Japanese netizens reaction to nude photo of Serena Williams

I have a feeling the people doing the translations aren’t entirely fluent up to native levels in either English or Japanese and/or aren’t thoroughly versed in Internet slang.

“Gross” is likely a mistranslation for “grotesque” shortened to the romanized form of “guro”. Though it’s gotten MUCH tamer in the past few years, the earlier days of 2ch used to be full of broswer crasher/virus/guro links like the mean-spirited cousin of the infamous Rickroll.

Hi, I’m one of the developers for myGengo so I thought I’d chime in – naturally since ‘steve’ makes a disappointing assessment of a service we work hard to make translation accessible to those who would otherwise not have considered using it

I would simply like to point out that many factors go into the translation process, and it’s unfortunate that the only part being evaluated is the output. It would behoove critics of myGengo to consider other factors, including the content of what goes in (is the translator given enough context?), the price, the efficiency, etc.

Currently the only other options for high-volume, cheap translation are machine translation – which produces something like this, straight from Google:

Kireijan have to shine black
Buffy
But not like blacks can not compete with other・・・

or resource-intensive professional translation, for which most people don’t have a budget for.

I can understand we have still have a lot to work on, so I appreciate the sentiment. But I think many people are not seeing the entire picture – as hinted at by ‘k’: one doesn’t only use a translation service because they themselves are not able to do translation.

Well thank you for proving my point.
If you like, please read my comment to good gods 2009-10-12 17:23:50

George,

Yes, 2ch (or 2-channel) is used by various types of people, not actually limited to resident in Japan though. I’m not a 2ch expert, but it’s said that 2ch attracts very broad users and audiences. From academics and doctoral course students to jobless middle-aged men and 15-year-old boys. Housewives, musicians, IT engineer, rightists, leftists, and various other people. It might be sometimes in a very tense atmosphere with full of jeers and racial slurs somewhere on 2ch, but in the other board it can be well relaxed at the same time. It might have higher overall average standards of conduct, but there is surely large dispersion.

James picked up just a few comments from a section of 2ch, 2ch news flash board for sports, music, and showbiz. It is expected that there are many tabloid news addicts and they might be contesting on making a cynical and suggestive statement or just enjoy being a racist. However, it is unlikely that there are any racial slurs and rants in a math discussion board at 2ch.

“Then why do I see more Black female models than Asian ones, much more Black female celebrities than Asian ones in general?”

More blacks than Asians? Roughly 3x as many blacks in the US.

What is “droky”?

Are Fashion models and celebrities a good measure for ordinary people’s taste in selecting a partner? I don’t know what Weirdo actually meant for his order of “popularity” of women. However, being a good fashion model requires having beautiful proportions, and the Black people is a longer resident of U.S. and has relatively larger population in there thus they could have more chance to let their culture flourish.

There is a Wikipedia entry on “Interracial marriage in the United States”. You may be especially interested in the section of “Census Bureau statistics“. The most clear fact is that the marriage between the same race is the most common. Then, it can hardly be inferred other facts from there. Weirdo’s ranking seems to be correct in respect of white American husband’s choice of their spouse in 2006, although it is subtle for ranking of 2nd, 3rd, and 4th.

Also Dubya really really did look like a chimp. It was quite cute really.

Don’t bother ponta, people like these exist everywhere. Not that I approve of the comments on 2chan but I am under the impression that they don’t realize that they are also guilty of the same crime. At least you had the courtesy to say “some”

“after reading such comments about her being similar to a gorilla I am very dissapointed”

I was afraid some people might project their conceptual scheme, their frame of prejudice into the comments on 2 channel.
I am not sure if you are doing it but I was afraid some people might when reading this post.
There is no doubt some of the comments on it are very racist.
But Japanese compare Japanese celebrities with a gorilla as I showed on another comment for various reasons.
Here is No. 1 gorrila celebrity
上ノ宮絵理沙
http://ameblo.jp/erisa-kaminomiya/

Now the Japanese link apes with several Japanese celebrities for various reasons, and it is not always the case that they link the negative aspects of the apes.
In Serena’s case, it is most likely that her physical constitution　made some people associate a gorilla with her, but in general Japanese don’t link black people with the apes, and they don’t know—and I didn’t know—for instance, existence of monkey chant in football. Incidentally I don’t think you’ve head Japanese people compare Jero with a gorilla.

Reading some racist comments on 2 channel, regrettably I have a feeling that black people will suffer some prejudice from some Japanese. We should let Japanese know various aspects of black people to let them know that there are variety of black people just as there are various Japanese but at the same time I think we should be warned not to import prejudice/stereotype about them from the West.