Many of these are not examples: Surprisingly Good English

Many "examples" of Surprisingly Good English, particularly in the video games section, are borderline at best and at worst, downright not examples at all.

Many of them, for example, are "surprisingly good" in the sense that native English speakers are actually speaking English well. Since many games have native English speakers involved with translation, that's hardly a surprise. And the fact that the Japanese version of Sonic Battle featured the option to play in English is treated as Surprisingly Good English, just because the game's Japanese version has both the Japanese and English scripts.

This could really use some pruning.

When animes go out of their way to hire or outsourse English actors to appear in their animes to avoid Gratuitous English does fit this trope.

However those that use an entire english track or voice option and its being sent across the pond is not.

edited 7th Feb '11 8:19:13 AM by Raso

I think some musical examples in the Anime section need to be clarified. Unless these songs are written in English specifically for the show in question, then it's really just the company licensing an existing song, e.g. Falling Down for [1], which was out on Oasis' album before the show even aired. Stuff like Key of the Twilight, Monster For the love of life, and most songs by Yoko Kanno would really count, in this Troper's opinion.

Surprisingly Good English pretty much requires that whoever creates the work in question is not a native speaker. Most Jpop/Anisong examples probably fit.

edited 10th Mar '11 4:30:26 AM by SakurazakiSetsuna

My question is why is this trope written as if it only happens in anime...

Because most English speakers who watch foreign shows watch Anime in particular?

We have a lot of Anime fans who don't watch much other mediums. We're trying to fix that.

Personally I think this should stay pretty much like it is while move everything else to Surprisingly Good Foreign Language because it's shocking when they get english right.

By other languages I mean like Negima's Latin and Sanskit and Nichijou's Indonesian (and Nichijou still gets English wrong.)

edited 30th Apr '11 9:32:23 AM by Raso

On the "only anime" thing... Are there any Japanese soap operas? They don't seem to receive any attention here if they do exist.

Of course there are, and many of them at that. It's just that they don't get attention outside of Japan (and, if you wanna ask me, aren't very, very good IMO. None of the ones I watched during my one-year study trip in Japan left a mark in my mind, to the point I don't even remember most of their names).

edited 30th Apr '11 6:04:16 PM by AceNoctali

As Raso said, the reason for why this trope is Japan centric is because Japan really like their Gratuitous English and are usually really bad at it. And they are also infamous, unlike other countries, for it, not only for anime, but for video-game as well. So when the actually get English right it is quite a surprise.

I feel this trope has decayed into being its own Super-Trope.

We have a lot of Anime fans who don't watch much other mediums. We're trying to fix that.

No no, the problem is that fans of other mediums are not adding their examples.

And some tropes are just going to show up way more often in anime! Still don't get why people object to this rather self-evident fact.

Possibly because there are, or rather were, a large number of tropes that were written as if they were anime-exclusive when they weren't.

That said, I think the backlash against anime Fan Myopia is going too far nowadays - it's my opinion that there will be more tropes exclusive to anime than anything else on the site because, while all the other mediums we cover are primarily Western (or at least the tropers who cover them are), anime is not. Most so-called Anime Tropes are really more like Japanese Cultural Tropes, but because we don't cover much other Japanese media, there will be plenty of tropes on the site that really are anime-centric.

Right, tropes that aren't particularly Anime/Japan centric shouldn't be written as such, but ones that are, or are just in general used more often in those works should note as such in their description.

I'd say the only medium which would have more "unique" tropes is Videogames, and of course thats due to their interactive nature, which changes all sorts of things.

As for non-Anime Japanese works, well, there's nothing stopping people from adding them, other than that very few people watch them.

x4 Yeah when animes give us so many Meme's from bad english like I AM BOSS◊ Lord◊ instead of Load, hight◊. (these are just examples that I could think of off hand.)

Now a Surprisingly Good Foreign Language would be a super trope that would be all works like Austin Powers having Surprisingly Good Japanese in that one scene, or Negima's Latin and Sanskrit, Dot Hack's German, Big Bang Theory's Klingon, Nichijou's Indonesian ect .

edited 30th Apr '11 11:36:44 PM by Raso

I'd imagine that the reason that Japanese soap operas don't get mentioned much around here (besides that they don't get exported) is pretty much the same reason that Western soap operas don't, which is that the TVTropes-editing demographic and the soap-opera-watching demographic don't overlap much. There are a few live-action Japanese shows that have pages here, but they tend to be more on the sf/fantasy/superhero end of things.

(Also, most J-dramas are incredibly inane, IMO, but that could just be me.)

Anyway, I'd support the creation of Surprisingly Good Foreign Language as a supertrope.

edited 1st May '11 8:00:36 PM by bluepenguin

Since video game text is generally translated (and more importantly, edited) by native speakers, isn't it so that extremely few, if any, video games fit the trope?

Depends on the text in question.

Well a majority of the video game examples are all about songs and voice work.

^Or their related merchandise. See this Tokimeki Memorial desktop seal inking case, for example: [1]◊, [2]◊

edited 4th May '11 7:35:33 PM by AceNoctali

I'll be honest with you, I think a lot of the confusion stems from the description. It's a really interesting piece and I learnt a lot about the English and Japanese languages.

But why? I count 4 lines in that description that explicitly describe the trope and 13 that explain why Japanese is a hard language to speak. Is it any surprise that people have the impression that this is an Anime only trope?

I'm not even saying it shouldn't be here, but it should be condensed and there should be more lines to fully explain the trope.

The questions that I think the description needs to answer are 1.Is this only spoken English or does it cover clever translation of difficult written concepts 2. Does this work in any language? 3. Is it a requirement that it's surprising that the person translating is good at it? Also there should be more emphasis this mainly applies to gratuitous english, or at least it's most noticeable.

I also like the sound of the foreign language supertrope

Yeah, I say we change the description to be more general, from merely Japanese media to all foreign media. Also, we ought to purge the (many) examples that "justify" the trope by having it be used by an actual English native speaker, which obviously doesn't count.

*reads* *starts writing one reply, then thinks it over*

Junk the whole description and start over. The current description makes it sound like an Audience Reaction. The trope is "non-native English speaker speaks English flawlessly [in a non-English work]". That's a viable trope, and one with very good reasons to be surprised about.

edited 4th Jul '11 8:06:59 AM by MorganWick

Its not that Japanese is hard it's that English is hard for them to speak and write. Even though everyone actually learns English in High School it still appears wrong everywhere even show titles such as Gosick (Which is suppose to be "Gothic") that spelling appears on all artwork, novels, opening credits and other things. It's just They Just Didn't Care.

When things are correct it's shocking, more so to us. Negima's manga uses real English text books and conversations in English are perfect (the anime screws this up by casting students who speak English better than their teacher). Or Seitokai Yakuindomo's Fu*k You Mother Fu*ker scene. or surprisingly enough the Hentai Honey Blonde yes Hentai has Surprisingly Good English.

I still support a broad spectrum Surprisingly Good Foreign Language supertrope some shows feature other languages like Latin (West Wing, Negima) Indonesian (Nichijou) Sanskirt (Negima, Digital Devil Saga) German (DotHack) as a form of Multilingual Bonus Genius Bonus and Did the Research.

edited 4th Jul '11 3:09:50 PM by Raso

Bump.