Hacker News Reader

Comment by igonvalue | Hacker News Reader

> In addition to serving as the vice chairman of Japan's Olympic Committee, Tanaka is also the chief director of Japan's largest college, Japan University, and the president of the International Sumo Association

I was curious to learn more about Japan University, but it seems that there doesn't actually exist an institution that goes by that name! The Wikipedia page for "Japan University" does not exist, and a Google search for "Japan University" in quotes doesn't turn up any results for a Japan University on the first page.

It seems that he's actually referring to Nihon University; Nihon means "Japan" in Japanese.

View on HN

The word "Japan" doesn't exist in Japanese, so I'm not sure what your point is...

The point is that "Japan University" is a mistranslation. The official English name of 日本大学 is Nihon University. A fairly reasonable mistranslation since 日本 is usually rendered as "Japan", e.g. 日本航空 is Japan Airlines.

> The point is that "Japan University" is a mistranslation. The official English name of 日本大学 is Nihon University.

Its an accurate translation; though the existence of an official English name would generally eliminate the need for any translation, as using the existing official English name of the institution would generally be considered more proper than translating at all.

Only if you assume that English should be the default language when it comes to higher education institutions' names.

And we all know Japan has a bit of a reputation for xenophobia. I wouldn't expect this to change any time soon.

> Only if you view assume that English should be the default language

If an entity defines an official English language name, then when operating in English, it would be more proper to refer to it using the official name in that language than to translate a name from another language to English, no?

You do have a point. One thing I am unsure of is whether we can know who referred to it by the incorrect translation first -- the university, or the public.

His point is that it's weird to have translated part of an organisation name where the organisation calls it something else. A bit like someone referring to "All Japan Airways", instead of "All Nippon Airways".

Well it is also weird that we can just call Japan Japan or Germany Germany all the time as those aren't those countries' names, yet we still do it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9VMY8X9rU8

This is different, as Nihon University and All Nippon Airways already have official English names.

Meh, to someone who actually speaks Japanese it's not so clear cut. The word for Japan is 日本, pronounced "nihon" or "nippon" but never "japan". But every Japanese person would know that for whatever reason "japan" is the word English speakers use to refer to their country. So to someone who speaks Japanese, "Japan University" and "Nihon University" are the same thing. They are both obviously referring to 日本大学. "Japan University" is only technically a wrong transliteration if you insist on an editorial policy of using an organization's official English name. However to someone who doesn't know Japanese, "Japan University" is a better translation because it reflects the actual connotation of 日本大学 a native speaker would recognize -- "University of Japan."

I speak enough Japanese to know this, but I still disagree. These organizations have an official and well known English name, and these English articles were written for English speakers, not Japanese speakers. It would be like calling China "Middle/Central Nation/Country", or just calling it Zhongguo.

No, it'd be like calling Zhongguo University "China University." Can you see how that is qualitatively different?

Is Zhongguo University the official English name of that university? If so, then no. The only actual university I can find with that sort of name is Zhonghuarenmin university, which has the official English name of Renmin University of China.

That is called an "exonym". Many languages have them.

In Slovakia, the St. Lawrence River forming part of the border between Canada and the USA is called "Rieka svätého Vavrinca":

http://sk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rieka_sv%C3%A4t%C3%A9ho_Vavrinc...

Well that's a direct translation of the name and using the Czech/Slovak version of Lawrence/Laurence/Laurent.

Rieka = river

Svaty = saint

Vavřinec = lawrence

A bit of fiddling around to connect the words together correctly (slavic languages are odd in this regard) and you get "Rieka svätého Vavrinca"

note: I speak awful Czech and even worse Slovak :)

Oh it exists. For instance the NHK television channel announces itself as "Terebi Japan".

Usually, in print, it looks like ジャパン rather than "Japan", though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com