The Pains of Online Translators

This is a letter to my students and fellow teachers that they will never read.

Dear Students of English (or any language for that matter),

While using online translators for one or two words at a time is generally acceptable, using online translators to "translate" pages of the original language is not. You will end up with sentences like this, "I had you send it to a daddy to the place that you were up in the morning, and joined a family of the homestay future on the first day and met all of the school after a long absence." This may look, sound and smell like English, but it is not English. Your minds are much more capable of translating accurately than the internet is. Take a few minutes and do the translation yourself. Sure it is more work, but the outcome is better work that you can be proud of. Also your teacher will appreciate it.

When native speakers see sentences like the one above, they can immediately tell that you plugged the passage into the internet and had the internet do the work for you. Then, you did not even have enough respect for your teacher to read over the result of your venture and edit out the nonsense. No human being could come up with such mangled sentences as these without the aid of a robot. Not only is it insulting to your teacher to pass off shoddy, semi-plagiarized English translations but it is a shortcut that could start a dangerous precedent. As a student, the process of learning is just as, if not more, important than the final result. If you can recite all of the prepositions in the English language in alphabetical order but cannot use any of them properly, then what is the value?

Arguably who really cares about diary entries about a home stay in Australia translated into English? Though I was genuinely interested in reading about your opinions on the trip, that interest has been squelched by my inability to understand what you are trying to say. When I have to read the Japanese to understand what your English is attempting to convey, there is a serious problem.

The issue is that these actions, copy/paste translating and plagiarism in general, can cause a student to think it is okay to take shortcuts. Though I know many of you have no intention of furthering your education at a university level, the skills you learn in high school (flexibility, time management, intellectual honesty, and opinion formation and justification) directly relate to the way you interact with with world. These skills are essential for people in academia and the work force. When you take unnecessary shortcuts, you are only cheating yourself and disrespecting your teachers.

The more troubling aspect of this problem is the response of the teacher. If these actions are left unpunished then there is no hope for behavior modification in the student. We, as teachers, have to be willing to be the enemy in this situation and have the student correct his or her behavior. If we tacitly allow students to get away with behavior like this then what is purpose of teaching them English? Just give them a computer or a cell phone with internet access.

Sincerely,

Your frustrated teacher

Anxiety and Anger

First I will start with the Anxiety.

Well, the past 5 months have been pretty stressful with a karate tournament, Japanese language tests, work and work related meetings. But the overarching, anxiety producing nugget is my future, or lack of a future plan. Not knowing what I want to pursue as a career has me caught me in a bit of a whirlwind. I know that whatever it is that I do, I want it to use Japanese. Over the past few weeks, since the completion of my language test, which I had been using as a procrastination tactic, I have begun thinking of things that I might like to get involved in and ways of making that happen.

Japanese History or Culture
This would involve going back to grad school for at least 2 years, possibly 6. This is an ideal situation if I can find a nice place to study and someone to pay for it it all. At the moment, the East- West Scholarship in association with the University of Hawaii seem like the best choice. Somethings I need to flush out before I apply (next November for the Fall 2012 year): GRE scores, letters of recommendation (fairly easy to get), a specific subject and area of Japanese history which I want to study or can contribute to. I am thinking about Buddhism's relationship in war in ancient Japan and the role that sohei played in these battles.
Pros:Seems like an ideal job doing and teaching what I like. Cons:It's extremely expensive and will take a long time to get there.

Japanese Language Teaching
This would also involve going to graduate school to receive a MA in Foreign Language Education or something along those lines. The added kicker would be the amount of supplementary Japanese courses I would have to take before even getting to the MA program. Pro:I would force myself to become fluent in Japanese. Con:I don't know how I would like teaching Japanese. Probably about as much as I like teaching English...

Translation
This would also be a really fun job, I think. I find that while studying Japanese, one of my favorite parts is translating the garbled mess that is a Japanese sentence into beautiful English. This would mean that I would have to stay in Japan, possibly on the JET program, to perfect my Japanese while I work to get myself out of debt from LMU. I would have to increase my Japanese level a lot to get into this business and Japan would be the likely place of my employment. There is not much call for translating Japanese into English in the states. Pros:Work from home. Good money. Forced to perfect my Japanese. Get to stay in Japan. Cons:Could take many, many years to get up to an acceptable level of Japanese

If anyone has any comments or ideas, please let me know.

Now for the anger.

Salvation Army discards donations because they promote 'witchcraft, vampires, and werewolves'

Apparently the Salvation Army does not want to give children Harry Potter and Twilight toys because they promote witches, vampires and werewolves and they go against Jesus and Christianity. WHAT?! Now, I can understand the desire not to give children toys from Twilight (it is just terrible - seriously terrible), but Harry Potter is a wonderful story about good overcoming evil and love triumphing over hate. Do they not understand the hypocritical nature of these actions? Jesus, if he existed, was an undead cannibal, zombie who used magic all the time before disappearing into the ether to once again return to earth to destroy/save the world. That sounds right up the same alley as witch, vampire, Bond villan and werewolf if you ask me.

"Damn it Jim, I'm a doctor. Not a spiritual advisor."

Prayer In Medicine Survey

I had a brain aneurysm concerning this unscientific hogwash of a survey, but I think that everyone should take the survey as an example of the state of conversation in the US. In short, my problem is with the style of questions. The questions assume that it is okay for a doctor to advise you on anything but medical matters. Sure there is an argument here that people with faith use that faith to help overcome emotional problems, but giving the medical doctor the leeway to "approach healing holistically" is bunk nonsense. Doctors are trained to deal with medical problems. Asking them or being hold by them about faith or spirituality on the hospital bed seems like a bad idea to me. It is like going to a mechanic to get your car fixed and while he is trying to fix your transmission asking him to give you legal advice on your upcoming divorce. "Damn it Jim, I'm a doctor. Not a　spiritual advisor."

The silly part of the whole survey is that you have choices for some questions (Very likely, likely, unlikely, N/A) which don't even correspond accurately to the questions. When the question says something to the effect of, "Will you seek spiritual or faith based information from an information packet?" Where is the "No Fucking Way" button? 'Unlikely' and 'N/A' don't satisfy my survey destroying blood-lust.

I was turned on to this survey by the science geeks over at Pharyngula.

Perhaps I will find some inspiration and write something of my own today after lunch. Maybe...

Rap I Can Get Behind

Now this is an artist I could get behind, though it isn't exactly my style of music.

A New Direction for This Blog

This blog started 2+ years ago as a way for me to share my experiences in Japan with my family and friends who cared to read my dribble. Seeing as I have been very busy lately and have not had the time to go out and have adventures worthy of repeating, I am going to try a different direction. In addition to the occasional stories about my life, I am going to also be posting commentaries, articles, and comics which I find interesting for one reason or another. This will be a useful way to spark up more comments and interaction on this blog and perhaps increase readership.
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http://edition.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/11/15/ilist.japan.englishization/index.html

It is certainly a unique idea coming from a Japanese. It certainly would force internationalization.

As someone who teaches English in Japan (or attempts to) there is something to be said about the "Japanese complacency" to which the CEO quoted in the article alludes. Of the perhaps 1000 students I have taught over the past 2 years I can remember maybe 10 that planned to use English in their daily lives. Nearly all of my students have resigned themselves to the idea that English is too hard and if they never leave Japan and join a typical 9am-8pm office job they won't ever have to learn any other language because Japanese people speak Japanese.

A Japanese friend of mine calls this, "The Complex." The Complex is, according to him, a fear of speaking English. It is a silly fear, but one I am rather acutely aware of in its reverse, i.e. my fear of speaking Japanese and Spanish. But the Japanese complex with English is rather, to risk stating the obvious, complex. English as a foreign language, though it has changed and adapted over the many years, has been taught in Japan for nearly 60 years at the junior high school level. (I cannot be certain of the validity at the moment, but this article seems to point to a long history of English in Japan). This relates to "The Complex" because even though modern Japanese have a long history of learning English, in some cases more than 8 years of formal instruction, many feel as though they cannot speak a word of it. There are many reasons for this but the main one being that Japanese English education is focused on the grammar and vocabulary of the language and not the speaking.

For those unfamiliar with the Japanese education system, everything is based on test scores. To get into high school, you must take a test. To get into a university, you must take a test. So in a response to shoddy international English test scores, the Japanese government will force elementary school students to learn English in an attempt to boost English education. But who knows if that will work? It might have the opposite effect and make students hate school and English even more than they already do by high school.

As a side note, I have come across many wonderful English speakers in my travels and bar hopping in Kyoto. Many of whom had no interest in English as students but learned English through day to day interaction with foreigners. The focus on an international business language could lead more people to seek English as a second language as a way to better themselves in the business world. It could be a good step to revitalizing Japan, though the implementation of this will undoubtedly be met with resistance.

The comments on this CNN article are hilarious, which is to be expected from people who comment on CNN articles. Somehow the mandatory speaking of English in the office of one particular business became the supplanting of the Japanese language and culture in all things throughout the country. One thing I would like to see happen within the Japanese language is the removal of katakana-ized English loan words. Sometimes it is impossible to understand what they are. Then again, in English we say, "carry oh key" and "car a tee" instead of "ka ra o ke" and "ka ra te".

These ideas are pretty interesting to me. Of course, as I already speak English, they are inherently selfish.