Sentacotus Posted March 22, 2015 Share Posted March 22, 2015 Genuinely curious question that I've had on my mind for the longest time and I only thought to ask after flipping through my copies of Knights of Iris and DNA Awakening Magnas. Why is it that Japanese books or texts often have English mixed in. Not neccessarily in the main body but for instance on the title or sections and subsections of the book? Hell the DNA Awakening Magnas actually have a full blown intro/description written in English on the front. The only reason I can figure is that English aside from maybe French is a universal language used for trade and commerce. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shadowofchaos Posted March 22, 2015 Share Posted March 22, 2015 Because Business. Look at Iwata speaking fluent English. And maybe just for flair. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lonelyVoxel Posted March 22, 2015 Share Posted March 22, 2015 Quite a few early Japanese video games happen to be in English pretty much exclusively to save space. It could be that, or that English is the standard language for coding, at least from what I've seen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thor Odinson Posted March 22, 2015 Share Posted March 22, 2015 (edited) I did a google on non-english based programming languages and the ones in japanese, at least, seems to be not particularly targetted towards efficient game production, so English being the dominant language in programming is definitely a thing that exists. Whether the programming language of choice influenced the actual game content in being partially english, I cannot say, but I can say that Ascii takes up less space than Unicode, which is possibly a contributor. Edited March 22, 2015 by Thor Odinson Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sentacotus Posted March 24, 2015 Author Share Posted March 24, 2015 Because Business. Look at Iwata speaking fluent English. And maybe just for flair. I figured as much I was just wondering if there was another reason to it. I guess I get why they put the title in both languages but even sizable parts of the main text are as well so I just wonder why they wouldn't just go and make an English version of it. I get there are costs associated with it but its like if you print like 1/8th-1/4th (probably an exaggeration there) of the book in English anyways why not the full one? Quite a few early Japanese video games happen to be in English pretty much exclusively to save space. It could be that, or that English is the standard language for coding, at least from what I've seen. Yeah that would seem to explain it for programs and games and such and if English was the standard language for coding I would not be suprised I could not imagine what programming in something like Japanese or Chinese would be like. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Esau of Isaac Posted March 25, 2015 Share Posted March 25, 2015 Genuinely curious question that I've had on my mind for the longest time and I only thought to ask after flipping through my copies of Knights of Iris and DNA Awakening Magnas. Why is it that Japanese books or texts often have English mixed in. Not neccessarily in the main body but for instance on the title or sections and subsections of the book? Hell the DNA Awakening Magnas actually have a full blown intro/description written in English on the front. The only reason I can figure is that English aside from maybe French is a universal language used for trade and commerce. Japanese are generally raised with a fair command of the English language, like most modern nations, for obvious reasons. They make use of many English loanwords, so you'll often see buzzwords and such in ads and texts all the time. In addition, English can be seen somewhat to have a bold flair in imagery, in some way similar to the way that kanji seems mystic and stands out to English speakers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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