3 ms·

Similar critique was heavily featured during Polm's announcement of cutlet on HN. I never quite understood the reasoning either: https://news.ycombinator.com/i

Similar critique was heavily featured during Polm's announcement of cutlet on HN. I never quite understood the reasoning either: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23800805 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23800805

numpad0 6y ago
It's natural though. I could probably say romanization is a casual, reasonable effort method to convey a word so that the both sides can agree on the word in the source language with reasonable accuracy. Uncommon/novel/excessive romanizations like "katsukaree" or "hakkar nywusu" can be technically correct or more precise, but if they can't be traced to the word or concept at less effort for an average audience than "cutlet curry" or "hacker news", they actually serve the purpose less. For real world uses, Google Search[1] in Japanese for "cutlet curry" gives me an info panel for cutlet, a dictionary page as top result, as well as multiple Japanese videos about cutlet curry(why would anyone take and upload that kinds of videos is a mystery to me). In contrast, for "katsukaree", it gives me "maybe you meant..." mini panel, and the top three results are an Instagram tag page, English Wikimedia Commons link, and Tripadvisor page for a restaurant in Columbia. I checked the tag results page but none of top or newest posts seemed to be someone from the country. I think it's safe to say "katsukaree" is quite an unpopular expression to native Japanese speakers. [1]: https://imgur.com/jdPZN7m https://imgur.com/jdPZN7m
- lmm 6y ago
  I don't think anything is gained by saying "Karee", but "katsu curry" will give you better results; it's pretty much a recognised word in English now.
- franciscop 6y ago
  As a non-native English speaker who lives in Japan and speaks some Japanese (and I'd guesstimate that the majority of foreigners in Japan who speak Japanese aren't fluent in English!) I know what "katsu" is but I would not know for the life of me what "cutlet" means. I even just typed "cutley" and had to look up to correct it! So it's indeed a lot more helpful for me to maintain "katsu" than "cutlet".

numpad0 6y ago

It's natural though. I could probably say romanization is a casual, reasonable effort method to convey a word so that the both sides can agree on the word in the source language with reasonable accuracy. Uncommon/novel/excessive romanizations like "katsukaree" or "hakkar nywusu" can be technically correct or more precise, but if they can't be traced to the word or concept at less effort for an average audience than "cutlet curry" or "hacker news", they actually serve the purpose less. For real world uses, Google Search[1] in Japanese for "cutlet curry" gives me an info panel for cutlet, a dictionary page as top result, as well as multiple Japanese videos about cutlet curry(why would anyone take and upload that kinds of videos is a mystery to me). In contrast, for "katsukaree", it gives me "maybe you meant..." mini panel, and the top three results are an Instagram tag page, English Wikimedia Commons link, and Tripadvisor page for a restaurant in Columbia. I checked the tag results page but none of top or newest posts seemed to be someone from the country. I think it's safe to say "katsukaree" is quite an unpopular expression to native Japanese speakers. [1]: https://imgur.com/jdPZN7m https://imgur.com/jdPZN7m

lmm 6y ago
I don't think anything is gained by saying "Karee", but "katsu curry" will give you better results; it's pretty much a recognised word in English now.
franciscop 6y ago
As a non-native English speaker who lives in Japan and speaks some Japanese (and I'd guesstimate that the majority of foreigners in Japan who speak Japanese aren't fluent in English!) I know what "katsu" is but I would not know for the life of me what "cutlet" means. I even just typed "cutley" and had to look up to correct it! So it's indeed a lot more helpful for me to maintain "katsu" than "cutlet".