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Enjoy Our “Safe” Flight

Whoever translated this message for Japan Airlines seems to have not noticed that a literal translation of the Japanese results in a message that might leave English-speakers wondering if the flight they are about to take really is safe and comfortable:

[via Reddit]

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34 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - May 18, 2010 at 9:23 am

Categories: General Japan Tags:

Craig

Ladies and Gentlemen, I’ll be your ‘pilot’ for today. We will be ‘in the air’ soon.

toro

Yes Craig it’s obvious the English skills need a lot of work still, thanks for pointing that out
http://www.japastuff.com erika

ooh! I love to “fly high”!

toro

Seems pretty straight forward 安心-feel at ease　and 快適–comfort, enjoy your flight it says this is one of the better translations out there, not that far off the mark like some others like Yamada Denki’s “for your “Just”

Since it says this guy is the maintenance manager I would expect him to say safe.

Most airlines pilots over the PA say relax and enjoy your flight

Rob A

The point is that it’s in quotes, which means in English(usually) that it’s not a serious adjective, almost like the qualifier ‘supposedly’. Like:

I am an “expert” in computer technology.

It may be true to me, but it isn’t necessarily true for everyone else, and there’s no real way to quantify it. It’s a pretty tough construct to explain to non-native English speakers. A lot of companies like to use it for claims and slogans to say “Well, we weren’t being exact…just generalizing.”

So it’s saying Enjoy your (supposedly) safe and (supposedly) comfortable flight.

toro

Alright somebody disagreed, offer a better translation then?
Yamato

Toro, perhaps you missed the point – it doesn’t need the quotation marks…Quotation marks are often used to indicate irony…
toro

Perhaps the translator was trying to emphasize both safety and comfort somehow, it looks the like the translation is pretty close to the Japanese, no errors there except for the quotes.
Ochazuke

As Yamato said, that’s the whole point, dude; the improperly used quotation marks make the statement seem sarcastic, which is particularly troubling considering it is a message from the Aircraft Maintenance Manager.

toro

Aircraft Maintenance Manager didn’t make the translation how do you know that for sure?

Ochazuke

The credit for the message states only the title + “in charge”, and the picture with nameplate on the right appears to be interchangeable depending on who is in charge at the time, so it seems pretty obvious that this is a boilerplate message meant to be from any and all of their maintenance managers. The airline is presenting the message (both original text and translation) as being from the Aircraft Maintenance Manager, whoever that may be at any given time, so whether Mr. Hirano there translated it himself or not is effectively irrelevant to the discussion.

Christ, am I getting trolled here?

toro

Also bottom line—Japanese need to learn the English correctly, with all the Eikaiwa that’s still out there the English is still off. English has to be taught right. It’s the education system, that’s the very core of the problem.

scott

Aircraft Maintenance Manager didn’t make the translation how do you know that for sure?

You’re still missing the point. It doesn’t matter the original or intended meaning. The literal translation may be accurate, but by including the quotes the implied meaning is that the flight is at best questionably safe, and questionably comfortable.

It’s the education system, that’s the very core of the problem.

I’d assume JAL hires proper translators which would necessitate more training than public education English and eikaiwa. If not then there’s your weak link in this PR fail.
Tbrot

I wouldn’t be surprised if the subtleties of punctution was not taught in English classes. Even in the west I’m not sure student in our education system would necessarily be familiar with all the uses. Some of the spelling and grammar one sees on the internet is pretty awful.

somegirl

LOL ok, it was more enjoyable reading Toro’s responses and TOTALLY missing the point . .
Miss_igirisu

No, my dear, the bottom line is that if you’re going to use English on a sign for such an international company as JAL, then you should get it right. As others have said, the translation is fine, it just needs to lose the “‘s, because when you use them it means that you don’t mean what you are saying.

toro

Miss Igirisu perhaps the guy doesn’t understand the use of quotes and as said he’s trying to emphasize both safety and comfort.

helical

Which is why it’s funny because it doesn’t mean what they think it means.

… you still aren’t getting this, are you?

toro

crystal clear
toro

got it already, one should always edit, and review before submitting the final. The quotes apparently send the wrong message.

Mito_tourer

Toro, where are you from? Not to pick on you but your reaction shows the general problems with translation in Japan. Most Japanese companies would rather deal with another Japanese company rather than a freelancer. Unfortunately, most large translation companies (that we’ve worked with) are staffed by either 1. Native Japanese with (hopefully) excellent English ability or 2. Native English speakers that have either spent way too much time in Japan or have an entirely unhealthy obsession with the original Japanese text.

Results from the above types of translators? Text that, while occasionally grammatically correct, is far from natural. It’s incredibly frustrating to have spent large amounts of money to outsource a translation, only to have it come back completely unusable because the translator either can’t write natural English or is too focused on translating every single word or sentence structure from the original text.

English education in Japan may eventually be able to produce more than a handful of students that can carry on a conversation in English in a business setting. Still, no matter how much schooling you give Japanese kids they will still be missing context, and that context is necessary to avoid such embarrassing written errors as the above message from JAL.
nagoriyuki

This is economy-class translation.
Please use our business class if you need perfect translation.

InJM

Business class or “business class?”
helical

I’m sure we’ll get a nice “translation” if we do.

tbrot

Definitely good for a chuckle. Japanglish is one of the major attractions of coming to Japan so totally eliminating it would be a loss in my opinion.
Sandy

http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com/

If you laughed at this… endless fun!

Rob A

Yeah, that was sure “endless fun” alright.

(The site is down…?)

WordsnCollision

Enjoy your fright!
RotJ

What do the L brackets mean in Japanese? Are they used for emphasis, and more appropriately translated with italics or bold face?

OsakaGuy

I think most of the time they are just straight quote marks, but apparently as show by this sign emphasis is another use. As far as I know they don’t use them to convey irony in Japanese.

Wow, Wikipedia has a whole article on these “scare quotes” in English:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes
http://www.zdwonline.de Haf

That’s it right there! There’s a misconception among Japanese about the usage of quotation marks and the proper way of translating the meaning of Japanese L brackets. I’ve encountered this myself a couple of times when conversing with Japanese people in English or German in written form. Somehow this doesn’t seem to be taught in school and at the universities. Or this usage of quotation marks is a concept that’s very difficult to grasp for Japanese people. I often heard that Japanese have problems with understanding irony, I wonder if this has something to do with it.

Of course this does not mean that every Japanese person has problems with those quotation marks.

OsakaGuy

Underlining might have been OK, but maybe JAL would come off as trying too hard to convince us.

Don’t be too hard on them though, illiterate native English speakers use quote marks improperly all the time, as can be seen in Unnecessary Quotes blog Sandy linked to.
kyo

when I go over I have to find one of these signs
John

I “know” I’d feel “good” about taking that “flight”.

Enjoy Our “Safe” Flight

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