other people do too.

I am a linguist, though. And I have taught.

On the rude/respect angle, one of my former flatmates at university was from Taiwan. She wouldn't let anyone use her Chinese name unless they could pronounce it properly, because it really offended her when people got it wrong. I was one of the few non-Chinese speaking people who could, because I asked her and I listened to her about how SHE wanted me to pronounce her name. My friend in India and my friend from Israel also taught me how to correctly say their names, although they got 'anglicised' a lot when they were here. When I was teaching, a lot of my students came from diverse backgrounds. I had to learn how to pronounce properly a lot of (very pretty!) Islamic names, some Korean, some Chinese, and so on. It's just been a rule of mine, always, to ask the person HOW and then try as hard as possible to adhere to HOW when I've learned it. You can't always get every name right, but people appreciate the effort. I think that's what you're talking about too, you just misunderstood what I meant and who I meant it towards.

It's not about expecting perfection, it's showing willing to reach out to a different cultural basis and show you have that awareness and willing to not impose your rules and expectations based on your own linguistic background.

And mispronunciation can cause massive offence. Like kawaii and kowai. Nuff said.

[Pokeyonekenobie]

Kawaii is cute things, right? Is it pronounced like Hawaii with a K? (ka-why-ee?)

What's kowai?  I don't think I've heard that one and I'd like to not inadvertently offend people...

[Taffeta]

Kawaii is cute things, right? Is it pronounced like Hawaii with a K? (ka-why-ee?)

What's kowai?  I don't think I've heard that one and I'd like to not inadvertently offend people...

Kowai means scary.
Lemme see if I can find sound bytes, but a lot of English speakers pronounce kawaii like kowai.
How I would pronounce Hawaii sounds closer to kowai than kawaii to me, but I am British so I don't know for sure the comparison.  In any case kawaii has a double final vowel and all syllables in Japanese are voiced, which isn't really intuitive to English speakers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPZjyp7PY_k

Japanese has a lot of words that can sound similar if anglicised and they convey different meanings.  Kawaii and Kowai are just one of the more obvious and awkward if misused xD.

This is a longer video that explains the distinction specifically by someone who is  a native speaker...you really only need to look at the first minute or so to hear both.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU2EOgt-mqs

[banditpony]

You can't always get every name right, but people appreciate the effort. I think that's what you're talking about too, you just misunderstood what I meant and who I meant it towards.

That's what I meant.

The fact that you can hear things and pronounce them as you hear it is a talent. It's like how some people are really good at music, and some people are really good at art. So the way the brain works also influences how someone interprets what they hear, and how they say it.. that's also what I've been trying to get say.

It's something I personally wish I was good at. I can barely make out my own dialect. lol.

I have no idea on how to tell if someone doesn't know because they aren't trying, or if it's something else. 

[Pokeyonekenobie]

How I would pronounce Hawaii sounds closer to kowai than kawaii to me, but I am British so I don't know for sure the comparison. 

I can hear a difference between the two in that video.  And Kawaii sounds like the way I say Hawaii, so that will make it easier for me to remember how to pronounce it.