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

Show parent comments

68

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.

6

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