BillyClark

As a person with a long history of intermittent insomnia, I had this bad feeling last night that I’d not be able to go to sleep no matter what.

So, I did what I normally do in those situations, which is probably not the right thing, by the way. I stayed up and tried to distract myself until I forgot about that thought. It usually eventually works, but last night, I couldn’t seem to forget the thought, and at about 4:30 am, I was so tired that I thought I should be able to fall asleep, regardless.

And I did fall asleep, but I think it was around 6. In retrospect, I should have just taken some medicine at midnight.

The style of interface invented at Xerox PARC in 1973 (and almost certainly used by you if you’re viewing this on a Linux computer) is called WIMP, for “Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer.” Microsoft just stole the name.

it’s important to have verifiable studies to cite in arguments for policy, law, etc.

It’s also important to have for its own merit. Sometimes, people have strong intuitions about “obvious” things, and they’re completely wrong. Without science studying things, it’s “obvious” that the sun goes around the Earth, for example.

I don’t need a formal study to tell me that drinking 12 cans of soda a day is bad for my health.

Without those studies, you cannot know whether it’s bad for your health. You can assume it’s bad for your health. You can believe it’s bad for your health. But you cannot know. These aren’t bad assumptions or harmful beliefs, by the way. But the thing is, you simply cannot know without testing.

The primary reason that I’d put forward is that Japanese people place a lot of importance on social hierarchy, to the point that even between twins, it’s important to know which is the older sibling. Because it’s used in everyday conversation and in referring to one another (although not quite as much with twins, I just brought that up for emphasis).

The point is that the Japanese version of these words are used a lot more and have a lot of extra meaning compared to the English phrase “Big Brother”. So, it’s actually a worse fit. Japanese people use enough English loanwords that they probably understand the English phrase, anyways. So, the meaning gets through without the extra unintended baggage from the translation.

It’s one of the many pitfalls of translation. Often, there are words that mean “the same thing”, but they still aren’t the right words because either the extra connotations in the original language or the extra connotations in the target language can throw off the translation.

I think the Japanese translation is fortunate that, in this case, the Japanese language already has so many English loanwords… although I’m not sure whether that was exactly the same case when the book was first translated. It was published in 1948, I think. My recollection is that the English loanword boom started after WW2, so that would be somewhat contemporary.

“-chan” is a diminutive suffix that indicates affection when used. These two factors mean it would never be used in the context of Big Brother.

Even with little knowledge, you should at least come up with alternatives like nii-san, onii-san, onii, nii-sama, etc. Those still wouldn’t work well. I’d think that a lot of people would also think of aniki, which is getting closer. But it’s definitely the best option to just to what they actually did and just use the English “big brother” like a loan word.