Racist Or Lazy?

Example: in another forum the other day, someone asked me to translate something a Japanese player said. They "rudely" dropped party with no warning, said something evidently "racist" in English, and "stormed off." The English-speaking players launched into a massive diatribe about xenophobic, elitist, thorny, hostile JP players, with some people who supposedly spoke Japanese jumping in to "translate" the JP users' statements into something that verified the original assumption.

In actuality, they didn't speak JP at all. They made it up. Or they only barely spoke JP, and filled in the blanks with their own imaginations. What the JP player actually said was that there was a sudden emergency in his family, and he needed to log out. In the polite tense. With apologies. But by that point, the thread was so self-absorbed in righteous indignation that they didn't want to hear it.

Taking what is a simple misunderstanding in phrasing and arguing backwards, all the way through centuries of history to make sweeping statements like "Japan is a closed society," with some stroke of finality as though you're qualified to define an entire nation in one sentence, is itself just as racist as what you're accusing other people of.

I'm just going to say it.

Most NA players are rude, snobby, arrogant, racist, sexist, elitist, greedy and extremely selfish.

/equip body "Assault Breastplate" <me>

/ agreed. its true, I am white but in game definately a japanese supremacist

Was told JP Onry when I went to Mount T and there was a magic burn going w/ 3 blm and a cor. I asked to join and got shot down. I know its not my gear because I about 90% HQ everything and I have everything except a novio atm as well as being fully merited. I soloed for a while and was doing a steady 200-500 damage over the JP hardest nuker..

Long story short

I left about 20 min later, took a break for about 40 min then geared up BRD. Not more than 5 min LFP I get a /t from the same JP asking if I wanna EXP @ Mount Z. My whole /seacom was written in engrish and had no auto-***-translate in it.

I dont even think he noticed I was the BLM that had asked an hour earlier. At least until I got out to camp and said i sowwy, engrish onry then warped out.

^.^b

well said Jaerik

You guys are reading into things that you should not be, and it's maddening to watch. Applying your definition of polite/rude speech or behavior across language lines is extremely dangerous, and I think it's a telling aspect of human nature that the default assumption when presented with ambiguity is to assume hostility. Just look at any human's natural reaction when people are talking in front of them in a language they can't understand. ("Are you guys talking ***about me?") Why do we always assume that? "jp only" is a rude statement in English. It's even arguably racist. From a Western perspective. But the auto-translator was written for the English release, by English-speakers. It is a tremendous pain in the *** to use in Japanese because certain functionality, like the ability to type a few letters and auto-complete the token -- features that make the entire system in English -- are missing entirely or unreliable in the JP release. If the word "only" is the solitary English term you've learned in school to describe what you're trying to say, you use it. You don't sit there wondering if the second-order implications of the one word you know might sound rude or racist in the other person's language. There are many reasons that Japanese players may want to only play with other Japanese players. Many of these reasons may not be racist. They may be reasons that, like the problems with the JP auto-trans function, you are incapable of knowing. There are legitimate racists among the JP player base, but they are no more numerous than among EN players. However, approaching a situation with the assumption of racist hostility does nothing but make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. Example: in another forum the other day, someone asked me to translate something a Japanese player said. They "rudely" dropped party with no warning, said something evidently "racist" in English, and "stormed off." The English-speaking players launched into a massive diatribe about xenophobic, elitist, thorny, hostile JP players, with some people who supposedly spoke Japanese jumping in to "translate" the JP users' statements into something that verified the original assumption. In actuality, they didn't speak JP at all. They made it up. Or they only barely spoke JP, and filled in the blanks with their own imaginations. What the JP player actually said was that there was a sudden emergency in his family, and he needed to log out. In the polite tense. With apologies. But by that point, the thread was so self-absorbed in righteous indignation that they didn't want to hear it. Taking what is a simple misunderstanding in phrasing and arguing backwards, all the way through centuries of history to make sweeping statements like "Japan is a closed society," with some stroke of finality as though you're qualified to define an entire nation in one sentence, is itself just as racist as what you're accusing other people of.

Seen this a few times in this forum.. But all I really seen is lame *** excuses for a country that is occupied by a lot American civilians and military AND has ENGLISH as a second language.

BTW, NAs, stop talking "Most of us are *** idiots" and "We're all rude" I'm sure JP have their rude, their foolish, and their crooked, but they don't group themselves all in with those people. Quit bringing us all down with the "bad" in our society. JP are just like NA, only they speak a different language and live in a different place. If you don't like how your fellow Americans are, become a mentor, a teacher, or a counselor and help prevent it.

Well other countries see us as pigs, why not agree with them? since its true

Well other countries see us as pigs, why not agree with them? since its true

Speak for yourself >_> Just because there's a lot of idiots within the USA doesn't mean we're all idiots.

BTW, I never noticed, but is Jae actually JP? He speaks English better than most Americans 'talk american', and I think I've seen him actually translate from JP to Eng and Eng to JP. Just curious.

My post wasn't an invitation to bash NA players either. If we're going to be against racism, we need to be internally consistent, and turning that around and saying things like "NA players are arrogant and self-centered" isn't the answer either.

I'm a white guy that grew up in Japan, so I'm dual-native with a weird hybrid of loyalties.

It's not a race issue it's a language barrier issue.

Not only that, but what if when the other side responded to you, the translation was so bad that "Please invite me" came out as "Please stick it in?" (That's the actual JP version of that autotrans token, by the way.)

{Please invite me.} turns into "Please stick it in" on the Japanese client..? o.o;

There's also a tech issue, here. Because of the way Japanese input is done through the IME in multiple conversion stages, the "auto-complete" feature of the auto-trans is unreliable and often useless.

NA players: imagine if you had to actually type out "Thanks for the offer, but I'll have to pass." every time before you could hit Tab and tokenize it as autotrans? And if you missed the comma, or the period, or the capitalization, it wouldn't recognize it?

What if it wasn't even that? What if it was subtly awkward or bad grammar because it was written by Japanese developers, and you have to remember to not just type it perfectly, but remember it's actually "The offer is my thanks, but passing on this I will have to accomplish?"

Would you be wild about using it? Probably not. And what would be your reaction if Japanese players called you "lazy" and "racist" for not doing so?