Comment by jpatokal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jpatokal | Hacker News Reader

Sigh. Another facile "ooh, different language/cultures are so very different" story, coating a nugget of truth in a thick layer of bullshit. Having lived in the US, Japan and Singapore, rest assured that in any of these, a washing machine (or car or mobile phone or...) that falls apart in a week is considered low quality, regardless of how new (Korea), shiny (Japan) or expensive (China) it looks. Sure, each of those three cultures has those preferences for appearance and you'll need to take that into account for design and marketing, but material quality (Jp. 品質 hinshitsu, Ch. 品质 pinzhi) still means exactly that everywhere: how well it's built to spec, how long it lasts, etc.

Also, I am completely not buying that story about somebody refusing a dented shipping container just because it's dented. Think about it for a second: if somebody offered you a shipping container full of goods, and said giant metal box looked like it had fallen from a crane, would you buy it? Hell no, at least not without inspecting every piece inside for damage and a hefty discount for my troubles.

quality can translate into two slightly different words in Chinese 品质 (grade) vs 质量 (quality)

I think the author only refers to the former, but the latter means exactly the same as American English.

> "“This is why you can’t just take your brilliant American business idea and go make it happen in China, India, or Indonesia." I don't see much of difference in definition of quality when it is described as in "Japan" and "U.S" . I don't get this , what is difference between "it is perfect" and "it's well built and it will last".

I am not buying this piece either and because I am born and brought up in India , I know better how quality is defined in India and it's different from what author is trying to justify.

This thirdhand piece of information comes courtesy of something my mother read in the autobiography (?) of a Japanese woman who came to the US some time in the past.

Supposedly, in the course of cleaning her new home, she pulled the piano away from the wall and was shocked to find that that part of it meant to sit flush with the wall looked completely different (different wood, say) than the rest of it. To her, the piano should be viewable from any angle and any direction, no matter how it was intended to be installed in the home. To the American manufacturer, the appearance of the piano was of course highly significant -- but only the appearance of the parts you could see.

That's probably why Steve Jobs cared so much about how the inside of computers looked. He was obsessed with it. He probably read some Japanese book when he was in his youth and his culture became radically different in some way. Much more Japanese.

You're demonstrating the very point the author is trying to make, which is this: don't assume you know what a word means in a particular, foreign, culture - because they have different meanings depending on where you live.

And you've just demonstrated that.

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