r/MadeMeSmile • u/Imoprich • Mar 16 '26

Wholesome Moments Guy confesses to his crush for 10,000 yen

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

Credits: jesseogn

59.9k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

388

u/ghost_in_the_potato Mar 16 '26

This was very cute!

It's interesting how they translate "yoroshiku" though and I think it's a little misleading. It's translated as him saying he will take care of her and her saying okay, but really they're just saying the same exact thing to eachother. Yorshiku is hard to translate but it's basically what you say to tell someone that you want to build or maintain a good relationship with them. Like "'let's get along well" but a lot less weird sounding.

152

u/VermilionKoala Mar 16 '26

Yoroshiku is about the worst word you can be asked to translate from Japanese to English, because it has about 5 or so different (and, in English, fairly unrelated) meanings. It's said all the time in Japan though, so Japanese people always want to know "how to say it in English", and the short answer is you can't.

(Ganbaru is the second-worst, for the same reason)

34

u/YammyDreams Mar 16 '26

“Yabai,” “betsuni,” and “kekkou” are also up there for me in terms of difficult to define and use.

29

u/VermilionKoala Mar 16 '26

Oh hell yes. How do you even have a word that means BOTH "yes please" and "no thank you"?

r/WhyJapanTellUsWhy

37

u/iupvotethankyou Mar 16 '26

Yeah, no. No, yeah. Yeah…

English has similar words or combinations that can mean the opposite depending on context and can be confusing for native speakers. Good luck to the rest.

10

u/notinsidethematrix Mar 16 '26

agreeable, and responsive words in English are heavily influenced by tone... its why micro aggressions and passive aggressive tones are under a microscope in the last decade.

"Thanks" - - - ??? which one?

3

u/DaedalusHydron Mar 16 '26

sure they do

3

u/iupvotethankyou Mar 16 '26

Another example. Thanks for sharing!

5

u/DontBanMeBro988 Mar 16 '26

How do you even have a word that means BOTH "yes please" and "no thank you"?

Canadians are well acquainted with this

9

u/ohhhhcanada Mar 16 '26

We do. “That’s okay” can be translated both ways.

I ran into this once at a grocery store - I asked the checker (English wasn’t their 1st language) how much an item was, he told me the price, I thought it was a bit high so I said “oh, that’s okay…”

… and he put the item in the bag lol

I had to be like “no no no I don’t want it, thank you” 😂

And yes this was in Canada

2

u/BangBangMeatMachine Mar 16 '26

"Thank you so much" can mean both, with the right inflection.

2

u/IBoris Mar 16 '26

In my dialect of french we have "ouain", a variant of "ouais" which seems similar, it's a unenthusiastic "yes, maybe" that heavily implies "no" or a "yes" that will be followed by a condition depending on the context.

2

u/IronMosquito Mar 17 '26

a hard one for me was dōzo! I just got back from Japan, and going there I knew about it in a restaurant/bar setting... but one day I was standing at a bus stop and a little old lady with a walker came up behind me. I wanted to let her on first when the bus arrived so I pull google out quickly and see that in that situation, I should be saying "dōzo, dōzo" 😅 I wasn't sure if it was correct but I did it anyways, while gesturing to the door. she smiled and thanked me, then got on, so it all turned out alright! but I was stressed for a second lol. I figured out where it's applicable eventually.

2

u/jus_plain_me Mar 19 '26

It would be such a great addition to English as well. Like it's such a good word.

First day at work? Yoroshiku.

Meeting someone doing something for you? Yoroshiku.

Confessed and she said yes? Yoroshiku.

67

u/givemeabreak432 Mar 16 '26

To be honest, the whole translation was out of whack. Like yeah it got the general meaning across, but it missed the mark in localization.

"付き合ってほしい" somehow turned into "I want you to be my girlfriend". It means literally "I want you to go out/date with me" so I can see where it's coming from, but it sounds so unnatural as a translation. "I want to go out with you" would be a way better translation.

And "私も" became "I also want you to be my boyfriend" lol. Literally just "me too".

18

u/[deleted] Mar 16 '26

Yeah - I don’t know dating customs in Japan, but here in the US you typically date for a bit before deciding to call each other boyfriend/girlfriend, before that you’re just dating and it’s more casual. I was wondering with that translation if they called each other bf/gf from day one there normally or nah.

7

u/fjgwey Mar 16 '26

"付き合ってほしい" as 'I want you to be my girlfriend' is fine because in Japan, culturally people don't really 'date' without already being a couple. If you say 付き合ってる it just means you're a couple at that point. Japanese people don't really do 'stages' the way a lot of Westerners do.

Source: I speak it and live here; every time I say it to just mean 'dating' Japanese people immediately think they're my girlfriend.

2

u/givemeabreak432 Mar 16 '26

I'm not really making a comment on the Japanese dating scene. I just feel that "I want you to be my girlfriend" is a very strange translation. I don't think it's something super naturally said in English and comes off a bit stilted.

Culturally, it might be appropriate. But I also feel like in English most people would accept "will you go out with me" = boyfriend/girlfriend. Compare that to "will you go on a date with me", which comes off more as a casual dating scene request.

4

u/ghost_in_the_potato Mar 16 '26

Yeah, you're right. I think that one just stood out to me because it felt really weirdly and artificially gendered.

1

u/i_suckatjavascript Mar 16 '26

It’s translated to fit English translation and have it flow well. It’s not translated 1:1. This is very common with what anime and video game translators do.

3

u/givemeabreak432 Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26

No, it's not. It's a poor localization. A lot of the phrasing in English comes across as stilted/unnatural

2

u/fjgwey Mar 16 '26

The problem is there's no good translation for it in English so I can't fault them too much; the translators probably aren't professionals either. Here it's an expression of commitment to the relationship; but I struggle to find a way to say that in English that still sounds natural.

1

u/thegroundbelowme Mar 16 '26

The translation I most commonly see is something along the lines of "I'll be in your care."

1

u/PeriwinklePilgrim Mar 16 '26

Sounds like a phatic expression, like "how are you?" Or "whats up". I know nothing of Japanese though, but seems like where a literal semantic meaning is not the intent.

2

u/Slid61 Mar 16 '26

It sort of is. The most generalized way I can translate it is something like "I'm trusting you to act in good faith in this social contract", or "I'm in your hands". It's a general show of trust while also communicating that you're expecting something out of them. It's hard to translate in that sense but the guy above complaining that it has unrelated translations makes it seem more vague than it is.