Mind your manners at the urinal, won't you?

November 16, 2015 @ 11:34 pm · Filed by under Style and register, Translation

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Nathan Hopson sent in this photo of a sign that is posted above the urinals at the Atsuta Shrine in Nagoya, the #2 shrine in Japan's Shinto hierarchy:

The sign reads:

shǒuhù lǐyí ba
bùyào bǎ kǒuxiāngtáng
rēng dào xiǎobiànqì nèi

守护礼仪吧
不要把口香糖
扔到小便器内

guard / protect / defend etiquette / decorum / ceremony / ritual, why don't you / all right?
don't throw gum into the urinal

I showed this notice to two graduate students from China, without telling them where it was from.  One of them said he thought it was just fine.  The other remarked:

I think the second line and third line are correct but the first line is not idiomatic. It is better to say something like "请遵守公德"*. 礼仪** refers to how people should behave before others in a public place.

VHM:

* qǐng zūnshǒu gōngdé 请遵守公德 ("please observe / follow public / social morality / ethics")

**lǐyí 礼仪 ("etiquette / decorum / ceremony / ritual", etc., etc.)

In a way, I agree with both of the graduate students.  All three lines are grammatically correct, and it's easy for a Chinese reader to understand what the message of the sign is meant to be.  Nonetheless, although the first line ends with the suggestive final particle "ba 吧" that is highly characteristic of Mandarin, the wording, or perhaps I should say sentiment, of the first four characters strikes me as somehow more Japanese than Chinese.

This is another installment in our long running series of Language Log posts on dàbiàn 大便 ("big convenience", i.e., "defecation") and xiǎobiàn 小便 ("small convenience", i.e., "urination"):

[Thanks to Jing Wen and Fangyi Cheng]

November 16, 2015 @ 11:34 pm · Filed by under Style and register, Translation


11 Comments

  1. Laura Morland said,

    November 16, 2015 @ 11:56 pm

    Interesting post!

    You haven't remarked on the presumed necessity of a sign entirely in Mandarin in a Japanese setting. Have the Japanese experienced a lack of "follow[ing] public/social morality" solely on the part of Chinese tourists? (Such as the citizens of Hong Kong have complained about since reunification?) Are there any signs in English, for example, conveying the same message?

    As well, for those of us who don't know Mandarin, could you kindly provide more of a line-by-line translation? Does 不要把口香糖 represent a separate phrase?

    Finally, in contradistinction to the multiple possible meanings of the first line or two, does 扔到小便器内 simply mean "don't throw gum into the urinal"?

  2. Victor Mair said,

    November 17, 2015 @ 12:10 am

    @Laura Morland

    Thanks for your perceptive and legitimate questions about how to break up the last two lines of the notice that I translated as "don't throw gum into the urinal".

    Here goes, more literally:

    =====

    don't take gum
    throw into urinal

    =====

    In answer to the questions you raise in your second, long paragraph, PRC travellers have a reputation for bad manners all over the world, but especially in Japan, where social decorum and cleanliness are taken very seriously.

  3. Matt said,

    November 17, 2015 @ 2:42 am

    The choice of "守护" may represent too-close adherence to a Japanese original like "reigi o mamotte kudasai" 礼儀を守ってください. The verb is "mamoru," which literally means "guard", "protect", "watch over." (I suppose you "protect" the protocols by acting in adherence with them. You can also "mamoru" a promise, etc.) "Shugo" 守護 is synonymous or nearly so with the more literal meaning of "mamoru", which might inspire a translator to use "守护" even though it is not idiomatic in this context.

    (Same goes for 礼仪, I suppose — it's not unusual at all in this context in Japan, although it would often be replaced with something more modern like manaa マナー from English "manner[s]".)

  4. krogerfoot said,

    November 17, 2015 @ 7:37 am

    Could "ba 吧" be an attempt to render the ubiquitous 〜しましょう,
    which is usually translated into English as "Let's ~" in Japan (マナーを守りましょう, "Let's mind our manners")? If so, I agree with Prof. Mair that it's a very Japanese sentiment.

    Laura Morland, I'm often saddened to see in Japan signs reminding us in Portuguese, Mandarin, English, and Farsi (but not Japanese) not to engage in various antisocial acts.

  5. Dan Lufkin said,

    November 17, 2015 @ 12:39 pm

    I wonder if someone would be kind enough to post the following plea in simplified Mandarin:

    Please shower before entering pool

    I'd like to put it up on the door to the pool I use frequently. It's at a research facility with a lot of visiting Chinese scientists. I've never seen one of them stop and take a shower before using the pool, which reeks of after-shave by afternoon.

    Here's the result from Google translate; is it OK? 使用池之前，请洗澡 (Shǐyòng chí zhīqián, qǐng xǐzǎo)

  6. Dan Lufkin said,

    November 17, 2015 @ 12:39 pm

    I wonder if someone would be kind enough to post the following plea in simplified Mandarin:

    Please shower before entering pool

    I'd like to put it up on the door to the pool I use frequently. It's at a research facility with a lot of visiting Chinese scientists. I've never seen one of them stop and take a shower before using the pool, which reeks of after-shave by afternoon.

    Here's the result from Google translate; is it OK? 使用池之前，请洗澡 (Shǐyòng chí zhīqián, qǐng xǐzǎo)

  7. JS said,

    November 17, 2015 @ 2:24 pm

    Dan, no, it's not OK. 游泳前请冲澡 is better. But probably it would be wise to heed krogerfoot's concerns and supply multiple languages including English and go through the facility rather than being "that guy."

  8. Ross Bender said,

    November 17, 2015 @ 3:11 pm

    Don't know where you got the identification of Atsuta Shrine as "the #2 shrine in Japan's Shinto hierarchy." Even your Wikipedia link doesn't make that claim.

    Historically there was a ranking of Shinto shrines known as the "niju nisha" or "22 shrines", which began with a list determined by the court in 965 and in subsequent years in the 10th and 11th centuries.

    These were:

    Twenty-two shrines (Ise, Iwashimuzu, Kamo, Matsuno-o, Hirano, Inari, Kasuga, Ōharano, Ōmiwa, Isonokami, Ōyamato, Hirose, Tatta, Sumiyoshi, Hie, Umenomiya, Yoshida, Hirota, Gion, Kitano, Niukawakami, Kibune) that received special patronage from the imperial court beginning in the mid-Heian period and ending in the mid-Medieval period.
    http://k-amc.kokugakuin.ac.jp/DM/detail.do?class_name=col_eos&data_id=23484

    (Note that #2, Iwashimizu, is a Hachiman shrine. Ahem.)

    In contemporary Japan there is an association called the Jinja Honcho that proclaims Ise as the #1 shrine, but does not AFAIK provide a ranking of other shrines.
    http://www.jinjahoncho.or.jp/en/shrines/index.html

    There is a 1986 article by Allan Grapard in History of Religions if anyone is interested:

    "Institution, Ritual, and Ideology: The Twenty-Two Shrine-Temple Multiplexes of Heian Japan"

    Vol. 27, No. 3, Shinto as Religion and as Ideology: Perspectives from the History of Religions (Feb., 1988), pp. 246-269

    And just BTW Professor Jolyon Thomas of Penn will teach a course next spring titled "The Politics of Shinto", and will be leading a panel at the AAS meeting in Seattle next April titled "What *Isn't* Shinto?"
    http://www.thomasresearch.org/jolyon/

  9. Matt said,

    November 17, 2015 @ 7:13 pm

    Ross: I agree that there isn't a simple ranking of shrines that could resolve the question objectively, but there IS a tradition that because Atsuta Jingu houses Kusanagi no Tsurugi it is "second [only] to Ise Jingu." If you search for "伊勢神宮に次いで" you can find many websites making that claim – along with sites making the same claim for other institutions on other grounds, illustrating the main thrust of your comment quite well.

  10. The Filter Dislikes Dainichi said,

    November 17, 2015 @ 7:19 pm

    Maybe Mair refers to the 三大神宮, the three big shrines, which are usually listed as 伊勢神宮 Ise, 熱田神宮 Atsuta and 明治神宮 Meiji, always in this order AFAIK. I have no idea if this is official in any way.

  11. Ross Bender said,

    November 17, 2015 @ 9:09 pm

    And of course 明治神宮 Meiji is a very modern shrine. Another ranking list is that of the Kanpeisha established in 1871 (abolished in 1946)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_system_of_ranked_Shinto_shrines

    This is a fascinating topic (if you're into Shinto). I was just looking at the Engishiki List of "3,132 kami in 2,861 shrines, in which 271 kami are worshipped jointly" in Felicia Bock's translation (Sophia University, 1970).

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