• Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    29 days ago

    Afaik they don’t know any sarcasm and swearing (swearing in comparison to english)? I believe to have read somewhere on Lemmy how a english/japanese bi-lingual mentioned to their japanese friends how much nuances and jokes were left out to make Deadpool 3 work for the audience.

    • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
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      29 days ago

      Japanese uses sarcasm (“needling” through words) and irony (a statement conveying its opposite) heavily, perhaps even more than English does. The problem is that how you convey sarcasm and irony changes from language to language, and Japanese relies heavily on context to do so.

      I’ll give you an example: in English you can show deference towards a person using Mr., Ms., or similar. If I were to do this here, and wrote something like “Mr. Appoxo”, it would sound weird (as there’s no reason to show deference), but not insulting.

      In Japanese however this would be interpreted as ironic and belittling towards you. Specially if I used a “stronger” honorific like -様 / -sama.