Oh ho, WOW.

Instead of studying for the PLT tonight, I instead stayed up reading this wank, as I was completely absorbed by the utterly amazing linguistic bullshitting going on in this thread. It's... It's utterly fascinating, that's what it is.

And it hits all of my personal squicks about how non-Japanese fans sometimes interact with Japanese fandom. I'm just freakin' amazed at the amount of bullshit that proglution constructs her "argument" with, and how she positions herself as some sort of expert on Japanese language and culture (sooooo much more knowledgeable than the original translator, amirite?) while twisting, fabricating, or outright lying ("'Yappari' does not mean 'Of course', nor is it any kind of assertion or agreement, in this context" - OMG SERIOUSLY?!) about the translation issues involved.

I can't help but be reminded of Pretendians, particularly in the way that they can take a little bit of cultural knowledge and suddenly position themselves as "experts" on all things Native American, twisting NDN beliefs to fit with their own New Age-y beliefs and agendas, then re-packaging said BS to peddle to fellow New Agers. Actually, I see a lot of the same in English-speaking Japanese fandoms, too: Fans with only a tiny amount of Japanese knowledge will position themselves as "experts" on the language and culture, and then twist their little bit of genuine knowledge into overblown expertise to support their own personal agendas, whether it be shipping, or justifying manga piracy, or armchair quarterbacking about the manga industry, or whatever. My personal favorite is when they make blanket statements like "OMG fan translations are so much more accurate than the official version!" because they have an anti-industry stance or whatever, even though they may not actually be qualified to comment on the quality of a translation at all beyond an obvious point like "Damn, I wish they had kept the honorifics here" or "WTF is up with this flipped artwork, yo?" Now, to be fair, pointing out a lack of honorifics or the practice of flipping artwork are both fair criticisms of any professionally translated work, regardless of one's Japanese linguistic ability. But a blanket "this sucks, the fan translations were better!" statement is NOT fair unless you really, really know what you're talking about. I'm amazed at how often I see and hear people who admit that they can't speak Japanese praising fan translations for being more accurate/authentic/whatever than the professional translations. WTF. If you can't actually speak the language, how the hell do you feel entitled to make blanket statements like that?!

And it's not just fan-versus-professional translation wank where I see the Pretendian (Wapanese?) dynamic come into play in Japanese fandoms, either: There's a lot of posturing and BS-ing about nearly every aspect of fandom that I can think of, whether it's posting long screeds on ffrants about What Japanese Schools Are Really Like (usually posted by someone who has never been to Japan), or making authoritative statements about the Japanese manga/anime/television/movie industry without having any actual facts to back oneself up. I see it all the time. Or, for another glorious example from Bleach fandom: Remember this one? (Read beneath where it says "Strawman #1".) I know, linking to old wanks is bad form, but still, that post is a perfect example of what I'm talking about, especially the part where she goes off on the Japanese ideal of femininity, as if there's only one popular concept of idealized femininity in Japanese culture.

And before anyone accuses me of throwing stones in a glass house: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. I've been guilty of bullshitting like this in the past, too. But I'm older and wiser now, and trying harder to suck less, yes? And again, I think it's totally fair game for any fan, regardless of Japanese ability, to discuss issues of translation and Japanese culture in fandom - you just have to be careful how you frame those discussions, and be aware that a lot of us (myself included) sometimes feel entitled to say a lot more about translation and/or cultural issues than we really have the knowledge to back up.

But I actually do happen to be fluent in Japanese, which actually does qualify me to make the following statement: proglution is full of shit. Seriously, totally full of shit.

BTW, for the record, I ship Ichigo/Rukia. ;) And I don't understand why it even matters which ship Ichigo's voice actor prefers. He said that he likes Ichigo/Orihime, so what? Why does anybody even need to parse his statement for hidden meanings and mysterious, mystical Japanese doublespeak? It's not only bullshit, it's completely unnecessary bullshit. (*eyeroll*) I mean, really.

Edited to add: Oi vey, that Pretendian comparison might not have been a very good idea, as I somewhat belatedly realize in this comment. So, er. I apologize for showing my ass in a post where I was calling out other people for showing their asses. What I was trying to get at is that I think that there are a lot of similar beliefs and attitudes that lead to both Pretendianism in real life and Wapanese posturing in fandom. But the end results are somewhat radically different in terms of their impact on the target cultures, and I definitely failed to consider that when I wrote this post.

Edited again: Post-mortem.