Leaderboard

I've recently been in the mood for reading some fanfiction for some anime that I used to watch, and I can't help grimacing when at the amount of fics that are riddled with Japanese words inserted into English sentences-- Japanese words that have perfectly acceptable equivalent words in English, and yet the author chooses to use them in their fics anyway. Examples of these words are: urusai, baka, sugoi, hai, gomen, etc. I just don't understand. Do they think it's cool to include these words? Do they think having these words makes their fic look more authentic or something? I mean, most of the time, these words they choose to use have loads of alternative English words that carry the same tone or meaning, so it isn't really a matter of something being lost in translation. At the very least, if they're going to use Japanese words, they might as well write the whole line in Japanese, rather than saying something like, "Gomen, for yelling at you." orz Though, what's even more painful is when authors write the whole sentence in Japanese, but the grammar, etc. is all wrong. I once encountered a fic where the author sometimes releases 2 versions of a chapter-- one with the English dialogue, and the other in Japanese. The latter was more of broken Japanese at best, and made me want to bang my head on the desk. Repeatedly. orz I can somewhat accept it if there's a disclaimer of sorts that says that the author doesn't really know Japanese. However, there are those who know some basic Japanese grammar, and think that it's enough to write a decent Japanese dialogue. Evidently, they don't know much colloquial Japanese, because all they succeeded in doing was making their characters sound flat. Is a fic that's not in Japanglish too much to ask? Sometimes, I wish there was a 'No Japanglish here' sign or something, just so I know which ones to skip.

Couldn't agree more. It makes me want to punch them through the monitor.