Why Mistranslation Matters
A documentary I saw years and years ago would say that this article is not being honest about the Japan memo.<p>The documentary said that Japan used a super-obscure word, and that there was a team of translators digging through books who eventually told the president that Japan it means that Japan is both responding and not responding. They&#x27;re giving a &quot;NULL&quot; answer.<p>In other words it wasn&#x27;t the words that were mistranslated, but that Japan was using something that doesn&#x27;t fully translate <i>culturally</i>.<p>E.g. apparently in Japan if you do something unusual while on the train then you may find that everyone around you is suddenly &quot;asleep&quot;. They&#x27;re so embarrassed for you for violating a minor cultural norm that the easiest way to make this better is to pretend to be asleep and that they didn&#x27;t see it. (I guess I never made such mistakes while there)<p>If you&#x27;ve worked with people from other countries you may know similar things. Like in some countries they say yes to everything. They can&#x27;t deliver some of the things, but it would be rude to say no.<p>Back on topic: In the end Japan did not answer in time, and &quot;surrender or get bombed, we will end this war now&quot; ultimatum doesn&#x27;t give room for &quot;No comment. We need more time&quot;.<p>Japan didn&#x27;t say &quot;we surrender&quot;. They didn&#x27;t say &quot;we don&#x27;t surrender&quot;. Not literally. It&#x27;s more comparable to &quot;Yeah we definitely should hang out some time!&quot;. It&#x27;s not the words that matter there. It&#x27;s the meaning. And the meaning was unclear. And that was, to the US, unacceptable while people were dying every day.