Steve as a reporter!!!

Here is an update from our mechanical engineer, Steve!!

*******

Its Xmas after all. Modify or throw away at your leisure. I am an engineer not a reporter.

Public transport in Tokyo, no more need for cars,

In the weeks prior to leaving the UK the amount I used my car seems now to be completely amazing.

-I lived in one city and worked in another,

-Regular meetings at architects office

-Regular site visits to check on construction progress, and

-Occasional marketing trips to client’s office.

-In total an average week could total between 600 to 800miles.

 Since arriving in Tokyo, I find that I have not needed the use of a car to do any of the above due the high quality of the public transport and underground systems. Train Stations located within Tokyo are spaced around central Tokyo. The aim was to be able to walk to the nearest train station from any point within central Tokyo. Each of our client’s offices, construction sites and city officials offices are all located within easy reach of a train or subway station.

So  now after 2 years in Japan, I find the only reason to use a car is for personal freedom to set stuck on a highway at rush our whilst going shopping in an out of town supermarket. So if you don’t mind carrying your shopping here, don’t bother with a car. If you want to buy a vehicle to go exploring with, get a motorbike. It will be cheaper and you can get thought the traffic a lot faster. 

Laters,

Steven J. Alvey

Senior Mechanical Engineer

Working in Japan

I can’t imagine that I can work in Japan without being able to speak any Japanese!!
If you are a foreign “GAIJIN” engineers who are interested to work in Japan but without knowing any Japanese, you can stop by and spare a few minutes to read through my blog here. Sounds like a commercial advertisement, haha.

Overall living in Japan can be regarded as difficult for foreigners. I got experience of living abroad but related to Japan feel different. I’ve come across comments on various websites from the foreigners complaining about how it’s difficult to find an apartment, to apply for a credit card, to open a bank account, to communicate in a hospital etc. I can say life is inconvenient without knowing Japanese. But our company is great; they get me into the company by requiring my English ability and technical experiences only. And they will provide (pay for) the basic Japanese course to make my daily life easier. There are a lot of chances to practice inside the company. May be I don’t have much talent in language; I still cannot master the simple conversation very well after a few months of Japanese lessons. My company also gave me a lot of support and help in getting my apartment within a very short period.

I am lucky that I joined a good team, my coworkers and managers are so patience and tolerate that they will translate / explain anything that I cannot understand to English. Of course, it is essential for us to understand all the requirements and deliver the corrected products to the client. Overall it is an interesting experience for me to work in Japan.

Yes, we often have meetings in "Touching Room"

Thanks, Simon!!! O(^_^)O

Yep, we loved this "Touching-Room Incident" and we still use this phrase internaly often like "We shall have a meeting in Touching Room!" or "Where are you going to be?  - Oh, I will be in the meeting room, not Touching Room!".   There is no funny translation for meeting room yet.  If anybody have, let me know.

Now it's Sonny's turn, but he is too busy this week.

I will chase him around and make sure he write something soon.

If he doesn't know what to write, maybe we should have a meeting in Touching Room then.

Nonsensical English

In Japan over 90% of Japanese to English translation is carried out by native Japanese speakers. I’ve come across estimates as low as 3 percent for the number of such translations carried out by native English speakers.

The result is that visiting English speakers can see lots of very bizarre English slogans written everywhere, which are sure to provide endless amusement. From hotel lobbies, train stations & airports, in official documentation, advertising and even the advertising slogans on biscuit packets.

The accepted view in most countries is that translation should be carried out by native speakers of the target language. It is virtually impossible for a non-native speaker to write a sentence that sounds natural, and the chance of making howling bloopers is very high.

Here’s an example:

The Japanese word ousetsushitsu means meeting room or reception room in English. One Japanese engineer translated it as the touching room. The Japanese characters for this word are 応接室. The middle character alone, 接 means connect, adhere or touch, and I can only assume this is why the engineer came up with touching room.

The documentation eventually came my way so I could correct it, but many companies do not have any procedures in place to catch these kinds of errors. I suppose there just aren’t enough native English speakers in Japan.

Walk through Tokyo any day and you will see a huge number of clothes and fashion goods decorated with nonsensical English. A tee shirt that says BUY MORE SOCKS!, another that says Stability of a Penguin, or a bag that is decorated with the words Enjoy nice bag for your happy trip. A popular brand of coffee had the slogan “I wonder why coffee tastes so good when you’re naked with your family” The thing is that in many cases the designers don’t really care about what the English means. It is purely a visual design feature - an attempt to make it look fashionable or cool - so they are not even interested in checking the meaning in many cases.

Our business is different of course. We often deal with British and American clients so it is essential that we make sure the English we present them is correct.

Starting PTM International Project Group Blog!!!

Hi Everyone,

This is Maki, Project Coordinator at PTM International Group.

We are now starting our group glog, broadcasting our daily work, news, interesting topics (and some complains) world-widely!!!

We would love people to know what we do everyday, how fulfilling, exciting, interesting (and tiring and frustrating) our service is. Yet the main purpose of this blog is not only to increase our homepage access numbers!!!, but also to recruite GAIJIN engineers overseas to work and be slaved with us at PTM.

We will have our GAIJIN engineers, David from Australia, Sonny from Hong Kong, Steve from U.K. (with Scottish accent!) and our brillient translator Simon from U.K., write on this blog by taking turns. We also have our Manager, Totsuka-san and our Director, Kawauchi-san, join sometimes.

Hope you will find interesting topics here. Enjoy it.

Maki xxx