
10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki - Ultramanoid
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ondemand/video/3004594/
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Ultramanoid
... Or Miyazaki Hayao ( 宮崎駿 ) as we would say over here, and the government
wants foreign media to start saying as well.

 _An exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at legendary Japanese animator and
director Hayao Miyazaki. For a decade, he allowed a single documentary
filmmaker to shadow him._

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burfog
If word order is to be unchanged now, let's start doing that with the rest of
the words, eh? Sentences can be translated word-for-word without regard for
the sentence ordering conventions... or maybe this isn't such a good idea.

~~~
Ultramanoid
Recent discussion :

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19970922](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19970922)

Personally I don't see a reason not to do it, as it is done for Chinese and
Korean names. Japanese name order in foreign media is the outlier.

Nobody in Western media writes or says Jinping Xi.

~~~
burfog
Those aren't universal rules. I knew a man by the name of Moon Kim, originally
from Korea but then a US citizen.

We change name order for the same reason that we change the order of anything
else in a sentence. Partial translation creates confusion.

~~~
Ultramanoid
Doing it for some languages and not others is inconsistent and certainly
confusing as well, if said languages share the same cultural conventions when
it comes to people's names, as it is the case here.

Again, having the Japanese following Western rules instead of their own as an
exception compared to Chinese, Korean, etc, makes no sense. If we're arguing
for adapting to Western order, then do it for the Chinese and others too.

~~~
burfog
What I'm saying is that yes, we do switch name order for Korean. Maybe I met a
weirdo, but he was from Korea and he did put his given name before his family
name ("Moon" can be either) when living in the USA.

~~~
Ultramanoid
Of course. And so do Japanese living in the U.S., Germany or South Africa. Or
Taiwanese in Spain or Canada. They live in another country, under its laws.

No Japanese in Japan, or Korean in Korea, or Chinese in China, or Taiwanese in
Taiwan does put family name second. Nor the foreign media when speaking of
them, be they leaders, politicians, artists, or plain citizens that make the
news. And no media in the world refers to Xi Jinping as Jinping Xi. Or to Tsai
Ingwen as Ingwen Tsai, Moon Jaein as Jaein Moon, etc.

Yet they will say Shinzo Abe instead of Abe Shinzo. Why this extraordinary
exception ? Does not make much sense, if any. Translate all names or translate
none.

Edit : Fun fact; if a foreign born person becomes a naturalized Japanese, they
will have to adopt a Japanese name ( could be simply some sort of
transliteration of their original name ) and it will be always legally
displayed in Japanese order, family name first.

