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Japanese mansplaining

Language Log 2020-09-13

[This is a guest post by Nathan Hopson]

This came across the transom:

"Your Global Mansplaining Dictionary In 34 Languages" The Japanese in this "handy crowdsourced linguistic guide to a universal blight" is a bit off, as I'll mansplain below, and I'd love to know how the LL hivemind sees the other languages. 横柄な男の解説 (ōhei na otoko no kaisetsu) = “patronizing man’s explanation," as it says, but: 1. 横柄 is rare enough in conversation that I can't recall ever encountering it, though I definitely have heard it "mis-"pronounced as yokogara occasionally. A more likely term for the patronizing aspect of mansplaining would be 上から目線で (ue kara mesen de), i.e. "looking down upon." I have also seen "mansplainer" rendered as 上から目線の男性  (ue kara mesen no dansei) or 上から目線男 (ue kara mesen otoko), which comports with my understanding. The same meaning is produced in reverse by the verb 見下す (mikudasu), lit. "to look down upon," and I have seen that used in describing mansplaining as well. 偉そうに (erasō ni), meaning something like "self-importantly," seems equally likely.

HuffPost Japan combines the two in its definition (translated from an English HuffPost article): マンスプレイニングとは、男性が偉そうに女性を見下しながら何かを解説・助言すること Mansupurēningu to wa, dansei ga erasō ni josei o mikudashinagara nani ka o kaisetsu / jogen suru koto "Mansplaining is when men self-importantly look down on women and explain something or give advice." Another candidate floating around the intertubes at least is 知ったかぶり(shittakaburi), an adjective akin to "sciolistic" in English and describing someone at the peak of the Dunning-Kruger effect's infamous "Mt. Stupid" of maximum ignorance and confidence. The venerable women's magazine Fujin kōron (Women's Review), offers the following translation for "I really don’t need you to mansplain that to me" in its "Teatime English" column (on the classist implications of which, no comment): あなたの知ったかぶりにはうんざりよ Anata no shittakaburi ni unzari yo "I'm fed up with your know-it-all-ness." and defines mansplain as: 知ったかぶった男の説明 Shittakabutta (perfect-tense of shittakaburi) otoko no setsumei (the vanilla translation for "explanation") This is listed as 教養 (kyōyō, general)-level as opposed to 専門家 (senmonka, specialist)-level English. The column is, with no apparent sense of irony, written by a youngish white man, and accompanied by a smug headshot captioned, "Let's Try!" I suppose I hardly need to tell you, Dear Reader, that I simultaneously giggled, sighed, facepalmed, and threw up in my mouth a little.   2. 解説 is fine, but 説教 (sekkyō) captures the annoying "preachiness" of mansplaining better imho. It was used in the translation of Rebecca Solnit's Men Explain Things to Me (説教したがる男たち, Sekkyō shitagaru otokotachi, lit., "men who like / want to explain things"). Solnit is credited with the first known use of mansplain in print. Fujin kōron's 説明 is unadventurous. As usual, though, it seems that Japanese has widely settled on the katakana (マンスプレイニング, in this case), so these various translations are mostly ancillary. Still, when I Googled マンスプレイニング 偉そう (Mansupureiningu era-sō), "mainsplaining looks proud / great / conceited"), Prof. Google suggested I might want to add 撃退 (gekitai), "fight off / repel." So it's pretty clear that everyone understands what mansplaining means, however it's translated.

 

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