Cross-cultural communication （50）　

50）Who do you tell what? Foreign words are not a fashion!
I was watching a morning TV show when they were reporting on the 'Doctor Heli'. This is a helicopter that doctors ride in and fly to the scene of an emergency, and in Japan it is abbreviated to 'Doctor Heli' and seems to be commonly referred to as such. Since this is a common practice in Japan, there is nothing wrong with writing it in katakana and understanding it among Japanese people. When the image of the helicopter appeared, it had the words 'Doctor Heli' written in large letters in English on the fuselage. Who is this message in English directed at?　English-speaking people don't abbreviate the word helicopter to heli. When they do abbreviate it, they take the second half and call it copter. Well, if you're an English-speaking person with at least a little bit of common sense, you'd probably understand that Doctor Heli is a helicopter with a doctor on board, but I don't understand the intention behind writing Doctor Heli in the Latin alphabet. If you're going to use an abbreviation that is only used in Japan, wouldn't it be more appropriate to write it in katakana? If you're targeting people who can't read katakana but can read the alphabet, then it's pointless unless you write it in a way that they can understand. All over the country, “Doctor Heli” is flying around with this English-style logo, at considerable expense. I think that at the very least, this slightly embarrassing misuse could have been prevented if they had just asked a few native English speakers for their opinions before deciding on it officially.

Similar things, i.e. incorrect English or French written in the alphabet, can often be seen when walking around town. Once, I saw a sign for a cafe in the building of Shin-Osaka Station, which is the face of Osaka's Shinkansen, that read “Nouvelle Cafe something”. Since “Cafe” is a masculine noun, it should be “Nouveau Cafe”. This is another mistake that could have been prevented by simply asking a French person or a Japanese person familiar with French. Even if you write it in katakana, there is a difference in pronunciation between Nouvelle Cafe and Nouveau Cafe, so the mistake would be obvious. Every time I passed by the shop, I thought about telling the staff about it, but I decided not to because I thought they might think I was being nosy. Before I knew it, there was a large-scale renovation project at Shin-Osaka Station, and the cafe had disappeared.
Riding the wave of globalization, it's not a good idea to write everything in English. If you do write in English, please make sure that what you write is correct.

| BACK |