Quote:
|
Originally Posted by pjwolf I sent the t-shirt pic to a friend in Japan....she said it says "bass/base".....I talked to her on the phone a minute ago & asked "could that refer to a bass guitar?" she said yes....home base, base of operations, bass guitar.....depending on how you use it. |
This is exactly why unless you want to have meaningless gibberish on your t-shirt or arm you should always talk to at very least one native speaker and better yet 5 or 10.
Either putting just simply ベース or 低音 on something and expecting it to make much sense to a native speaker doesn't make much sense to me.
As I've said before you're probably going to have a better chance of getting something that sounds cool to a Japanese speaker if you don't start off thinking in English.
In other words, ask a native speaker how they would word something, rather than putting the words in their mouth.
Japanese are very likely to give an answer based on what they think you want to hear and will oftentimes say that, sure, it'll work, when actuallly it doesn't.
Want to have a t-shirt made up; have a phrase put on instead of just a singular word.
Not necessarily a suggestion but for example making a play on a set of words that most Japanese would recognize from a radio show in which people talk about things they shouldn't do (often in a wink, wink fashion) but can't stop could be;
わかっちゃるけど、只今ベースが好きだ！ which if translated directly to English would sound fairly pathetic, but if delivered properly could sound quite hilarious within the context of a Japanese conversation.
My ability with both spoken and written Japanese is not as good possibly as some others here but one thing I'm most often complimented on is my natural use of the language and sense of word usage, especially pertaining to making jokes.
Still I would talk to at least a few of my friends who know how much I hate poor translations and ones that don't come close to saying what the speaker wanted to say before I would put something in writing.
Last year I made up a sign that said 立入り禁止 because I've seen it so much in Japan where they don't want anyone to come in.
Three Japanese looked at it and said it was perfect before I asked second time to the one I trusted most and he admitted it seemed overly harsh, especially since we deal with tourists.
What he ended up editing for me was this 関係者以外は御遠慮下さい, which basically says "Unless you've got business in here please don't enter" compared to the first ones "Stay Out".
