During the show, an American businessman was quoted "I was told the only Japanese I needed to know was 百万台, which meant 1,000,000 units." At the same time, CNBC showed 百万台 on the television screen with last two characters upside down.
video: 917 KB Windows Media (thanks to Yang Zongbao)
Looks like some lackey was working on that stupid rotation animation, and forgot how many times they had rotated the characters.
ReplyDeleteI saw that show. Somewhere between the guy telling his story and the narrator, they mispronounced the word as "yaku-man-dai," rather than hyakumandai.
ReplyDeleteI saw that just a few days ago and had a good laugh. In Japanese those kanji are read hyaku-man-dai. As far as I could tell, both the man they were interviewing and the narrator consistently pronounced it without the H.
ReplyDeleteYeah.
ReplyDeleteWhen I saw this, I couldn't believe that Japanese would have such wacky characters.
Then I realized they were just upside down.
Which is odd to me, because it seems like you have to work harder to mess them up than you have to to get them right.
Regards,
Zongbao
Good to know I wasn't just seeing things. (I studied Mandarin and Japanese when I was younger, but now am utterly incapable of anything more than counting). I thought the exact same thing as Clark, that someone in the animation department got a little lost with the animation.
ReplyDeleteThe ironic thing is that, if the hyaku had also been upside down, it would kind of fit with the rotation animation (like a jumble of letters being organized into an actual word). Oh well, close but no cigar. :-)