One of the beauties of the Japanese language is how much it can cram into a small space

[styl_oh]

Please nevermind this failed joke of an OP, we're actually talking about learning Japanese now.

For example, if I want to talk to fans of the popular PS4 stealth game (known to complete casuals as 夏色ハイスクル☆青春白書) in English, I have to say, 'so, have you finished Summertime High School. A Young Man's Notes – How a New Exchange Student Like Myself Ran Into His Childhood Friend On The School Tour, Then For Some Reason Became Super-Popular With The Girls For His Daily Scoops On The School Photography Club Even Though He Only Takes Panty Shots, And What He Thinks As He Goes On Dates During His Summer Of Island School Life yet?'

It could be argued that this also takes up a non-arbitrary amount of text on a videogame message board.

But in Japanese, I simply say: 友達。。。PS4のゲームは夏色ハイスクル★青春白書〜転校初日のオレが幼馴染と再会したら報道部員にされていて激写少年の日々はスクープ大連発でイガイとモテモテなのに何故かマイメモリーはパンツ写真ばっかりという現実と向き合いながら考えるひと夏の島の学園生活と赤裸々な恋の行方。。。done？！

Now, admittedly, I don't know that we need 'High School' in Katakana/English there, as '高校' would shore things up nicely, and the star certainly fills its seat up on the airplane, but isn't it so much more efficient this way than having to repeat 'Summertime High School. A Young Man's Notes – How a New Exchange Student Like Myself Ran Into His Childhood Friend On The School Tour, Then For Some Reason Became Super-Popular With The Girls For His Daily Scoops On The School Photography Club Even Though He Only Takes Panty Shots, And What He Thinks As He Goes On Dates During His Summer Of Island School Life' every time you want to talk about this presumably brilliant game?

Note: My original idea for this thread was a thorough investigation of Japanese->English game titles, why things like 'Bravely Default' exist, comparing differences, dunking on Dragon Quest's Always Active Airborne Assault of Alliteration, and perhaps an excavation of 'Unlosing Ranger VS Darkdeath Evilman' but I got lazy and found this 65-character game title on Kotaku by accident. I hope you enjoyed your time and please forgive me!

 

[Spring-Loaded]

Works well for body writing.

 

[kiaaa]

I think you've done a more effective job at telling us that Japanese game titles can be really, really dumb, overly literal, and way too long.

You're also not saving that much space?

 

[Jonnax]

erm. wtf kind of game is this?

Is this literally a game where you take up skirt photos of high schoolers?
Wouldn't talking about it be banned on the gaming side?

Plus your sentence isn't even that much shorter.

 

[smileyforall220]

Weird game aside....I really like the top to bottom design approach for Japanese characters in graphics design, shit just hits different

 

[Choppasmith]

As someone who's dabbled in rom hacking this is definitely something you get sort of impressed and annoyed with at the same time.

 

[Sybil]

It seems like a logical conclusion that a more logographic-based writing system would require less characters than an alphabetical? Not sure what's really crazy about that. Could argue that Chinese crams even better if we're going by that string of logic.

 

[Deleted member 86105]

This is why early English localizations were often really weird and truncated when there were space constraints. One character in Japanese (which can constitute an entire word) is equivalent to one letter in English. So you can express a full sentence in less than 20 characters in Japanese with zero spaces like "ドラゴンの宝物は城の中にあります" or "The dragon's treasure is located somewhere in the castle," whereas in English to express that same sentiment in 20 characters would be something like "GO TO CASTLE FOR GIFT."

 

[DiipuSurotu]

..."stealth game"?

 

[Ryuelli]

My favorite word in Korean is 뒈질래, which is pretty much directly translated as "Do you want to die a long, meaningless, painful death?".

 

[dude]

Maybe if the game didn't have such a stupid title it would fit nicely in other languages as well :P
Also, I'd take an alphabet, abjad or abugidas over logograms any day - Even if the end sentence comes out longer.

 

[meph]

Note: My original idea for this thread was a thorough investigation of Japanese->English game titles, why things like 'Bravely Default' exist, comparing differences

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It seems like a logical conclusion that a more logographic-based writing system would require less characters than an alphabetical? Not sure what's really crazy about that. Could argue that Chinese crams even better if we're going by that string of logic.

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This is why early English localizations were often really weird and truncated when there were space constraints. One character in Japanese (which can constitute an entire word) is equivalent to one letter in English. So you can express a full sentence in less than 20 characters in Japanese with zero spaces like "ドラゴンの宝物は城の中にあります" or "The dragon's treasure is located somewhere in the castle," whereas in English to express that same sentiment in 20 characters would be something like "GO TO CASTLE FOR GIFT."

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End of investigation.

 

[N64Controller]

My favorite word in Korean is 뒈질래, which is pretty much directly translated as "Do you want to die a long, meaningless, painful death?".

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See, that's saving space right there.

 

[tadaima]

You should see Chinese. Even more crammed into a smaller space.

 

[Timbuktu]

You should see Chinese. Even more crammed into a smaller space.

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I have to say that I enjoy the best Chinese lyrics more than English ones.

 

[DiipuSurotu]

In French you can basically cram any meaning and sentence into the simple phrase: "putain"

 

[brinstar]

Yeah this was one of the things I quickly picked up on as I was learning. Also the amount of wordplay and double meanings you can do with kanji is so fun.

 

[N64Controller]

Damn it link is broken move along

 

[styl_oh]

You should see Chinese. Even more crammed into a smaller space.

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yeah i mean it's the same shit without the kana, which helps you differentiate the two. studying kanji i've kinda virtually just been learning chinese in a sense

also i hate to say i think some people took me too seriously, i honestly just wanted to post that title repeatedly and i deserve all i get

 

[DukeBlueBall]

So you mean the part of the Japanese that's Chinese.

 

[DiipuSurotu]

So you mean the the part of the Japanese that's Chinese.

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That's like saying there's a part of English that's Latin

 

[julia crawford]

I was reading one time about data compression and the topic of languages compressing data into equally rich signifiers as other languages but occupying a lot less space came up and this is so fucking cool.

This is a kind of very slow, naturally evolving compression method for communication.

 

[styl_oh]

Yeah this was one of the things I quickly picked up on as I was learning. Also the amount of wordplay and double meanings you can do with kanji is so fun.

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i like the numbers stuff, the gorowase

39 san-kyuu 15 ichigo/strawberry

i've heard a lot of game developers sneak themselves in as numbers representing codenames (on licence plates etc)

 

[Timbuktu]

That's like saying there's a part of English that's Latin

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Not really. kanji literally means Chinese, or at least "Han characters".

 

[DukeBlueBall]

That's like saying there's a part of English that's Latin

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If English used Latin words in one for one context yeah same words and meaning.

 

[styl_oh]

oh god i bet this game's title is a fucking hell machine in romaji

 

[styl_oh]

if i could change the title perhaps it would be 'some of us in here are i guess learning japanese, and also some people are discussing chinese, latin and language-oriented data compression'

i think that would be a hit

 

[lunarworks]

In French you can basically cram any meaning and sentence into the simple phrase: "putain"

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When I was a kid looking at Canada's bilingual packaging I was always interested in how much longer the French writing was compared to the English.

 

[No Audible Release]

I don't know that we need 'High School' in Katakana/English there, as '高校' would shore things up nicely

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Would it really though? English uses fewer strokes to write the word "high school" than Japanese does for 高校. The amount of visual information is roughly the same; its just that the strokes of Chinese/Japanese characters are printed smaller. You can reach a similar outcome in English by decreasing the font size.

Edit: I mixed up the first two strokes of 校, lol.

 

[Tochtli79]

Someone get some Japanese tweets in here to demonstrate. 140 characters in English is like half a thought and in Japanese it's almost a short story.

 

[Anarki]

I'm pretty sure noone actually writes or says full title of that, they always reduce titles to 4 characters or so, like they refer to dragon quest as ドラクエ(dorakue)

 

[wandering]

laughs in Chinese

 

[Pikachu]

this is like factually untrue lol

"Information Density: The Japanese language has the lowest information density (0.49). This means you have to say more in Japanese to say the same thing in English, which has a very high information density. In fact, English's information density is nearly twice that of Japanese!"

 

[Pikelet]

Would it really though? English uses fewer strokes to write the word "high school" than Japanese does for 高校. The amount of visual information is roughly the same; its just that the strokes of Chinese/Japanese characters are printed smaller. You can reach a similar outcome in English by decreasing the font size.

Edit: I mixed up the first two strokes of 校, lol.

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I have nothing to add here, but this is really interesting thanks!

 

[ann3nova.]

...rewrite your Japanese in Romanji.

Or even IPA.

What you've written for both would not correlate to the amount of time it would take for you to SAY what you've written.

 

[lorddarkflare]

this is like factually untrue lol

"Information Density: The Japanese language has the lowest information density (0.49). This means you have to say more in Japanese to say the same thing in English, which has a very high information density. In fact, English's information density is nearly twice that of Japanese!"

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This has more to do with the spoken word and getting information across that way.

From my observation, Japanese has high information to character ratio. But low information to syllable.

 

[SRG01]

this is like factually untrue lol

"Information Density: The Japanese language has the lowest information density (0.49). This means you have to say more in Japanese to say the same thing in English, which has a very high information density. In fact, English's information density is nearly twice that of Japanese!"

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I think the OP is talking about written vs speech in terms of density.

edit: How was I beaten?

 

[styl_oh]

i honestly wasn't talking about anything but i appreciate people putting in the actual work here

 

[darkhunger]

Not really. kanji literally means Chinese, or at least "Han characters".

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Vocabulary-wise Japanese doesn't use many kanji the same way as in Chinese, and of course in many cases they don't pronounce them the same way. So it's in some ways equivalent to English repurposing the Latin alphabet and vocabulary for its own use.

 

[Silvergun-Blue]

Isn't this also why 90's era game translations (RPG's in particular) featured very basic prose and often missed out plot details because they had to work with harsh character limitations. Well that and the fact that it just wasn't considered all that important and just didn't receive much in the way of resources and time.

 

[tadaima]

this is like factually untrue lol

"Information Density: The Japanese language has the lowest information density (0.49). This means you have to say more in Japanese to say the same thing in English, which has a very high information density. In fact, English's information density is nearly twice that of Japanese!"

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It's one of the reasons why Japanese is such a vague language and can be infuriating even for natives.

 

[Stabi]

In French you can basically cram any meaning and sentence into the simple phrase: "putain"

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Needs upvotes

 

[turbobrick]

On the subject of how much space it uses, that was always a thing that became apparent when I was taking Japanese classes in college and we had to write something. The assignment would be to write one page, but then you realize just how much it takes to fill one page.

 

[Cats]

I really tried hard to learn Japanese but kanji just kicked my ass and made it impossible every time. Basically adding 2x the information retention necessary (the unique symbol and then the spoken phrase) to every single concept and object in existence is just way too difficult.

 

[Unknownlight]

this is like factually untrue lol

"Information Density: The Japanese language has the lowest information density (0.49). This means you have to say more in Japanese to say the same thing in English, which has a very high information density. In fact, English's information density is nearly twice that of Japanese!"

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That's really interesting that spoken English has the highest information rate out of the eight languages tested. It feels true, even though I don't know any other language well enough to have an informed opinion. But I had to do some audio transcription for work once, and I remember being really caught off guard by how much I had to type even when someone spoke for less than five seconds.

 

[MegaRockEXE]

Would it really though? English uses fewer strokes to write the word "high school" than Japanese does for 高校. The amount of visual information is roughly the same; its just that the strokes of Chinese/Japanese characters are printed smaller. You can reach a similar outcome in English by decreasing the font size.

Edit: I mixed up the first two strokes of 校, lol.

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See, this is interesting because they both have their advantages and disadvantages. With the Chinese/Japanese below, you can fit that in less vertical space, but often times, where resolution is limited, you literally can't fit all the detail to make that legible. And sometimes, and I've never seen this be true, when words have to be transcribed from English to Japanese, the word ends up taking more characters because of the approximation.

 

[styl_oh]

I really tried hard to learn Japanese but kanji just kicked my ass and made it impossible every time. Basically adding 2x the information retention necessary (the unique symbol and then the spoken phrase) to every single concept and object in existence is just way too difficult.

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yeah... if you learn say a romance language, you're dealing with familiar characters and then the four tenets of language... with japanese it's the four tenets plus a couple extra language pack dlcs, one of which is least 2300 chinese characters

i'm absolutely not advanced, but it does help if you learn them as words instead of these individual units with anywhere from 1-20+ possible readings--you'll pick up vocabulary and then see a compound kanji word, either look it up or hear it read aloud and go 'oh, that's how that word is written' and it'll stick

it is certainly a large, ongoing task, though

 

[fontguy]

I'm pretty unimpressed with the economy of that particular example, OP.

 

[styl_oh]

See, this is interesting because they both have their advantages and disadvantages. With the Chinese/Japanese below, you can fit that in less vertical space, but often times, where resolution is limited, you literally can't fit all the detail to make that legible. And sometimes, and I've never seen this be true, when words have to be transcribed from English to Japanese, the word ends up taking more characters because of the approximation.

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yeah, english in either katakana or romaji takes up a ton of space

'ベルセルク; berserk... seems about a fair match (unless you try to say it out loud)... but then you got your 'Beruseruku'

 

[iksenpets]

Would it really though? English uses fewer strokes to write the word "high school" than Japanese does for 高校. The amount of visual information is roughly the same; its just that the strokes of Chinese/Japanese characters are printed smaller. You can reach a similar outcome in English by decreasing the font size.

Edit: I mixed up the first two strokes of 校, lol.

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This is really good. Reminds my of something I saw a while back about how the speed of speech varies between language with high amounts of info per phoneme (Like Chinese) versus low amounts (Japanese) in such a way that info per second holds pretty consistent. All languages, written and spoken, are pretty efficient about getting info compressed to the limits of human comprehensibility, even if yes, the Latin alphabet and Chinese characters do it in ways that prioritize page space very differently, and very differently in the digital age when Chinese characters and Latin letters are assigned the same amount of space in memory.

Also, this thread in general seems way too generous to the Japanese writing system, which is an absolute monstrosity trying to map the Chinese writing system onto a language with way more grammatical complexity where it just doesn't work.And way devalues the ways that English writing and grammar allow for a level of flexibility that the Chinese characters just don't, where dealing with a loan word from a foreign language or making up a term for a new concept is always kind of a nightmare.