Jaw meets floor.

[nenena]

Oh my. It's been a good several years since the last time that I've had the comments section of a post devolve into such a stunning example of case in fucking point.

Edited to add: Okay, look. I am hardly the only person who has publicly called out proglution and the others in that thread on bleachness for their BS. Many, many people on fandom_wank are making the same points. kuromitsu in particular is someone whose opinion ought to carry some weight, being a damn good translator of Japanese.

Protip: It is never a good idea to start a wank about translation by insulting a professional translator, and it makes you look like even more of an ass when you then go on to twist around and bullshit about what was actually said. When enough people with enough accumulated knowledge among them are continually pointing out that you are wrong, then it is time to step back and consider the possibility that maybe you might be wrong.

proglution and suzukaze are right to argue in my previous post that pobody's nerfect. The same applies to them as well. I have had people more knowledgeable than me point out my translation errors before. And I've corrected them right away. It does nobody any favors to write ten pages worth of comments defending your shitty translation and continuing to insist that the professional interpreter in question was "misleading" when she wasn't.

This, then. This is pretty much the perfect example of the type of posturing behavior that I was trying to call out in my first post.

ETA again: Meni just pointed out one of the bigger, ickier issues that got buried by the translation wank, and I tried to articulate a coherent response on the matter. But this is another one of the things that I wanted to discuss in my first post (before it got so spectacularly derailed): the difference between showing cultural knowledge vs. expressing stereotypes. There's definitely a Pretendian/Wapanese inclination to attempt to speak for people from other cultures, rather than letting them speak for themselves. And that is exactly what happened in Moritagate, when the shippers relied on oversimplified, essentializing cultural stereotypes to deny the possibility that Morita might actually mean what he straight-up said. Talk about twisting cultural knowledge to fit a personal agenda.

Comments

[nenena.livejournal.com]

I actually think she was trying to argue the opposite of profiling with that statement. But it was one concession within her bigger point about cultural norms, which was full of fail and stereotyping.

The issue about cultural norms vs. individual behavior definitely got muddled in those comments. But the point is: It's important to recognize and understand cultural differences, but it is equally as important to recognize that there is always individual diversity within cultures. If we don't, then that's what we call essentializing. When we make unfounded assumptions about an individual's motivations and behavior based on something that we think we know about their culture, that's stereotyping.

Especially in terms of a topic as broad as "Japanese attitudes toward discussing relationships," we have to recognize that although there are broad cultural trends toward standoffishness, there is also a LOT of individual variation in terms of what types of attitudes Japanese people have regarding talking about sexuality. If there weren't, then Japan wouldn't have trashy tabloid magazines or sexy gossip blogs. If there weren't, then I wouldn't have had the experiences that I had in Japan. Japanese people are still individuals with diverse personal attitudes toward discussing sexuality, even though some broad trends are still recognizable.

So! The point is, it's incredibly offensive to make authoritative, blanket statements like "Japan doesn't talk about sex" without also recognizing the possibility of individual variation (it's important to disclaim yourself!). It's even more offensive to assert authoritatively that "Morita said/did ABC because he is Japanese and therefore has XYZ attitude toward relationships/politeness/Bleach shipping/whatever." That, again, is stereotyping. Yet that is exactly the way that proglution phrased her statements about Japanese culture in her first two comments on bleachness.

I think it's even more egregious in this case because Morita so clearly said "it's Orihime" and the shippers are actually trying to argue "BUT HE DIDN'T REALLY MEAN IT BECAUSE OF HIS CULTURE!!" It's like, now they're actually taking cultural stereotypes and claiming that they're more true than actually letting Morita speak for himself. It is so fucking offensive to deny the possibility that somebody could actually mean what they said because certain stereotypes about their culture would have you believe otherwise.

Understanding cultural differences is important, but making assumptions about individuals behavior is not the way to apply that knowledge. Anthropology 101. It's important to let Japanese people like Morita speak for themselves. Trying to apply "cultural knowledge" to deny what he said is so, so many layers of bullshit.

That was the issue at stake.

Caveat: Like I've stated so many times before, I think it's okay to speculate about the reasons why Morita said what he said, as long as you make it clear that it's speculation. Straight-up asserting authoritative truth about Morita's motivations is totally different, and totally not cool.

ETA: I want to thank you for making this comment (and apologize for the tl:dr response!). Because that is exactly the type of issue that I was trying to discuss in my first post, but it got derailed by the back-and-forth over the translation idiocy.

[meni-tan.livejournal.com]

no totally okay.
In fact I wanted to hear your reaction about that because some of the main points were about stereotyping.
(you should add this into your edit)

[nenena.livejournal.com]

No, I should be thanking you. I'm glad that you brought up the stereotyping discussion again, because I'm equally as guilty of brushing it aside in the previous post and allowing the derail to happen. I was too busy focusing on the linguistic chicanery and I lost sight of the bigger issues involved.