While working as a translator, Sachiko, a friend of mine, hired a British woman, "Ms. B," as a proofreader for her team. Ms. B is fluent in Japanese and her job was to proofread documents translated by Sachiko's team members into English. Ms. B often came late and failed to correct spelling and grammatical mistakes. But her biggest problem was she never admitted to making such failures. Ms. J, a translator of Sachiko's team, is a Japanese woman. As she spent many years in an English spoken country, she was fluent in English.
One day, Ms. J asked Ms. B to proofread her translation and send it back in an hour, which, Ms. J thought, was enough for Ms. B to proofread it, considering her high quality translation. Thirty minutes later, the document hadn't come back. Forty minutes later, the document still hadn't been back. And when one hour had passed, Ms. J started to peek at Ms. B. Seventy minutes later, she finally received the proofread translation. She reviewed and sent it back to the client and reported the completion of the task to Sachiko. But after that, she didn't go back to her work. Instead, she went to Ms. B's place and told her to keep the deadline. Ms. B, being proud of her own proofreading ability, said that she couldn't make it because of the poor quality of the translation, to which Ms. J talked back and it went on and on.....Sachiko had to step in.
A few minutes later, Ms. J was back to her place when Sachiko heard Ms. B saying "iya na onna." It was a murmur, but clear enough for Sachiko to hear. It literally means "an obnoxious woman," but in Sachiko's brain, was translated automatically to "bxxxh!" Sachiko turned around and found, thank God, that Ms. J hadn't heard it. Sachiko sometimes remembers this, but still believes that the translation of "iya na onna" to "bxxxx" was correct.
Hi! I'm Kei Narujima. This is a blog about flowers/plants🌼and bugs🐛, and sometimes art and unique Japanese culture that make you smile or think (or so I hope)!! こんにちは。花や虫、そして時々日本の文化などについて書いてます😊。税務英語については https://zeimueigo.blogspot.com/ をご覧ください。
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