This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
With the increased usage of ChatGPT and other aislop in everyday communication such as casual emails and slack messages, AI apologists have increasingly tried to excuse this usage by non-native English speakers(citation needed, but besides the point). The excuse being that for non-native speakers, AI usage can save time, or even increase the quality of the resulting writing. I want to argue this is actually the opposite, and that using AI output particularly and exceptionally corrosive when used by non-English speakers.
I came across this section(plaintext transcription in below comment) of a YT video, where an intermediate level English learner is trying to use ChatGPT improve a piece of writing, and also learn from it. (source video, not important). Here’s the catch ChatGPT’s output is just plain bad
Overall, my issues with ChatGPT for this use case can be broken down into three main problems:
Let’s go over the main revisions point by point
stunning -> absolutely mind-blowing - Stunning is already quite a strong adjective and ChatGPT is overdoing it. OK edit.
I commented -> I typed in the comments - Absolutely a bad edit. More wordy for no more meaning, and the original English is more true to the original Japanese.
Moreover -> Not only that - Moreover is perfect here. Bad edit.
Em dash - not called for here. AI tell.
reacted really disgusting me -> actually reacted - This seriously changes the meaning, taking away a major element of the storytelling. Bad edit.
I’m in a heaven right now -> I’m in heaven - I’m in heaven right now is emphasis. Bad edit.
It was a peaceful and amazing moment in my life -> That one moment was pure peace and bliss. Probably one of the best highlights of my life. - Deemphasized and wordified into two sentences. A better version would easily be “It was the most peaceful and amazing moment in my life”. Bad edit.
And also, the most excited thing is -> And the most exciting part is still ahead. - AI slop tell. Bad edit.
I could die there -> nothing - ChatGPT just took that out completely!!!! WFT!!!!
I really wanna support her live too. -> I really, truly want to support her with everything I’ve got. - “really, truly” came out of nowhere and the double emphasis with “with everything I’ve got” is odd. Bad edit.
Imagine that live I feel like drinking her bath water. -> Just thinking about that live … feels like I could drink her bathwater. - This one is totally lost. Basic context clues and cultural knowledge make it clear that the narrator already wants to drink gamer girl bathwater irregardless of any live. The correct edit would be “When I imagine that live, I feel like I’m drinking her bathwater” or “Imagining that live feels like drinking her bathwater.” The original English is closer to correct than ChatGPT and the correct meaning can be inferred.
Of course ChatGPT can probably be made to produce better outputs with better prompting, or used differently, but this is just one of many examples where ChatGPT usage by a casual user has actually made things worse.
Now what's the point of this post? First I would like to urge everyone not to use GenAI outputs in the final work, even for edits. Using AI as a judge is probably fine, but the best way to maintain quality is probably write all of the final text in your own words. Even for people without perfect English. Secondly, with all levels of society using or even abusing AI tools, it may increase productivity by some metrics, it will also be like an enshittification of all written communication.
We've seen an increasing number of complaints enter the discourse about foreign immigrants with weak English skills just being annoying to deal with in everyday life. And I've also had similar experiences, where dealing with a fresh off the boat foreigner has been an annoyance when ordering food or asking a simple question - and also where hiring an American would have only costed a tiny bit more. Well now AI slop is going to provide a double whammy - lazy or misguided native speakers are going to enshittify their own communication with slop, and also foreigners will have their English learning impeded, and the English they do write will be worse.
Interestingly @RandomRanger cited a video in another thread that's an unintentional example of this. It's an Avatar compilation video titled "Hardest RDA Edit" where 'hard' is used to mean based/awesome/woah. My browser mistranslated that to "[Most Difficult] RDA Edit' i.e. 最も難しい RDA 編集.
If GPT is given both the title and the summary (which Youtube could do internally with their API) it gives the much better translations "Max strength RDA edit" 史上最強RDA編集 or "Most villainous RDA edit" 最凶RDA編集. In general I find GPT much better on language problems than they are on almost any other task, and miles better than standard machine translation.
The translation of "edit" as 編集 also feels iffy to me - I haven't seen that word used in the nominal sense for a product of editing, but only in the verbal sense for the act of editing. The term that JP net culture uses for these sorts of videos is MAD, or if you are okay with dropping any connotation that the clips were modified as opposed to just stuck together, you could stick with just 編 or even 編成動画 (compilation video).
"Hardest" feels borderline untranslatable, with its simultaneous connotation that the edit itself "goes hard" and that it makes the RDA look hard. It's actually serendipitous that 最強 works as well as it does - I couldn't think of anything that would work as well in German.
I like 最凶 better - you get the pun on さいきょう and also the slightly evil connotation.
Good to know, I thought the M stood for music and it was the same as an AMV.
Fair, if you want that connotation it's not a bad choice.
This line of discussion got me thinking a little about how strange a word edit is to begin with. Following the Latin roots, it really should just denote the act of releasing a text (e(x) + dare = give out), and there is plenty of semantic overlap between editor and publisher so that this connotation isn't gone, but somehow along the way it has acquired the overwhelming meaning of modifying something which I guess any sufficiently micromanagerial publisher has to do. Either way, in English this etymology is now pretty opaque, so edit is generally tied to this perception of some modification being involved - though there is also the expression "to edit [2+ things] together" which is rather in line with the thing below.
On the other hand, the suggested translation as 編集 (which indeed is the canonical JP name of the "Edit" UI element, as well as the job of a magazine editor) suggests a much more light-touch process of editing/publishing - it is made up from 編 "weave" (with both the literal meaning and a metaphorical interpretation as in "weaving a tale" going way back) and 集 "collect", suggesting an act of finding the right pieces and stringing them together skillfully, and this etymology is completely transparent. Meanwhile, there is an absolute overabundance of words that instead capture the modificatory aspects of editing, with subtle differences - 変更 (change+replace=modify), 調整 (tune+arrange=adjust, fix, tweak), 訂正 (correct+right=correct), 改変 (alter+change, with possible slightly negative connotations), 改訂 (alter+correct, with positive connotations)...
Part of this is that JP has a much more recent reification period, right? IIRC, the Meiji Era government basically had an explicit taskforce sitting down and deciding how to translate scientific, literary and other types of words into kanji in a way that was clear and useable. Thus 編集, 銀行、糖尿病、etc. as well as the creation of new pronouns such as かれ.
British English hasn't had such a process and the Americans were focused on other matters, so they're much more evolutionary. and the evolutionary process is what gives us the various masterpieces that @phailyoor has kindly provided for our, um, edification.
For 編集, at least, kotobank has citations from a 13th-century Zen Buddhist tractate ("Historians may 編集 this into an example of [some form of meditation]..."), and a 1656 translation that evidently uses the "compilation"-editing meaning ("Having resolved to do so in last year's spring, [I?] 編集 a 20-volume book called Shinpi Ketsudanshou").
edit: I also want to dispute the novelty of かれ as a pronoun. It's simply an older (perhaps regional? I have little intuition for what just fell out of prestige language use due to the west->east power shift) form of あれ that slots regularly into the this-that(close)-that(far)-which determiner pattern: これ・それ・あれ（かれ）・だれ, この・その・あの（かの）・どの, こなた・そなた・あなた（かなた）・どなた. If you have any exposure to period-drama or fake-oldtimesey speech, you might have heard かのもの with a very emphatically up-pitched か for "that person". It didn't take long to find an example of かれ being used as a personal pronoun all the way back in the Tale of Genji.
I bow to your superior knowledge. I was told that 彼 and 彼女 as gendered pronouns were an innovation to allow translating European works into grammatical Japanese, but perhaps it's not so or it was a minor twist on an established usage.
Eh, I think it is probably correct that かのじょ is an innovation! To begin with, it's an awkward mixed kun-on reading that just makes it look more pronominal over the natural かのおんな which is really just that woman, and there is no reason to believe かれ or あれ should originally be gendered - indeed, in the Genji quote it refers to a female character (Lady Kiritsubo), and in deliberately old-fashioned speech you still find lots of examples of あれ referring to females.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link