Smoking cessation
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Joseph Williams sent in the following photograph of a Japanglish sign that he took on a ferry traveling to the famous Itsukushima Shrine (also called Miyajima) in Hiroshima:
We'll go through the four languages on the sign, one after another.
Japanese
kin'en 禁煙 is a standard term for "no smoking; smoking prohibited"
Confusion may arise due to the fact that kin'en 禁煙 is the term for both "No Smoking" and for "smoking cessation", as in the expression kin'en gairai 禁煙外来 ("outpatient smoking cessation"). Image Search results here. A more common usage is as in kin'en seki 禁煙席, the non-smoking section in restaurants, etc.
Cf. "Eco Coke and No Smorking " (8/5/14)
English
"Smoking cessation" sounds strange for a sign on a ferry, but it wouldn't be odd in a clinic, since this is the formal equivalent of the colloquial "quitting smoking".
Korean
geumyeon (RR), kŭmyŏn (MR) 금연 禁煙 is the usual interdiction against smoking.
Chinese
Jìnzhǐ xīyān 禁止吸烟 is the most common of the half dozen or so usual prohibitions against smoking.
In Mandarin, "quit smoking" would be something quite different: jièyān 戒煙, where jiè 戒 conveys the notion of "give up; stop; guard against; exhort; admonish; warn; Buddhist monastic discipline". Joseph wonders why Japanese would use the character Jìn 禁 ("forbid; prohibit; ban") for this idea and asks whether it says something about Japanese culture.
[Thanks to Nathan Hopson, Cecilia Segawa Seigle, Haewon Cho, Fangyi Cheng, Daniel Sou, Miki Morita, and Xiuyuan Mi]
mcur said,
May 9, 2015 @ 12:17 am
It seems like 禁煙 first meant 'smoking prohibited' and then later came to mean 'quit' by association with 禁酒 (abstaining from alcohol, also cf 禁酒法 'Prohibition'). My only support for that is that Saito's Japanese-English dictionary (from 1928) only lists one meaning for 禁煙 (though he may have just left out the second sense of 'quit').
As for why 禁酒 uses 禁, I suppose the sense is of denying yourself a pleasure. Besides, 戒 isn't really an option (basically only means 'warn against'), 停 (as in 停止 'stop' / 停電 'electrical blackout') is somewhat too literal… I can't think of any 'better' character to use than 禁.
Matt said,
May 9, 2015 @ 2:00 am
禁酒 appears in old (pre-Han) Chinese texts meaning a formal prohibition on drinking, so that was presumably the original meaning. I suspect that the meaning "abstain from drinking [voluntarily]" leaked out from Buddhism, where phrasing like 断肉禁酒 can blur the already conceptually shaky line between "things that are forbidden [by the temple, etc.]" and "things that one freely refrains from doing [because they're not good]".
Victor Mair said,
May 9, 2015 @ 11:00 am
New nuances of gairai / wàilái 外来
When I first encountered the expression "kin'en gairai 禁煙外来" ("outpatient smoking cessation"), it sounded strange to me. If the order had been gairai kin'en 外来禁煙, it might have seemed a bit less odd, but even then, the basic meaning of gairai 外来 as "alien; imported" and of kin'en 禁煙 as "smoking prohibited; no smoking" would have made it difficult for me to understand that the reference was to "outpatient smoking cessation".
I'm not the only one who had trouble with "kin'en gairai 禁煙外来" ("outpatient smoking cessation"). A colleague of mine who is a specialist on early modern Japanese literature and culture and who has gone back to her homeland Japan regularly (in summers and at other times) had the following reaction to this expression:
=====
[first, when she saw it cold]
The usage of the words, the order of two compound words sound much more Chinese than Japanese.
The Japanese would have said 外来禁煙. although that would still sound very strange.
If it's 外来禁煙, I would interpret it as 外来者の禁煙、meaning outsiders (or people coming in from other places) are forbidden to smoke.
But the way your quotation is written 禁煙外来 suggests as though "Forbidding smoking came from outside (from foreign countries)" or something like that.
I have never seen such a sign in Japan. Where did you get it?
[later, when I showed her the images of signs with this expression]
I see, they started something new and made up a new expression in Japan.
In one of the pictures, a man is saying "病院（禁煙外来）へ行こう” and it sort of explains: 禁煙 外来のご案内 – I think he is saying "Let's go to a hospital, where you can just come in and receive a
new treatment of non-smoking." They are inviting men to just walk in and start the treatment for stopping to smoke.
They are trying to promote (advertise) this new hospital.
Interesting.
=====
Maybe we should think of it as a "walk-in" clinic? Even so, for me that is a novel use of 外来, whether in Japanese or in Chinese.
Anyway, as a language person, the first thing I always think of when I see gairai / wàilái 外来 is wàiláiyǔ 外来语 / gairaigo 外来語 ("loan word; borrowing"). That is so far away from "walk-in smoking cessation" that it really requires a huge mental readjustment of the meaning and function of gairai / wàilái 外来, at least for me.
Nathan Hopson said,
May 9, 2015 @ 4:10 pm
As a medical term, 外来 (outpatient) is paired with 入院 (inpatient; nyūin). The patients literally "come from outside" the hospital.
外来患者 vs. 入院患者 is the clearest example of this, I think.
In 禁煙外来, the word order indicates a difference between "foreign methods of smoking cessation" (a phrase that doesn't exist or make a lot of sense, but would presumably be 外来禁煙) and "smoking cessation outpatient (services)."
See the entry for 禁煙 in Jim Breen's JDIC:
It is also worth noting that 禁煙外来 is just one of many "specialized outpatient (services)" (専門外来 senmon gairai), as the ever helpful Wikipedia is quick to point out.
The list is long and diverse, ranging from rheumatism and sports medicine to dry eye and "Chinese medicine" (漢方 kanpō), and on to proctology and burns.
Some other notes:
As indicated by the 日本外来小児科学会 (Nihon Gairai Shōnika Gakkai; Society of Ambulatory and General Pediatrics of Japan) pediatrics at least tends toward a different word order. I was not aware of this. ("Ambulatory care" is a synonym for outpatient care)
Speaking of things I was not aware of, 枕外来 (makura gairai), or "outpatient pillow services" (one presumes) is less about bedside manner and more about getting a good night sleep by having a custom pillow molded, or at least learning how to adjust the pillow you have.
Victor Mair said,
May 9, 2015 @ 7:36 pm
In Japan, the kin'en gairai 禁煙外来 ("outpatient smoking cessation") clinics got started in the second half of the 1990s.
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%A6%81%E7%85%99%E5%A4%96%E6%9D%A5
The English Wikipedia article, "Tobacco cessation clinic", is about an initiative of WHO (World Health Organization) and the Ministry of Health of India that began in 2002.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_cessation_clinic
Joseph Williams said,
May 9, 2015 @ 11:01 pm
Thanks to everyone for their comments on this sign.
I thought some about why 禁煙 would mean to quit smoking and decided that it wouldn't really have this meaning. "Smoking Cessation" the formal English I've decided is understood as "smoking forbidden" whereas Japanese would use やめる to abstain from something willfully as in the example-
父は既にたばこも酒もやめてしまいました。
My father has already given up smoking and drinking.
外来禁煙 does sound strange. I guess in this sense the point of view is from the doctor where the patients are like foreigners coming from outside, that are then prohibited from smoking. I was looking for a difference in Chinese culture here where really I find this expression sort of a confirmation of the Confucian obidence to figures of authority.
As for 外来語, I wonder if the Korean on the sign had come from the Japanese. Maybe even during the occupation period.
John Swindle said,
May 10, 2015 @ 2:05 am
禁煙 is Japanese, but wouldn't it clearly mean "no smoking" in a Chinese context, too, absent additional clues about smoking cessation? Would it be immediately obvious that it's Japanese or at least foreign?
Joseph Williams said,
May 10, 2015 @ 5:45 am
John Swindle is right that the characters 禁煙 would mean no smoking in a Chinese context, I checked and the 漢語大詞典 dictionary lists this as a definition in the modern context, yet I have never seen this in China but always 禁止吸烟 as far as I can remember. It's possible that some mainland Chinese would not recognize the traditional character 煙as it has been simplified to 烟.
As for 禁煙 as smoking cessation in Japanese-besides タバコをやめる tanbako o yameru, a way to express quiting smoking in Kanji would be "finish smoking, or die to smoking" (卒煙 sotsu en) or "break from smoking"(断煙 dann en), which the dictionary 大辞林 defines as having a stronger nuance then 禁煙 for quiting smoking and which the Japanese wikitionary says would mean more of voluntary abstinence. This supports my observation above that 禁煙 for smoking cessation must take place in a clinical setting with doctors orders.
斷煙 duan yan is a less common synonym of 戒煙 jie yan in Mandarin, but the word 卒煙 is not used in Chinese.
Matt said,
May 10, 2015 @ 8:58 pm
This supports my observation above that 禁煙 for smoking cessation must take place in a clinical setting with doctors orders.
Not necessarily — it's pretty uncommon today but that wasn't the case a few generations ago. There are lots of examples in the PD texts on Aozora Bunko of people using 禁煙 to mean "quit [or at least refrain from] smoking." It really was used that way, even if the original meaning (as revealed in the kanji) was "forbid smoking."
Bruce said,
May 12, 2015 @ 5:27 pm
I remember being in an elevator in Hong Kong where the following sign was posted: 青勿吸烟.There was also a notice about a large fine (can't remember details) A man in the elevator was smoking and I pointed at the sign. He said (in English) that since the Chinese sign meant "don't inhale smoke", he was in compliance since his cigarette was not in is mouth!