Today I enjoyed a rebroadcast of the iCarly “movie”, or long episode called “iGo to Japan”. As a father of kids the right age, I can appreciate the physical and irreverent humor. Besides, Harry Shum Jr. of Glee fame and more importantly of “The LXD” fame, made a guest appearance.
I’m a big fan of silly pop culture shows as well as fine films and, having been raised on Bugs Bunny cartoons and Star Blazers, I can suspend disbelief with the best of them. A barber chair that can rise to the moon? I’m good. The A-Team helping people while on the run for a crime they didn’t commit? How can I contact them? All the insanity that happened in Hazzard County, Georgia? That’s how I learned how to drive!
As a result, shows that misrepresent Japan on American tv don’t bother me that much. Intentional misrepresentations for comic effect can be lots of fun, but hopefully a little bit of truth finds its way into the discourse as well.
While “iGo to Japan” is pretty far off, it IS iCarly so I didn’t have high hopes. I can live with a massage parlor in which people are wrapped in nori like maki-sushi, the car steering wheels on the left side, and all of the other misrepresentations. I feel the same way in Japan when they misrepresent the U.S. It’s wrong, and I hope that most thoughtful people know better than to take it as the truth, but it’s all in good fun as well.
The Japanese language used in iCarly actually consisted of a bit of good slang even where the actors’ pronunciation made it hard to understand. I have no doubt there was a native speaker of Japanese or a very high level non-native speaker on hand. One joke in particular, when Spencer (Carly’s older brother) says to one of the guards, “Omae no okaasan debeso.” I would be surprised if there were even a handful of people raised outside of Japan would use. (The phrase is just a silly one used to make fun of someone and literally just means “Your mom has an outie belly button!” As I said, just a silly way of making fun of someone.)
The reason I decided to take time write about the show however is some of the slang used, actually one word in particular.
The word that bothered me is “kichigai”. It’s a word you may hear spoken in conversations in Japan. It’s not, however, a nice word. You also will not hear it spoken on proper tv because it’s among the words considered “sabetsu yogo”, or a discriminatory slur not to be used in the mass media.
In iCarly, a girl turned to her brother and yelled “kichigai” as an angry response. Viewers who don’t speak Japanese, or have only a passing knowledge may not have noticed it, but every member of our family was a bit surprised at hearing the term on tv, even American tv. Someone with a passing or more casual knowledge of Japanese, or a person with Japanese language skills who is a bit out of touch with the culture might use this term to mean “crazy person”. In fact, Google Translate will tell you that “kichigai” in Japanese means “fruit loop” in English with no mention of the danger of offending people by using the term.
The truth, however, is that “kichigai” and its cousin “ki ga chigau” are terms that are considered to be discriminatory against the mentally ill or people with other emotional disabilities. The English word “retard” that has a similar meaning and discriminatory nature. There is currently a campaign to end use of the “r-word” as well.
It would be very easy for the writers to have gone with something like “oniichan no baka”, meaning “stupid brother”, or something similar instead. There are plenty of cute or funny or even mean-sounding insults that could have been used. “Kichigai” is the wrong one, and illustrates the need for translators to stay current, have cultural knowledge, and also keep a finger on current events and pop cultures of both languages.
At least some of the audience will know enough Japanese to be shocked to hear that word spoken so clearly on a kids’ tv show, and I that people learning Japanese won’t think it’s an acceptable word to use in polite conversation. Interestingly, “baka” which is often described as a “bad word” in Japanese, is used regularly on tv shows in Japan, though care should be taken not to offend people when using it. It literally means “foolish”, but doesn’t discriminate against a particular group of people the way that ‘kichigai” does.
A translator, localization specialist, or intercultural consultant should know the dangers of stepping over the “sabetsu yogo” line. “Kichigai” is just one of many words in Japan that are not to be used on television because of the bad sides of their meaning, and there’s no reason not to avoid using it on tv outside of Japan as well. I expect people writing or translating Japanese for mass media to be aware of this. As I mentioned above, there are plenty of other, more appropriate and even linguistically accurate options that will get the same amount of laughs without being offensive to the only people who would understand it.