Japanese TV broadcasts with subtitles ... in Japanese

Factual Questions
1

I’ve been watching a lot of video clips (on YouTube) of various Japanese pop singers, and I’ve noticed something puzzling. When an artist is giving a performance on Japanese television, the song is almost always subtitled in Japanese. I find myself wondering … why? Why do they use Japanese subtitles for a Japanese singer singing a Japanese song to a Japanese audience?

(Note: I see this specifically on TV broadcasts. The subtitles are not present on clips ripped from live concert DVDs. I assume this is because the TV broadcast will likely be viewed by some people who have not heard the song before, while purchasers of the live concert DVD are likely to already be familiar with the material.)

Thinking about it before asking the question (as I’m wont to do), I’ve formulated a couple of theories:

#1: The Simple Explanation

The subtitles are there to relate the lyrics in written form, to compensate for different regional dialects.

#2: The Complicated Answer

I don’t speak Japanese, but I have a rudimentary understanding of some of the concepts (read: I made a futile attempt to teach myself the language using books, and so had some things explained to me). One of those concepts is that spoken Japanese has a steady rhythm. Every syllable is given the same duration, whereas in English some syllables are longer than others. That kind of rhythm goes out the window when the words are sung, at least in modern music (what little “traditional” Japanese music I’ve heard has tended to be of the one-note-per-syllable variety, with each note having the same duration).

This doesn’t make a whole lot of difference in a European language, because most of the syllables that make up multi-syllabic words are meaningless by themselves. You’ve got a prefix and/or a suffix plus whatever comes between. A spoken European language is comprised of discrete sounds combined in every way imaginable. However, some of the syllables made from those sounds only ever appear at the end of a word, and some only appear at the beginning of a word.

Japanese, on the other hand, is based upon syllables. There are a limited number of syllables available, and every word in the language is constructed by arranging selected syllables in a particular order. And for the most part (as near as I can tell, anyway), any syllable may appear anywhere in a word. Example: the city name, “Tokyo” is comprised of the syllables “to” and “kyo”, and was (allegedly) created by simply reversing the two syllables of the older city name “Kyoto” (kyo + to).

As I mentioned, in spoken Japanese, all syllables are given equal duration. One of the books I read while trying to learn the language, in fact, said that if, while speaking Japanese, I start giving some syllables longer durations, and some syllables shorter duration, I was going to be incomprehensible to the average native Japanese speaker, even if I was otherwise using the correct words and grammar.

So, taking the above observations regarding the positioning of syllables within words and duration of syllables, I can see that Japanese sung in a modern style could be confusing. Syllables get held for varying durations, or the note pitch changes within the same syllable, and it might become unclear as to where one word ends and the next begins. “Was that ‘ko’ the last syllable of the previous word, or was it the first syllable of the next word?” For another example, look at this line from the song “Kabutomushi” by my favorite Japanese singer, aiko:

sore mo anata to sugoshita shirushi sou

You see it contains the syllable “shi” three times in rapid succession. Rhythmically, the last three words are sung like this:



short short long short long short short long

su    go    shi  ta    shi  ru    shi   sou

so that instead of “sugoshita shirushi sou” it sounds like “sugo shita shiru shisou”. Whether the “words” in the second set of quotes are actual words or not, I don’t know, but if they are I bet they don’t mean the same thing as the correct words. Hence, the subtitles.

Damn, I went on longer than I thought I would. Anyway, am I anywhere close to correct with either of the above theories?

2

I don’t think your guesses are right. If you watch much Japanese TV, particularly the variety shows, you’ll notice that they often put subtitles for conversation, not just songs. And, Japanese spoken syllables often sound of varying length, even if it’s just stops and stretched vowels. For instance, the っ prefix to kana shortens the sound. Vowels are often lengthened, hence びる (“biru”) is a building and びいる (“biiru”) is beer. The 長音 (“chōon”, ー ) symbol is used to lengthen sounds, particularly when writing katakana.

Standard Japanese is based predominantly on Kanto-ben, the dialect spoken in Tokyo. While regional accents are often easy to identify, they’re not nearly extreme as, for instance, England or Quebec, where they can verge on unintelligible.

I don’t have an authoritative answer to give you, despite my comments about your theories. With the variety shows, I get the impression it’s to distinguish what is being said from the other voices and sounds, particularly when the participants get excited and start yelling a lot (which is frequently their stock-in-trade). There are other oddities, though, that might be related. Often when you are watching a Western TV show or movie, the name of a character will appear on them in frame when they are shown for the first time. I’m not sure that it’s really necessary for Japanese people to follow or enjoy the show; it might just be the way it’s always been done. It could be the same thing for your observations about singing.

3

Several dialects are almost completely unintelligible to Tokyoites. Kagoshima dialect is famous for being impossible to understand, but there are several other extremely thick ones also. Osaka dialect is very common on television, and is different from Tokyo Japanese, but due to its exposure, pretty much all native speakers understand it fairly well. It’s mostly older people, or people from more rural regions, that speak purely in these dialects.

The simple answer to your question is: The ants are my friends, they’re blowing the wind.

Even if you’re a native speaker of a language, it doesn’t mean you will always pick out all the lyrics accurately. I know many people who couldn’t make out Michael Stipe’s “call me when you try to wake her up” from The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight. Since karaoke is a national past-time, many people want to know the lyrics, although for the most part, they’re not particularly hard to figure out by ear.

If you watch Japanese television, you’ll see that subtitles are used all the time. In variety shows, there is a lot of play with fonts and text effects to underline what people are saying. Sort of like bada-bums after a joke. These subtitles often compensate for the lack of actual substance and provide a running commentary.

Subtitles are also used regularly on the news. In this case, the purpose sometimes is to help with unintelligible fishermen from Aomori. As a rule, pretty much anyone who is interviewed gets them, regardless of their dialect.

I don’t know where you got that, but it’s flat out wrong. For one thing, Tokyo is 4 syllables in Japanese, whereas Kyoto is 3. TO - O - KYO - O and KYO - O - TO. Long syllables count for two. The kanji are 東京 and 京都. “Tokyo” means east-capital and “Kyoto” means capital-capital, or capital-city.

Your breakdown of “Kabutomushi” doesn’t make much sense to a fluent speaker. There are certain words where rhythm is important, for instance the above-mentioned “biru” vs “biiru”, or for instance “kosho”: 古書 (short-short, used book), 胡椒 (short-long, pepper), 高所 (long-short, high place), 交渉 (long-long, negotiations). When there is a risk of confusion, a composer will make sure to not stretch short vowels. You wouldn’t hear something like: koooooooshooooooooooo-ya de katta hon wo yonde… (Reading a book I bought in a used book store.)

4

Dang, I wasn’t even close! Oh well, my guess was fun to come up with, anyway. THanks for setting me straight :slight_smile:

5

(Total WAG)

In a culture where great attention is paid to observing social rules and not giving offense, perhaps subtitling everyone is an effort to avoid an implication of superiority. I can’t recall the specifics, but there was an incident in the last year or two where one person on a news program speaking heavily accented English was subtitled, while others were not, and that one person took it as an insult: “What do you mean I can’t be understood? Are you saying you’re better than me?” (There was a follow-up comedy sketch based on the incident, where IIRC Afghan rebels got pissed off at the same thing. I think the sketch is better known than the original event, actually. But I digress.) Sort of an overreaction, yeah, but you can also sort of see his point.

Anyway, this is avoided if everybody is subtitled.

6

wrt music shows, the insane popularity of karaoke may be a factor.

For the comedy shows, like jovan said, they help pad out a lot of skits that are lacking in substance. In many cases it seems like the script is “stick a bunch of comedians in a room and film them goofing off, clowning around, arguing and fighting. Occasionally tell them to play a game. After 12 hours, edit the footage down to 30 minutes and subtitle everything.” I can picture the guys in the editing room saying, “was that a joke? I didn’t get it.” “Me neither, just put it in a funny font and people will laugh.”

7

Great. Another song stuck in my head all day.

some nutty, cuckoo, super-king.

8

This has always been my guess also.

I have to say that for people who are learning the language, the ever-present sub-titles are incredibly useful.

9

I assume you mean the bit about the name “Tokyo” being created by reversing the syllables in “Kyoto”. It was either one of the Japanese textbooks from which I was trying to learn the language, or it was on a Web site about Japanese history. Whichever it was, it didn’t simply say that the syllables were reversed, but that the two kanji characters were reversed, which you’ve shown to be incorrect. It’s been a few years now, so I’m a little vague on the source. For all I know at this point, I might have read it in Shogun :wink: Wasn’t the city now called Tokyo once called Edo?

Now this actually has me curious. Everything I’ve read on the subject has insisted that the three-letter (in romaji) syllables like kyo, ryo, tsu, ect. are pronounced as one syllable, and that Americans are horribly incorrect when they say “To-ky-o”. My half-Japanese roommate (father American, mother native Japanese) confirms this, having heard it from his mother. :confused: On the other hand, I can’t really argue about the long vowels you’ve indicated, as those sounds are probably simply indistinguishable to my American ears, something else the textbook told me. Actually, now that I think about it, that textbook probably confused the issue by using doubled vowels in the romaji to indicate long vowels.

(sorry this reply is so late; I just got home from a 14-1/2 hour shift at work, and only had time this morning to dash off a quick reply)

10

Yes, but that’s not where the extra syllable comes from. I use the word “syllable” in its Japanese sense, which is closer to the English concept of “mora”. Long vowels count for two, short for one. Tokyo breaks down as TO - O - KYO - O, written in hiragana it’s: とうきょう, versus きょうと for Kyoto. Notice there’s one less character in the second.

By the way, there’s a word for the sub-titles in variety and comedy shows: nazori-teroppu.

11

It’s not just Japanese TV- I’ve noticed American TV shows (such as Ripley’s Believe It Or Not) sometimes subtitle non-Americans speaking English, much to my eternal confusion. Is your average American that unable to comprehend Australian, New Zealand, or British accents?

12

This is also done in China quite frequently.

Everyone there told me it was for the elderly, who watch a lot of television and can’t hear as well.

13

I don’t know about average Americans, but my parents both had trouble with some British accents. They could understand RP pretty well, but some of the “working class” accents gave them trouble. Also, a thick Scottish burr or Irish brogue would throw them.

14

See, that was my “so simple it’s obvious” answer. There are a LOT of old people in Japan. That’s probably not the whole answer, but I’m sure that it’s a big part of it.

It helps both ways with nonstandard dialects. Dialect speakers get standard Japanese reinforced, standard speakers get subtitles for the really thick stuff from people who can only be understood by someone else from that region.

It also does help sometimes when you’ve got a written record to see which word was being used. There are quite a few homophones in Japanese, and while you can usually get which one was meant from context, it’s nice to have a second opinion sometimes. I’ve actually seen segments where someone else on a variety show will use a word that sounds the same but uses different kanji to make a joke. Word play like that is fairly common, there are even word games that depend on those similarities. There’s a game show I’ve seen that tests the participants’ abilities to identify kanji from its reading. Subtitles are vital there so that you know what the correct character is since there are dozens or more with the same reading.

The standard dialect is called 標準語 (hyôjungo; standard language), not Kantô-ben. No one says Kantô-ben, though you’d think it fits the pattern. In theory, the Kantô dialect is the standard, but where I live is considered Kantô, and there are several regional differences even in this prefecture. People in Tôkyô are starting to change the language from what would be acceptable as hyôjungo too. It might not be too long before Japan does what the French did and establish a language standards board in an attempt to keep the language from changing too much. Won’t work, but I’ll bet they’ll try it.

Plus, as my buddy put it, they’ve got no subtlety in humor a lot of the time. It’s in your face, bang you over the head with it. The stuff with fonts, colors, underlining, and accents make sure you understand that you’re supposed to laugh now. About half of Japanese comedy turns me off. I don’t find people yelling at each other and whacking each other in the head to be funny most of the time, and both of those seem to be a standard of manzai 漫才and most modern comedy derived from that.

15

You need to hang out more around my necks of the wood if you think no-one says “kanto-ben”. For what it’s worth a google search on Kanto-ben returns over 38,000 hits. There’s no single Kansai dialect either, but the expression Kansai-ben is extremely common and refers to the family of related dialects spoken in Kansai.

This is a nitpick, but, I wouldn’t say that people are “starting to change” the language. All living languages are organic and continually changing. The vernacular, even in Tokyo, has always been somewhat distanced from the standard dialect. For instance:

This is from Soseki’s “I am a Cat”, published in 1905. It’s a good example of Tokyo street slang. Even though it’s 100 years old, people still speak more of less like that.

16

Let’s put it this way, I said Kanto-ben, was laughed at and corrected. Twice. Maybe where you are it’s acceptable, but for where I live, it’s considered a childish mistake. And I’ll see your 38,000 hits and raise you 1,140,000 for 標準語. Sure, there is English-speakin’ people use “ain’t”, but that don’t necessarily make it right none. I guess even though I live sort of out in the countryside the people around here use closer to “proper” Japanese than where you do.

When I said “starting to change” I probably should have chosen different wording. This is the kind of thing I’m talking about. Standard forms are still absolutely necessary for news broadcasting and other official and respectable positions, but Kansai-ben and other hôgen are slowly gaining more public acceptance, and youth forms from Tôkyô are starting to creep into adult language. I know that language is never static. Like I said in my earlier post, I can see the government doing more than they already do to keep the language from drifting too much, but it won’t make much of a difference in the long run.

17

Different senses of humor are different. I don’t think that Japanese TV is high brow, but I think US TV is stupid as well, and has to rely of over-the-top laugh tracks.

18

I would have thought some of it would be for the hard of hearing, as well. In Spain one of the options you’ve had for the last two decades or so (but in most programs, still not the default option) is subtitles in whatever language the program is in.

Many DVDs are sold with subtitles in the same language the soundtrack’s in, as well. Very good for the hard of hearing but also for foreign learners, when a character has a heavy accent or when it’s one of those movies where people go from normal voices to whispering and back without warning.

19

That’s probably because you are in Kanto. The expression “Kanto-ben” is, in my experience, used primarily in opposition to “Kansai-ben”, or other dialects.

That article doesn’t say that. I note:

They’re all native speakers of western dialects. What this paper talks about is native Kansai-ben speakers switching to standard dialect for more formal speech. This is certainly not a new phenomenon. I don’t have the book on hand, but Jun’ichiro Tanizaki describes this type of code-switching in Sasame-yuki (The Makioka Sisters). All the characters in one scene are from Osaka but they make great efforts to speak in standard Japanese. However, the sisters cannot help slipping back into Osaka-ben when talking to each other. The book is set in the 1930s.

If you look at more serious research (a 30 minute conversation between 3 people is not statistically significant), you’ll find that use of dialect is going down. Core Osaka dialect is an exception, but even then, there is a definite movement in the general direction of standard Japanese. Note how the pure Kansai-ben “…ya sakai ni” construction has been almost completely replaced by the hybrid “… ya kara”.

Slang words making their way into standard vocabulary? Sure. However, the disappearance of dialects is such a well known phenomenon that I can’t see why you’d think they would be encroaching on standard dialect. Tohoku University’s Center for Dialect Studies’ web pages welcomes visitors with this line: “今、各地の方言は共通語化の波に洗われ、消滅の危機に瀕しています。” (“Now, dialects of every region are washed by the wave of standardization and face the danger of extinction.”)

Because of television, people are more familiar with the basics of one major dialect: Osaka-ben. However, it is a very watered down version. There are a few examples of words from Kansai making it into common usage (do-inaka, shindoi) but they’re utterly overwhelmed by the number of words that have disappeared from common usage even in Kansai.

Laugh tracks! That’s the perfect analogy.

By the way, for those who might be curious what the variety show sub-titles look like, here’s a clip from a popular tv show. Even if you can’t understand what they’re saying, you can very well see how text is used for emphasis.

As for the news, while I’m sure many older people benefit from the sub-titles, I should note that only the interviews are sub-titled, so you can’t follow everything by reading.

20

What the heck is going on in this clip? First the cute young woman gestures to her chest. Then a couple of guys mime dangling something in their mouths like they’re getting caught with fishhooks. Then the young woman turns to the guy behind her and fiddles with the cuff of his jacket. Then the host grabs his belt, hoists his pants, and points to his crotch.

Is this show called “Boobs, Bait, Buttons, and Blowjobs”? :wink: