Do people in other countries memorize things with a red transparent plastic sheet or is this Asian or East Asian thing? Or even something unique to my country??? I never see it coming on English-speaking internets so I assume people don’t do this in North America and Europe

I searched up and it seems like it’s unique to my country

For real ?? ??? ?????

I’m pretty sure I’d be stuck in middle school if I didn’t know this technique. This might be the biggest cultural shock in last 5 years

I supposed that at least fellow East Asians are doing this but there’s no info besides the ones introducing stuffs from my country

I know you guys have no clue what I’m talking about. Sorry. I’ll explain this to you tomorrow.

This is bugging me now and I can’t sleep so I’m elaborating now. It’s 4AM so please excuse the grammars and stuff

I thought this could be useful for somebody, but a person told me they don’t sell the sheet there. So just listen

Also if you’ve used the technique in the school please tell me where are you from.

So you prepare your notebooks. The point is to write the stuff you want to memorize in orange

And you prepare a red, transparent sheet. I haven’t got one with me so I’m editing the image but you know what I mean by the picture. Imagine the sheet is on the notebook.

And then you hide the orange letters with the sheet. And go “hmm what was the Czech word for even though?”

You slide the sheet down to check the answer. And continue. “Now what was the Czech word for even though/even if?”

“Oh it’s i když”. Then continue. If you want to, draw an ! next to the word you can’t memorize. Or something like that.

You want to memorize something printed?

Then highlight the word with a dark green pen

And the sheet. Now who was the dude who held the Slavic Congress of 1848?

Oh it’s Palacký (btw yes, they teach you about him if you’re in an advanced class)

I suppose this is especially handy in our education system where kids are forced to memorize tons of facts

You may not be able to adopt this style even if you find useful because it seems like they don’t sell the seat overseas. I’m aware of it.

Idk where this post was going so I’m ending this post. Bye

It’s especially handy when you want to memorize certain parts of a sentence and only that part

Or maps. Dude the MAPS

Also speaking of redsheetified maps can you take a look at a creation by 18yo me. It’s Colonial Africa

[Image description: photos of filled notebook pages and one textbook, with and without a red translucent sheet covering them. When covered, orange text looks white like the rest of the page, and green looks black like the printed text highlighted with it. In both cases this text becomes unreadable under the red sheet. Most text shown is in Japanese. /End description.]

Some 2005 covers of SAMSON! 

From Wiki: 

Samson (月刊サムソン) is a monthly Japanese magazine for gay men.

Samson specializes in daddies, older, chubby men and salarymen in suits and occasionally fundoshi, or traditional Japanese loincloths.

Paintings by Sansuke Yamada

ID: Ten pages of cover art for SAMSON Monthly for Men. Each page features two, fat, hairy, middle-aged Japanese men.

1: Two men in business suits eating noodles while standing. They are looking at each other. The one on the left is wearing glasses and smiling.

2: Two men in outdoor-wear sitting on the grass, eating with their eyes closed.

3: Two men smoking in swimsuits. One on the left has glasses and a has a white cloth tied on his head. The man on the right is squatting with goggles on his head.

4: Man on the left is standing and playing an electric guitar . The man on the right is sitting and using a synthesizer. Both are wearing glasses, a white button up shirt and a colorful tie.

5: Two police officers leaning close to light their cigarettes.

6: Two drunk men with their arms on the other’s shoulder. The one on the left is grinning with a tie around his forehead, his shirt partially unbuttoned and his pants unzipped. The man on the right appears to be singing.

7: Two men sweating in shorts and white tops. The man on the left is jogging. The man of the right is falling behind with an exhausted expression.

8: Two men wearing traditional clothing. The one on the left is wearing black and is covered neck down. He is also smoking and wearing, glasses and wooden sandals. The one on the right is wearng a blue attire that stops above the knees and a white loincloth. He has black rain boots and is holding a traditional paper umbrella above both of their heads.

9: Two men wearing white judo uniforms while grappling each other. There eyes are closed in concentration.

10: Two men in office clothes and wearing glasses. On the right is sitting with his shoes off and looking up to the man on the left who is wearing a jacket and leaning on the chair.

Made Japanese Milk bread using this recipe: https://thesweetandsourbaker.com/home/2017/5/21/hokkaido-milk-bread It turned out SUPER yummy and soft!

I wish you all a Happy New Year as we’re leaving Tiger for Rabbit (Japan celebrations are a bit early, Lunar year will officially begin on January 22). 2022 was once again pure chaos, I don’t have much hope for a quieter 2023, but let’s hold on together!!!

Moon Rabbit sanctuary, art by Miki Katoh depicting in the background the roof of Tsukunomiya-jinja.

This Shinto shrine is famous for having komausagi (guardians rabbits) instead of the usual komainu (guardian dog/lion):

(picture source)

[Image 1: a drawing of a woman in a green kimono, with loose black hair. She holds a white rabbit and floats in front of the full moon.

Images 2 and 3: close ups of her upper and lower half

Image 4: a statue of a rabbit with a tinier rabbit under its paw.

End ID.]

Red Spider-Lillies (Lycoris radiata)

So check this out; Red Spider-Lillies (aka red magic lily/equinox flower/hurricane lily/resurrection lily/corpse flower) have cultural significance in the far east as symbols of loss and separation.

They are native to central asia and bloom in summer/autumn with good rain, but only retain their bright red luster for a short time before fading to a more muted pink.  Although they can grow in a variety of locales, they are commonly associated with rivers and with cemeteries. Their bulbs are potently toxic and were commonly used to keep wild animals from digging up crops and corpses.

They are also associated and named Higan-bana:“OtherBank-Flower” after the Japanese holiday of Higan[彼岸], a celebration of the dead.  The name “other bank” refers to the mythological river Sanzu, which divides the worlds of the living from the dead.  Although Higan is a Buddhist holiday, it is also curiously a Japanese exclusive one, not having any real equivalent in Chinese or Indian practices.  The associations however do trace back to core Buddhist texts, where its red color links it to a mythical flower in the underworld.

Some folklore spefically says that the flowers bloom along the path where two people are destined to meet for the last time before never seeing one another again, often with implications of death. Others, that they trace the path to the underworld.  In China a myth tells of two spirits that embody the petals and leaves of the flower, but because the leaves and blossoms grow out of sync, the two spirits never see one another, but meet in death.  They promise to find one another after reincarnation, but tragically never do, meeting again only in the underworld in between reincarnations for eternity.

All in all they are really neat and a very common icon of the season and of themes of death, separation, and rebirth. But the culture gap around them is almost startlingly wide. The Japanese understanding of the symbol is ubiquitous, but entirely obscure in the west, which makes otherwise loud and clear constructions of a scene read muted to an ignorant audience.

One of my personal favorite uses is in Makoto Shinkai’s movie, The Children Who Chase Lost Voices From Deep Below. In it the spider lily appears with a black butterfly(another iconic psychopomp) along a mountain path as the main character races to meet her crush. As she passes it, she startles the butterfly into flying off, a poetic kind of illustration of the soul departing. The boy she is going to meet is of course not there, and she ventures into the underworld to see him again. But the use of highly familiar and highly legible symbolism creates a tone and mood to the scene that doesnt really work without that literacy.

Alternatively in Satoshi Kon’s TV series, Paranoia Agent, that fluency is actually used as a setup for a subversion. A character is having a kind of surreal discussion with herself but also the embodiment of her escapist urges as she contemplates suicide. Outside her back door spider-lillies are in bloom. As the spectre grows literally bigger and stronger as she reviews all the reasons she would want to die, she turns the discussion around, finally ending with, “I’ve decided to have the operation.” At which point the heads of the flowers drop off their stems.

But if we’re being honest they are usually used mich less tactfully. Downright tacky in fact. Scenes of ghosts or death obsessed characters surrounded by spider lillies in a kinda of excessive, aesthetically decadent way are actually pretty common.  But when a scene already very loudly establishes death as a subject, the use of something like symbols loses all subtlety, and doesn’t really communicate anything effectively at all as it’s being talked over.

But I’ll tell you where I didn’t expect to see this used with tact and grace and nuance…

Pokémon.

Yeah. In Pokemon OmegaRuby & AlphaSapphire, Victory Road’s final room is a field of red spider lillies before a bridge over a river that leads out of the cave and out to the Elite 4 building. More over, it is where you encounter your rival Wally for the last time in the core plot.  If youre not familiar, Wally’s whole thing is that he suffers a nondescript illness.  He gets his first Pokémon from your father, and fights you once before promising to fight you again some day.  So when you do see him again it’s on the “other bank” of the river sanzu, in the underworld, surrounded by red spider-lilies.  He talks about you keeping your promise together, and he talks about giving you something to remember him by…

Knowing the pieces that make up this scene, this is a really loud and clear kind of artistic statement:  Wally is dying of his illness.  His rivalry with you, and training his pokemon, is what’s giving him a reason to live.  He’s trying to literally leave a symbolic underworld, and he’s going to stay there until he’s strong enough to leave.  You meet for the last time where the red spider-lilies grow.  He promises to see you on the other side,  but all his rematches are in the same place.  So. just like the myth of the spirits of the flower, you’ll never see Wally in the outside world ever again, only in the underworld.  

the thing you need to realize about localization is that japanese and english are such vastly different languages that a straight translation is always going to be worse than the original script. nuance is going to be lost and, if you give a shit about your job, you should fill the gaps left with equivalent nuance in english. take ff6, my personal favorite localization of all time: in the original japanese cefca was memorable primarily for his manic, childish speaking style - but since english speaking styles arent nearly as expressive, woolsey adapted that by making the localized english kefka much more prone to making outright jokes. cefca/kefka is beloved in both regions as a result - hell, hes even more popular here

yes this

a literal translation is an inaccurate translation.

localization’s job is to create a meaningful experience for a different audience which has a different language and different culture. they translate ideas and concepts, not words and sentences. often this means choosing new ideas that will be more meaningful and contribute to the experience more for a different audience.

There was an example during late Tokugawa period in Japan where the translator translated, "Я люблю Вас” (I love you), to “I could die for you,” while translating  Ася, ( Asya) a novel by Ivan Turgenev. This was because a woman saying, “I love you,” to a man was considered a very hard thing to do in Japanese society.

In a more well-known example,  Natsume Soseki, a great writer who wrote, I am a Cat, had his students translate “I love you,” to “the moon is beautiful [because of] having you beside tonight,” because Japanese men would not say such strong emotions right away. He said that it would be weird and Japanese men would have more elegance.

Both of these are great examples of localization that wasn’t a straight up translation and both of these are valid. I feel like a lot of people forget the nuances in language and culture and how damn hard a translator’s job is and how knowledgeable the person has to be about both cultures. [x]

Important stuff about translation!

Note that you can apply this to your own translations even if they aren’t big pieces of literature or something. Don’t feel bad about not translating word for word. An everyday sentence may sound odd translated literally - it’s okay to edit a little bit so it feels right!

Oh my god, I’m about to go on a ramble, I’m sorry, I can’t help it, the inner translation nerd is coming out. I’m so sorry. The thing is–there is actually no such thing as an accurate translation.  It’s literally an impossible endeavor. Word for word doesn’t cut it. Sense for sense doesn’t cut it, because then you’re potentially missing cool stuff like context and nuance and rhyme and humor. Even localization doesn’t really cut it, because that means you’re prioritizing the audience over the author, and you’re missing out on the original context, and the possibility of bringing something new and exciting to your host language. Foreignization, which aims to replicate the rhythms of the original language, or to use terminology that will be unfamiliar to the target culture–(for example: the first few American-published Harry Potter books domesticated the English, and traded “trousers” for “pants”, and “Mom” for “Mum”. Later on they stopped, and let the American children view such foreignizing words as “snog” and “porridge.”)–also doesn’t cut it, because you risk alienating the target readers, or obscuring meaning.  Another cool example is Dante, and the words written above the gates of hell: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.  In the original Italian, that’s Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate. Speranza, like most nouns in latinate languages, has a gender: la. Hope, in Italian, is gendered female. Abandon hope, who is female. Abandon hope, who is a woman. When the original Dante enters hell, searching for Beatrice, he is doomed, subtly, from the start. That’s beautiful, subtle, the kind of delicate poetic move literature nerds gorge themselves on, and you can’t keep it in English. Literally, how do you preserve it? We don’t have a gendered hope. It doesn’t work, can’t work. So how do you compensate? Can you sneak in a reference to Beatrice in a different line? Or do you chalk her up as a loss and move onto the next problem? You’re always going to miss something–the cool part is that, knowing you’re going to fail, you get to decide how to fail. Ortega y Gasset called this The Misery and Splendor of Translation. Basically, translation is impossible–so why not make it a beautiful failure?  My point is that literary translation is creative writing, full of as many creative decisions as any original poem or short story. It has more limitations, rules, and structures to consider, for sure–but sometimes the best artistic decision is going to be the one that breaks the rules.  My favorite breakdown of this is Le Ton Beau De Marot, a beautiful brick of a translator’s joke, in which the author tries over and over again to create a “perfect” translation of “A une Damoyselle Malade”, an itsy bitsy poem Clement Marot dashed off to his patron’s daughter, who was sick, in 1537.  This is the poem:  Ma mignonne, Je vous donne Le bon jour; Le séjour C’est prison. Guérison Recouvrez, Puis ouvrez Votre porte Et qu’on sorte Vitement, Car Clément Le vous mande. Va, friande De ta bouche, Qui se couche En danger Pour manger Confitures; Si tu dures Trop malade, Couleur fade Tu prendras, Et perdras L’embonpoint. Dieu te doint Santé bonne, Ma mignonne. Seems simple enough, right? But it’s got a huge host of challenges: the rhyme, the tone, the archaic language (if you’re translating something old, do you want it to sound old in the target language, too? or are you translating not just across language, but across time?)  Le Ton Beau De Marot is a monster of a book that compiles all of Hofstader’s “failed” translations of Ma Mignonne, as well as the “failed” translations of his friends, and his students, and hundreds of strangers who were given the translation challenge (which you can play here, should you like!)  The end result is a hilarious archive of Sweet Damosels, Malingering Ladies, Chickadees, Fairest Friends, and Cutie Pies. It’s the clearest, funniest, best example of what I think is true of all literary translations: that they’re a thing you make up, not a thing you discover. There is no magic bridge between languages, or magic window, or magic vessel to pour the poem from one language to another–translation is always subjective, it’s always individual, it’s always inaccurate, it’s always a failure.  It’s always, in other words, art.  Which, as a translator, I find incredibly reassuring! You’re definitely, one hundred percent absolutely, gonna fuck up. Which means you can’t fuck up. You can take risks! You can experiment! You can do cool stuff like bilingual translations, or footnote translations! You write your own code of honor, your own rules that your translations will hold inviolable, and fuck it if that code doesn’t match everyone else’s*. The translations they hold inviolable are also flawed, are failures at the core, from the King James Bible right on down to No Fear Shakespeare. So have fun! It’s all in your hands, miseries and splendors both. 

this in particular has bearing on more than just translation, but possibly in any adaptive or interpretative creative work: 

knowing you’re going to fail, you get to decide how to fail

which is actually quite freeing, once you think about it

I want to talk a little about this one piece of dialogue from the Stop!! Hibari-kun! anime. 

I’m constantly pissed at how fansubbers here chose to translate “newhalf” as “cross-dresser” when that’s very much not what it means.

“Newhalf” is sort of an outdated term, nowadays considered offensive, that explicitly refers to trans women. In the year the anime was made, 1983, the term was one of the only ways of saying trans woman in Japanese that made clear you meant a trans woman.

It’s not cross-dresser! A more accurate translation would very much be “transsexual” if you want to keep the fact that the term is sort of outdated nowadays but fitting for the context of an anime made in the 80s while still keeping the intended meaning.

The only reason I feel subbers would pick “cross-dressed” is because they didn’t like the idea of Fumiko - and by extension, Hibari - being explicitly trans, that they just erased it from the subs. These subs are from 2018, I can’t even chalk it up as old ignorance because this is pretty recent.

I started Hebrew, which is why I’ve been dead on this blog, but I don’t think I can ever properly convey to you guys the sheer cultural whiplash of spending years learning Japanese from Japanese teachers and then trying to learn Hebrew from an Israeli

The span of human experience is so insane.

[ID: "#japanese: you (derogatory); hebrew: bitch (affectionate)"]

I’m not gonna lie I forgot that Levan Polka was an actual song and it took me a whole 30 seconds to realize that this dude wasn’t just out there playin Miku in the park

Those are the Miku lyrics and not Finnish though so this man IS playing Miku in the park

Those are the Miku lyrics of the finnish song sang along to a darbuka in a park in istanbul

I started Hebrew, which is why I’ve been dead on this blog, but I don’t think I can ever properly convey to you guys the sheer cultural whiplash of spending years learning Japanese from Japanese teachers and then trying to learn Hebrew from an Israeli

I need a comedy where a Japanese teacher and a Hebrew teacher have to go on an adventure together and also there is at least one (1) dragon 

in hebrew the word for “Excuse me” is the same as the word for “i’m sorry” and people use it as a way to get attention bc nobody ever uses it so it makes people look at you in startlement

In the Google internal training on writing tech support content that is easy to translate, Japanese and Hebrew are used as examples of opposites when it comes to things like:

English: we suggest that you try turning it on and off again.

In Japanese, becomes “JUST TURN THE DAMN THING OFF!!!” and needs a lot more deference added because the direct translation is abrasive and aggressive

In Hebrew, it becomes “we don’t care, turn it off if you want, or don’t, I’m a tech support article, not a cop” and needs to be rewritten to be a lot more direct because a direct translation wouldn’t even read as a thing you should bother to do

This gif is outrageous

 ■ The so-called “blood explosion” which punctuates the conclusion of Akira Kurosawa’s 1962 movie Sanjuro remains one of the most memorable and influential special effects in film history. Production designer Yoshiro Muraki would later recall this scene was filmed in a single take. No such effect had ever been attempted before, as movies of the time rarely showed violence with graphic detail. Filled with uncertainty, Muraki worried the blood spray he’d rigged up wouldn’t impress Kurosawa, so he added an extra 30 pounds of pressure to the fluid pump. At the moment the pump was activated, the additional pressure caused the compressor hose attached to actor Tatsuya Nakadai to blow a coupling which created a slight, unintentional delay before the fake blood began to spray, and caused a much larger gush of fluid than planned. It sprayed so powerfully Nakadai claimed it almost lifted him off the ground. His heart sinking, as he believed the delay and over-pressure had ruined the effect, Muraki nervously glanced at director Akira Kurosawa, but Kurosawa only nodded in approval.

“oh god i fucked this up”

“yoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooOOOOOOOO”

THIS IS THE ORIGIN THIS IS THE REASON WE HAVE THAT ‘CUT A GUY AND THEN THEY EXPLODE IN BLOOD’ THING IN ANIME

HOLY HELL I’D ALWAYS WONDERED WHERE THAT CAME FROM

me: why are you destroying earth!!!

aliens: because theres people who think that english is the only language they need to speak

me: thats fair i understand

For some reason I find this all the more amusing because it’s written in English

moi: pourquoi vous détruisez le monde!!! l'extraterrestre: parce que il y a des gens qui pensent que l'anglais est le seule langue pour parler moi: ah ça c'est bien

ich: warum zerstört ihr die erde!!!

aliens: weil es leute gibt die glauben dass englisch die einzige sprache ist die sie sprechen müssen

ich: das ist fair ich verstehe

ég: af hverju eyðileggið þið jörðina!!! aliens: af því að það er fólk sem finnst að enska sé sú eina tungumál sem þau þurfa að tala ég: oh, það er vit í þessu. ég skil.

ik: waarom vernietig je de aarde!!!

aliens: omdat er mensen zijn die denken dat engels de enige taal is die ze hoeven te spreken

ik: oh zo, ik snap het

minä: miks te tuhootte maapalloo?

alienit: koska tääl on ihmisiä joitten mielestä englanti on ainoo kieli jota niitten täytyy puhua

minä: toi on reilua, ymmärrän

私: どうして地球を滅ぼしているんですか？

宇宙人: 英語しか喋る必要がないと思う人がいるからです

私: なるほど、わかりました

me: Wosück maakt ji de Welt twei!!!

aliens: wieldat dat Lüüd gifft, de dinkt dat Engelsch de allenige Spraak weer, de een snacken mütt

me: jo, daar seggst wat. Nu versta ik’t

aniga: dhulka maxaad u burburinaya !!!

shisheeyaha: dadka intiisa badani u malaynayaan in Ingiriisidu tahay afka oo kaliya ay u baahan yihiin inay la hadlaan

aniga: waxaan fahamsanahay. waa wax cadaalad

我：你们为什么在毁灭地球?！！

外星人：因为有人以为他们只会英语就可以了

我：懂了，说得有道理

ako: bakit niyo sinisira ang mundo!!!

taga-ibang planeta: kasi merong mga taong akala nila Ingles lang ang kailangan nilang matutunang lenggwahe

ako: ah, sige naiintindihan ko

Aku : kenapa kau hancurkan bumi!!! Alien : karena masih banyak orang berpikir hanya bahasa inggris satu-satunya bahasa yang terpenting Aku : oh, oke lah..

tôi: tại sao các người hủy diệt trái đất!!! người ngoài hành tinh: bởi vì có người nghĩ rằng tiếng Anh là thứ tiếng duy nhất mà họ cần biết tôi: ồ thế thì tôi hiểu

Eu: Por que vocês estão destruindo a Terra?! Aliens: Porque há pessoas que pensam que o inglês é a única língua que eles precisam falar. Eu: Isso é justo, eu entendo.

jag: varför förintar ni jorden!!!

utomjordingar: för det finns folk som tror att engelska är det ända språket de behöver kunna

jag: rimligt, jag förstår

Já: Proč ničíte Zemi?

Mimozemšťani: Protože tu jsou lidé, kteří si myslí, že angličtina je jediný jazyk, který potřebují znát

Já: To je fér, to chápu.

ja: dlaczego niszczycie Ziemię?

kosmici: ponieważ są ludzie, którzy myślą, że angielski to jedyny język, którego potrzebuję

ja: rozumiem, w porządku

io: perchè state distruggendo la terra!!!

alieni: perchè ci sono delle persone che credono che l’inglese sia l’unica lingua di cui hanno bisogno

io: capisco, mi sembra giusto

Yo: porqué estás destruyendo la tierra!?!?

Extraterrestre: porque hay personas quienes creen que inglés es la única lengua que se tiene que hablar.

Yo: te entiendo, es justo.

Я: Почему вы уничтожаете Землю?!?! Инопланетяне: Потому что есть люди, которые считают, что им нужно говорить только по-английски. Я: А, ну понятно, тогда ладно!

A modern Rosetta stone.

أنا: لماذا تدمرون الأرض!؟

كائنات فضائيه: لأن هناك أناس يعتقدون أن الانجليزيه هي اللغه الوحيده التي يحتاجون إلى معرفتها

أنا: هذا عدل، أنا أتفهم

میں: تم ہماری دنیا کو کیوں تباہ کر رہے ہو؟

خلائی مخلوق: کیونکہ اس دنیا میں چند ایک لوگ موجود ہیں جو سمجھتےہیں کہ انگریزی وہ واحد زبان ہے جو سب کو بولنی اور سمجھنی چاہیے.

میں: جو بات ہے.

Аз: Защо унищожавате Земята!!!

Извънземни: Защото има хора, които мислят, че английски е единствения език, който трябва да знаят.

Аз: Това е честно. Разбирам.

Fun fact: in Romanian, a bookworm is called “şoarece de bibliotecă” which translated to “library mouse” :)

in Serbian,it is “Knjiški moljac’’ which is basically translated as Book Moth :>

In Hungarian it’s “Könyvmoly” which also translates as Book Moth. :)

In Finnish it’s “lukutoukka” which means “reading caterpillar”! ♡

In Greek, it’s “βιβλιοφάγος” which means “he/she who eats books”

this post makes me so happy :)

In Swedish you are a bokslukare ‘bookdevourer’ or a läslus ‘reading louse’.

In Japanese, I believe it’s “yomimushi” (reading bug) but i’m not sure

Reading bug sounds adorable oh my gosh

In Danish you can be a bogorm (bookworm) or læsehest (reading horse).

In German, you’re a “Leseratte”, a “reading rat” x3

In Spanish we have “rata/ratón de biblioteca” (library rat/mouse).

In Indonesian, it’s ‘kutu buku’ (book flea)

In polish it’s mól książkowy, which means book moth

Why must the slavs eat the books

They taste good

In Czech it’s knihomol which also means book moth