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I hate TEPCO. They have cut corners. They have not been capable of handling the crisis with the reactors. I think the disaster should have been brought under government control immediately after it happened. The failure to disclose radiation readings immediately in the areas around the Fukushima plant of course resulted in everyone thinking that everything is a lie. I initially fully supported ZeroHedge's gadfly prompting to disclose information which was clearly not being disclosed quickly enough.
However, this following at ZeroHedge is really not helpful and just doesn't have anything to do with what is actually happening here.
The latest in the tragic story that just gets weirder by the minute.
TEPCO's mishandling of info on nuclear crisis 'unacceptable': Edano
Partial meltdown of fuel rods believed to be temporary: Edano
Radioactive water from No. 2 reactor due to partial meltdown: Edano
Contaminated water due to condensed steam, not reactor crack: Edano
And our personal favorite:
Locals within 20-km evacuation zone asked not to return for now
This gives the impression that there are only brief statements being made. But every evening on NHK there are hours of documentaries explaining in detail what is happening at the plant using very detailed scale models and diagrams.
Worse, these statements are being taken out of context and the translations are slightly off, so the nuance might seem laughable.
I have been teaching Japanese translators for more than 20 years. Even the most veteran NHK native English speaking translators are struggling to translate what is happening in real time. The lack of correspondence between Japanese and English is enormous. So any brief translation you may see almost always sounds odd, especially if translated directly on the fly.
In the above statement by Edano:
Locals within 20-km evacuation zone asked not to return for now
ZeroHedge seems to imply that the entire area is permanently contaminated and will be uninhabitable for decades and that the authorities are just trying to hide this.
But this is not what happened. People have been returning to their homes in the evacuation zones. Edano is trying to tell them not to go there now and to wait until they can determine when it is safe to return for brief periods to get their possessions LATER.
There are no doubt specific areas that are contaminated and will have to be abandoned, but the contamination is not following the circular evacuation zone drawn on a map.
So, cynical smirking can certainly have its uses and be perfectly called for sometimes. However, when that way of thinking hijacks your understanding of what is happening, and then you broadcast your misunderstanding, however much it may seem correct to you, that is really not helpful.
If ZeroHedge is going to make statements like this, they really should get a native Japanese speaker on their staff and watch all of the NHK cable coverage in the US so that they do not misunderstand what is happening. Please continue to say what is true, but please do not inflame a situation with really simple misunderstandings.
Potential causes of misunderstandings of Fukushima reactor problems
The panic in the media outside Japan, well, I can certainly understand that. Totally aside of understanding the technical matters involved, I think a lot of the panic is honest misunderstandings due to translation problems.
I cannot tell you how complicated translating from Japanese to English, and vice versa, is. Nearly every single thing is out of order. "eastnorth" instead of "northeast". They count in 10,000s, not 1,000s, so that conversion can lead to errors. The subject is often omitted so must be supplied. If directly translated, nuance can be completely off. There is almost never any kind of correspondence between words in English and Japanese. For example, I was at the supermarket and there was a sign "We do not exchange money", which should be "No change without purchase". I think that will give you a sense of how nearly every single direct translation is likely to be wrong or misleading in some way. Translating directly from English into Japanese is even more hilarious.
Reading short news articles increases the confusion because of the lack of context. After watching two hours of NHK documentaries with really detailed models and graphics explaining what was found and where, seeing pictures of the control room damaged like the bridge on Star Trek, and listening to other full explanations, when I see people abroad pick up a word or sentence and misunderstand what it means, panicking everyone, well, that is just not helpful in any way.
When this first started, it seemed that even CNN had not one person who understood Japanese because the newscasters were looking at live feed but didnt know what they were looking at. Japan was the second, now third, largest economy in the world, with a population of 130,000,000, and I thought that was a little strange that they had no one who understands Japanese. At that point, even a Japanese college student in their studio would have been a big help. Unfortunately, that was just the beginning of the language barrier confusion. Most of the translators are not scientists or engineers and have no technical background. They are very good translators and can listen to Japanese live broadcast with headphones and speak in English in real time, but these reactor problems are straining their vocabularies and knowledge. And on top of that, Japanese is often like a conversation between friends where many things are omitted, so the translators are having to guess and insert many things necessary to make a complete sentence in English. It is maddening when working on paper, and it is just hell trying to do it in real time.
So, we have multiple layers of potential misunderstanding here:
What TEPCO knows or does not know.
What TEPCO will publicly say in view of not causing panic and misunderstandings and rumor.
What is in the actual statements being made on video, including tone of voice and body language and context of everything that has been said previously.
The context in which each statement is being made.
How the translator understands, in technical terms and in everyday terms, what is being said.
What the translator is compelled to convert.
What the translator translates directly and awkwardly because there is only a split second to do it.
What the translator must insert because it doesn't exist in the original sentence (the, a, plurals, and many other things do not generally exist in Japanese).
Which parts of the full translation are then picked up by a newspaper or quoted on TV because of what an editor thinks it means.
How that fragment sounds and what it means to the audience at face value.
What that seems to imply.
Confabulation is the normal mode of human thought.
Etc.
And you can see how far we are from the actual data at the beginning that TEPCO has.
Normally, this kind of problem is just odd and annoying or funny, but in this case, people who are unaware of all the problems in the translations can really, and in full honesty, misconstrue what they read and hear.
What has actually happened so far is of course extremely serious, and something more serious could happen from now, but anyone reporting needs to have good Japanese translators with them reading original text and viewing video in order to have any chance at all of having a reasonable understanding of what is actually happening. This is going to go on for a long time, so the faster we can improve understanding, the better off everyone will be.
However, this following at ZeroHedge is really not helpful and just doesn't have anything to do with what is actually happening here.
The latest in the tragic story that just gets weirder by the minute.
TEPCO's mishandling of info on nuclear crisis 'unacceptable': Edano
Partial meltdown of fuel rods believed to be temporary: Edano
Radioactive water from No. 2 reactor due to partial meltdown: Edano
Contaminated water due to condensed steam, not reactor crack: Edano
And our personal favorite:
Locals within 20-km evacuation zone asked not to return for now
This gives the impression that there are only brief statements being made. But every evening on NHK there are hours of documentaries explaining in detail what is happening at the plant using very detailed scale models and diagrams.
Worse, these statements are being taken out of context and the translations are slightly off, so the nuance might seem laughable.
I have been teaching Japanese translators for more than 20 years. Even the most veteran NHK native English speaking translators are struggling to translate what is happening in real time. The lack of correspondence between Japanese and English is enormous. So any brief translation you may see almost always sounds odd, especially if translated directly on the fly.
In the above statement by Edano:
Locals within 20-km evacuation zone asked not to return for now
ZeroHedge seems to imply that the entire area is permanently contaminated and will be uninhabitable for decades and that the authorities are just trying to hide this.
But this is not what happened. People have been returning to their homes in the evacuation zones. Edano is trying to tell them not to go there now and to wait until they can determine when it is safe to return for brief periods to get their possessions LATER.
There are no doubt specific areas that are contaminated and will have to be abandoned, but the contamination is not following the circular evacuation zone drawn on a map.
So, cynical smirking can certainly have its uses and be perfectly called for sometimes. However, when that way of thinking hijacks your understanding of what is happening, and then you broadcast your misunderstanding, however much it may seem correct to you, that is really not helpful.
If ZeroHedge is going to make statements like this, they really should get a native Japanese speaker on their staff and watch all of the NHK cable coverage in the US so that they do not misunderstand what is happening. Please continue to say what is true, but please do not inflame a situation with really simple misunderstandings.
Potential causes of misunderstandings of Fukushima reactor problems
The panic in the media outside Japan, well, I can certainly understand that. Totally aside of understanding the technical matters involved, I think a lot of the panic is honest misunderstandings due to translation problems.
I cannot tell you how complicated translating from Japanese to English, and vice versa, is. Nearly every single thing is out of order. "eastnorth" instead of "northeast". They count in 10,000s, not 1,000s, so that conversion can lead to errors. The subject is often omitted so must be supplied. If directly translated, nuance can be completely off. There is almost never any kind of correspondence between words in English and Japanese. For example, I was at the supermarket and there was a sign "We do not exchange money", which should be "No change without purchase". I think that will give you a sense of how nearly every single direct translation is likely to be wrong or misleading in some way. Translating directly from English into Japanese is even more hilarious.
Reading short news articles increases the confusion because of the lack of context. After watching two hours of NHK documentaries with really detailed models and graphics explaining what was found and where, seeing pictures of the control room damaged like the bridge on Star Trek, and listening to other full explanations, when I see people abroad pick up a word or sentence and misunderstand what it means, panicking everyone, well, that is just not helpful in any way.
When this first started, it seemed that even CNN had not one person who understood Japanese because the newscasters were looking at live feed but didnt know what they were looking at. Japan was the second, now third, largest economy in the world, with a population of 130,000,000, and I thought that was a little strange that they had no one who understands Japanese. At that point, even a Japanese college student in their studio would have been a big help. Unfortunately, that was just the beginning of the language barrier confusion. Most of the translators are not scientists or engineers and have no technical background. They are very good translators and can listen to Japanese live broadcast with headphones and speak in English in real time, but these reactor problems are straining their vocabularies and knowledge. And on top of that, Japanese is often like a conversation between friends where many things are omitted, so the translators are having to guess and insert many things necessary to make a complete sentence in English. It is maddening when working on paper, and it is just hell trying to do it in real time.
So, we have multiple layers of potential misunderstanding here:
What TEPCO knows or does not know.
What TEPCO will publicly say in view of not causing panic and misunderstandings and rumor.
What is in the actual statements being made on video, including tone of voice and body language and context of everything that has been said previously.
The context in which each statement is being made.
How the translator understands, in technical terms and in everyday terms, what is being said.
What the translator is compelled to convert.
What the translator translates directly and awkwardly because there is only a split second to do it.
What the translator must insert because it doesn't exist in the original sentence (the, a, plurals, and many other things do not generally exist in Japanese).
Which parts of the full translation are then picked up by a newspaper or quoted on TV because of what an editor thinks it means.
How that fragment sounds and what it means to the audience at face value.
What that seems to imply.
Confabulation is the normal mode of human thought.
Etc.
And you can see how far we are from the actual data at the beginning that TEPCO has.
Normally, this kind of problem is just odd and annoying or funny, but in this case, people who are unaware of all the problems in the translations can really, and in full honesty, misconstrue what they read and hear.
What has actually happened so far is of course extremely serious, and something more serious could happen from now, but anyone reporting needs to have good Japanese translators with them reading original text and viewing video in order to have any chance at all of having a reasonable understanding of what is actually happening. This is going to go on for a long time, so the faster we can improve understanding, the better off everyone will be.
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