It’s been reported on now such that the term has stuck, so yes I understand that pro-china people will also be using the same term so they can talk about the same thing, pro-china reporters may also not be gamers and not have known that more ‘natural’ (non-direct) translation already exists in English, but in the earliest instances when it hadn’t yet made the jump across to widestream western reporting, choices were made to keep the awkward term ‘kill line’ rather than localise it. There were commentators like me who said ‘kill line’ is unnatural. In the instances of pro-china people I do not imagine that they would wilfully translate something awkward maliciously, but I don’t give the same benefit of the doubt to western msm who would have only been a step or so behind, if not learning at the same pace.

It’s one of those things where yes, by the time it blows up it’s hard to say ‘Hey you’re translating this kinda wrong’ but by then it’s too late and it’s stuck

Yeah I know, the term kill line isn’t used by s at all and the china watching ‘journos’ either can’t translate for shit, or didn’t do enough research into gamer culture to find or understand a localised term. They could have even looked to shooters or other games where 1hp/one shot/one hit (from death) or similar would also have been oka and broadly understood. So the choice of the awkward term is deliberate.

There’s also a phenomenon where Chinese netizens may translate their own terms into English in a bit of a deliberately playful or slapdash manner, mostly for fun (e.g. good good study, day day up and the western reporting just picks that up and runs with it as the ‘serious’ translation (see the ‘lie flat’ movement) or use an extremely accurate but technical and alienating term (see ‘involution’).

Basically western reporting will settle on the translation that ‘others’ the phenomenon or concept by making it seem infantile or esoteric. It’s the ‘acceptable’ mockery of Chinglish for respectable publications like the NYT.

(Compare this to, for example, Forbes introducing, and explaining the term ‘karoshi’ 加劳死 ‘death from overwork’

But karoshi goes unspoken in the U.S. because the English language has no word for it.

We DO have a word for it. It’s death from overwork. Our language doesn’t work like german or japanese where we can slam so many nouns together to make infinitely long composite nouns, we add a space every now and again, so where they have ‘one’ word (which is really add + work + death) we have three ‘words’

“Oh the inscrutable Japanese with their beautiful, tortured, unique untranslateable culture, we have to treat it respectfully by not translating the term into mundane English so we will use the romaji karoshi throughout the text.”

Go figure, thanks for that. CGTN should hire me as a consultant.

I guess my working theory/axe to grind, is that western reportage on China will wilfuly keep or use awkward translations where they can without giving proper explanation. Western reporters are also perfectly capable of doing their own research and proposing their own translations or localisation within their writing.

See my comments below with how Forbes deals with the word ‘karoshi’ from Japanese (sharing because it’s related to stress, precarity, death and economics)

(Compare this to, for example, Forbes introducing, and explaining the term ‘karoshi’ 加劳死 ‘death from overwork’

But karoshi goes unspoken in the U.S. because the English language has no word for it.

We DO have a word for it. It’s death from overwork. Our language doesn’t work like german or japanese where we can slam so many nouns together to make infinitely long composite nouns, we add a space every now and again, so where they have ‘one’ word (which is really add + work + death) we have three ‘words’

“Oh the inscrutable Japanese with their beautiful, tortured, unique untranslateable culture, we have to treat it respectfully by not translating the term into mundane English so we will use the romaji karoshi throughout the text.”

Not only do they refuse to translate it, the article gives ample explanation. Japanese words are often kept in romaji elevated and exoticised*, while Chinese words are deliberately translated into clunky english and ridiculed

I’m sure you’ve noticed it before, its ‘thing, place 😐 thing Japan 😍’ through translation

*A recent IRL example I had was walking through a park with my brother, and there was a sign talking about the Japanese word komorebi and it’s all like ‘english has no word for this phenomenon’ ooo’ and I was like bullshit, we have the word ‘dappled light’ and if you want to get technical you can say ‘dappled light through leaves’ and a coworker who was explaining how ‘ganbatte’ was a unique Japanese concept (like other people don’t cheer people on in other countries)

t/n nakama means friend buzzfeed 16 untranslateable words from japanese (#7 will SHOCK you) ‘inuits have 42 words for snow’

I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:

• yewtu.be
• inv.nadeko.net
• yt.artemislena.eu
• piped.video

similar to the taking for granted that comes up in those interviews with residents of the

people in the eastern bloc had little notion of the true depravity of capitalism.

I remember 1989 in Poland where people were excited they will finally get all this colorful shit they seen in USA movies, but they were completely aghast when they were noticing capitalism is taking from them all they took for granted in socialism - jobs, savings, safety, etc etc. They have zero notion what really is capitalism and they didn’t believed state media which told them so.

Unfortunately it was too late since by this point everything was already in the hands of compradors and their beloved solidarność turned out to be (always was and still is) CIA tool to subvert and destroy workers power and organization in Poland.