Chūgoku

How did Yahoo come to render the name of the Chugoku Expressway (a motorway in western Japan) into English as China Road?

Some 14 cars in all were involved in the chain-reaction crash on an expressway named China Road in Yamaguchi prefecture, leaving 10 people with minor injuries.

The name Chūgoku (中国) in Japanese refers both to the country China and to a region of western Japan. In both cases, the literal meaning is middle country (or kingdom); in the latter, that’s a reflection of the fact that Japanese culture was historically centred a bit further west than it is now.

But isn’t that confusing? Not really; the context is usually clear enough, though the tourism industry is a notable exception. It’s no worse than having Georgia refer to both a state of the US and a country in the Caucasus: in practice, it’s rarely an issue.

Here’s coverage of the same incident from a Japanese newspaper:

山口県下関市の中国自動車道で４日に発生した高級スポーツカーなど１４台が絡んだ事故で、１４台のうち８台がフェラーリ、１台はランボルギーニ、３台はベンツ、２台はトヨタ車で、自動車販売店などによると、フェラーリとランボルギーニの車体価格は約１６００万～３０００万円台で、総額２億円程度とみられる。

In this instance, the road in question is called 中国自動車道 (chūgoku jidōshadō), usually and officially given in English as Chugoku Expressway. You could translate it literally as China Car Road, but that would be wrong. Moreover, you’d have to be able to read Japanese without actually knowing anything about the geography and culture of the country. My hypothesis is that someone put a Japanese article through an automatic translator and tidied up the English.

2011-12-06 01:29 UTC. Comments: 0.

Merry October!

Hearing that the Christmas decorations have already gone up in Oxford Street has given me an idea for how we could resist the annual months-long assault on taste and decency. It’s a very simple idea. More…

2011-10-15 19:52 UTC. Comments: 0.

Banking is hard

I recently signed up for email notification of my credit card bill. I received my first ‘Payment Due’ email a few days ago, and—well, let’s just say that it’s not entirely accurate: More…

2011-10-12 07:21 UTC. Comments: 1.

Working for the Man

Tomorrow is the start of my second week at my new job, working for the Government. Working for the Man. Maybe we are the Man. It’s probably different from what you might expect: I still don’t wear a suit to go to work, for example. So far, I’m really enjoying it. More…

2011-09-25 19:16 UTC. Comments: 4.

Recreating Club-Mate

I first tried Club-Mate at Metalab in Vienna in 2006, but I hadn’t drunk it again until I was in Berlin last month for Euruko 2011, where it was freely available. Over the course of a weekend, I grew to like it. It’s a German soft drink brewed from yerba mate, and it’s popular with hacker types in Germany. There is a UK importer who sells it by mail order, but as it’s a bit expensive and inconvenient, I thought I’d attempt to recreate the drink. More…

2011-06-19 21:36 UTC. Comments: 1.

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