Monday, May 5, 2008

Katakana Movie Titles

Katakana, one of the two Japanese syllabaries (a set of characters, similar to an alphabet), is specifically used for the phonetic spelling of foreign words, often English ones. If you can read katakana characters, you'll see "English" everywhere in Japan. Sometimes it sounds like English that English speakers actually use, sometimes not. A common example is クリーニング, or "kuriiningu" (cleaning) on a sign for a dry-cleaning business.

(If you see a series of question marks in the paragraph above, it's because your computer can't display Japanese characters.)

In the video store the other day, I noted that the majority of English movie titles had been written using "English" words in katakana, though their wording ranged from identical to wildly different from the original. A moderate example:

is called "Snake Flight".

It would be too overwhelming a task to search the entire video store for the best examples of these. Luckily I was able to find several winners by simply limiting myself to the sports movies section.

"Pretty League"


"Hard Play"


"Best Kid"


"African Dunk"


"Pro Golfer Gil"


"Sayonara Game"


"Boxing Baby"


"My Sweet Guys"