A leak from gaming company GameFreak had a curious note that caused fans to go wild. One Pokemon character, Cyrus, was described as “自閉的”. One of the earliest machine translations of this stated that this meant that the character is "autistic." This got a lot of attention and quickly spread throughout the fandom.
The entire sentence is:
彼は自分が完璧でないことが大嫌いであり、いつしか他人をも嫌うようになっていた。（完璧主義者、自閉的）
He hated that he was not perfect, and before long he began hating others too. (Perfectionist, jiheiteki)
The word in contention is 自閉的 (jiheiteki).
Some Japanese speakers alleged that this word in this context cannot mean “autistic” (the syndrome) and instead means closed off or reclusive:
Wait what
I’m just know hearing about the whole “Autism” “自閉的” translation…well mistranslation.
自閉的 is not Autism/Autistic
The correct word is
自閉症 read as jiheishou
Please be careful when trusting google translate with important words and terminology like this. (source)
It’s a little complicated to explain
But basically it’s saying he is close minded because he is a perfectionist.
Both me and my husband read it as, because he is a perfectionist he is close minded against anything and anyone who doesn’t live up to that standard. (source)
It means closed-off, with maybe an added, emphasized connotation of muteness/unresponsiveness/unsociability.
Calling someone 自閉的 really does not suggest they have autism at all. (source)
But others disagreed:
Twitter is saying this the Kanji used in this context doesn’t mean autistic. But I fact checked this with a friend and they said in this context it does? So idk, things are probably getting lost in translation.Twitter is saying this the Kanji used in this context doesn’t mean autistic. But I fact checked this with a friend and they said in this context it does? So idk, things are probably getting lost in translation. (source)
I did a little investigation and found that it seems both sides have some evidence to support themselves.
Let's start with some bases. If you look up 自閉 (jihei) on jisho, you will see it means social withdrawal, schizophrenia, or autism. 的 (teki) is a suffix like -ical, meaning having the characteristics of. The component characters of 自閉 literally are "self" and "closed." We can see how this relates to social withdrawal, schizophrenia, and autism.
The most common way to refer to autism is 自閉症 (jiheishou), with 症 (shou) meaning "syndrome" or "disease." This word is also used as a modifier, such as 自閉症児 (jiheishouji) meaning autistic child (noted to be a "sensitive" term by Jisho).
Let's return to the word in contention. Is 自閉的 (jiheiteki) ever used to refer to people? Yes. It is very easy to find references to it in textbooks referring to autism.
ところで私たちが自閉症の子どもを“自閉的”というさいにはつぎのような 2 つの手順のいずれかによっている。第 1 は彼らの行動、とりわけ人間に対する態度が私たちに自閉的という主観的印象を与えるかどうかのアナ
“Incidentally, when we describe a child with autism as "autistic," we are following one of two procedures. The first is whether their behavior, particularly their attitude towards other people, gives us a subjective impression of being autistic.”
In the following example, 自閉的な子 (jiheiteki na ko) is literally glossed in the text as "autistic child."
自閉的な子・自閉児( autistic child )など、さまざまな名称でよばれてきたが、現在では自閉症の障害は幼児期のみならず、成人期まで何らかの形で残存していくことが明らかになったため、自閉症( autism )とよぶことが一般的になりつつある。自閉症の診断 ... (source)
What about the other definition offered by Japanese speakers, meaning closed-off? 自閉的 (jiheiteki) is also used to mean ‘closed off’ or something like ‘self-referential.’ I’ll provide two examples I found:
子供たちは情報化が進むなかで、テレビ・ゲームに代表される自閉的遊びに溺れ、携帯電話、 e メールなどを媒体とした表層の情報交換しかできなくなりつつある。(source)
“People are becoming engrossed in solitary activities such as watching television and playing video games, and are increasingly only able to engage in superficial information exchange through mediums like mobile phones and email.”
Here it is clear they are not referring to autism, but to the isolated nature of watching TV and gaming.
多文化主義を盲信し、アートをコミュニケーションツールとして多用してきた 我々が、9.11 以降、自閉的で趣 味性という差異しか表現できないでいることこそが、人種なき人種 主義なのです。(source)
Our blind faith in multiculturalism and our overuse of art as a communication tool have left us, since 9/11, autistic and capable only of expressing differences in taste. This is precisely what constitutes race-less racism. (translation from linguee)
This example is also clearly using ‘autistic’ to mean self-referential or closed off.
I attempted to look up the etymology of the word to see when it began being used to refer to autism, and whether the metaphorical usage preceded or followed the medical usage, but I could not find any sources on this. Interestingly, this combination of characters (自閉) has been used in Classical Chinese to mean “to exclude oneself from society,” if you believe Wiktionary. Unfortunately no citations or examples are cited.
Having now established that 自閉的 (jiheiteki) means both "autistic" in the context of autism and "closed-off," let us return to the text in contention. In the leaked document, ‘自閉的’ appeared next to another word in parentheses. That word, 完璧主義者 (kanpeki shugisha) is translated as ‘perfectionistic.’ To me, appearing in a list like this suggests that it is meant to have a similarity with the other word. "Perfectionistic" in this case indicates a common trait, not a medical condition. Imagine if the text read "perfectionistic, obsessive-compulsive." Would you take this to mean that the character in question has obsessive compulsive disorder (or obsessive-compulsive personality disorder), or would you take this to mean that the condition is being used metaphorically to suggest the character has obsessive tendencies bordering on pathological? I would be more inclined towards the latter reading.
There is also a second document referring to this character which uses the word:
それなりに筋肉があり、とても自閉的な科学機械をこよなく愛している感じには見受けられない。
"Having a decent amount of muscle, he does not appear to be the type to be deeply in love with self-enclosed scientific machinery."
This one is interesting because 自閉的 (jiheiteki) is modifying 科学機械 (kagaku kikai), scientific machines. There is thus not a strong reason to believe that 自閉的 (jiheiteki) is used here to mean 'autistic' in the medical sense since, obviously, scientific machines cannot have autism. (The use of 自閉的 to describe machinery is very interesting, and I'm not quite sure how we're meant to interpret it - the machines are 'reclusive'? Is it that the machines do not involve the outside world? Or is it that they are a world unto themselves?)
The second document referring to this character shows that the authors were already comfortable using 自閉的 (jiheiteki) in a metaphorical sense, and nowhere else in these materials is any medical history mentioned. Given that 自閉的 also has an established non-clinical usage in Japanese meaning “reclusive” or “psychologically shut off,” that this sense fits the character, that multiple Japanese speakers have said a diagnostic reading feels unnatural in this context, and that the more standard term for autism, 自閉症 (jiheishou), was available but not used, I am inclined to believe that the likeliest intended reading of 自閉的 here is not an autism diagnosis, but rather “self-enclosed.”
For a different example of polysemous confusion, check out the Dr. Eggman - genius, gentleman, feminist? article.
