#and i could be wrong becauae ive never actuallt been to china

[j-exclamationmark-l]

Japanese and English are difficult. There are some things that are common to say in either that just don't sound natural when you try to translate it. One I get asked about a lot is "otsukare-sama desu." It's very common to say in Japanese, like acknowledging the hard work others have done or just said kind of at the end of work. Literally it's like "you've worked so hard today." But you don't really say that in English. I don't know what yall say when you finish work. Even in English settings I just say "otsukare" because it feels weird to just say goodbye when you finish work. Or like when I hear new Japanese speakers who are English natives trying to speak l, I hear a lot of "I" and "you" (watashi/anata) but it just sounds so clunky, it's usually implied. For example, "watashi ha aka ga suki desu" (I like red) is not technically grammatically incorrect but it's way more natural just to say "aka ga suki desu" ("like red," the "I" is just implied). There are some things that also might technically have the same meaning in a dictionary but to me just feel different. Like I know "mendokusai" and "annoying" are technically the same word but one has a different feeling from the other and I will use one instead of the other in casual conversation even if I'm not speaking that language right now because it's closer to how I feel. "I'm at the office and was told to go to the other office and come back to this office after that office and they won't just give me the paperwork until I go to the other one and get that first, mendoi naa." Or "あの子はまだ泣いているけど一人にして。たまに僕たちを覗いて、もし誰かが見ていたらまた大きい声で泣き続ける。 It's so annoying."

Linguists and multilinguals of Tumblr, I suddenly have a burning desire to know what language-to-language translation has the highest entropy of information; i.e. across what 2 languages does the most true meaning get lost in translation? I know simplified Chinese and English have a fairly high entropy and most latin languages have low entropy between them (I believe? I might be wrong). I'd also love to hear what you have to say about how one thinks in different languages. And also if you could help this question reach larger swaths of the internet through translating this post, it would be a massive help.