"The moon is beautiful, isn't it?" - An odd translation myth

While watching a video, I encountered this anecdote:

When the novelist Soseki Natsume (1867–1916) was an English teacher, one of his students translated the English phrase “I love you” as 我君を愛す / ware kimi o aisu. Soseki pointed out that Japanese people don’t say 愛す / aisu (to love), and that the best translation would actually be 月が綺麗ですね / tsuki ga kirei desu ne (the moon is beautiful, isn’t it?).

This anecdote has become widespread as an example of how translation challenges are not just about words, but about culture. In its most reductive form, people have taken away that "In Japanese, 'the moon is beautiful, isn't it?' means 'I love you'."

Moon after rain, Kiyomizudera Temple, Kyoto

I first encountered this story many years ago, where I sort of accepted it as a curiosity and moved on. Upon encountering it again, I felt much more skeptical. For one, plenty of Japanese media use rather direct translations of "I love you", ranging from the more low-stakes "suki desu" to the serious declaration of "aishiteru." 

Secondly, while I understand that high-context cultures exist, "the moon is beautiful, isn't it?" is quite vague. No example is given of the text that the student was trying to translate. If he's a teacher of English, then I presume that his student is Japanese and not a native English speaker, yet in this example it sounds like he's telling someone who is not a native Japanese speaker how to translate this phrase.

The phrase itself also confuses me. Am I to believe that any shared appreciation of the moon is tantamount to a declaration of love? Or are there special conditions that turn lunar love into shared love? If it's about the context, why is the context absent from this anecdote? Are there actual examples of Japanese translations of English text where "I love you" is rendered as something non-literal, and if so, what are they and what are the circumstances? In short, the whole thing sounded oddly pat and exoticizing while also lacking crucial detail on what would make such a translation work.

After googling the phrase and following Reddit links, I found that the original anecdote is a misattribution. Soseki Natsume never said such a thing.

The earliest citation found for this formulation is from a 1961 book:

さらにいえば、日本の社交の基本は「見る」ことで成立する。
若い男女の恋人同士が愛の告白をするとき、西洋人のように、
「私はあなたを愛しています（I love you）」
などとはけっしていわない。
そんなことばを口に出さなくとも、満月を仰ぎ見て、
「いいお月さんですね」
そして、二人でじっと空を見上げるだけで、意思は十分通じるのだ。 

Furthermore, the foundation of Japanese social interaction is established through “looking.” When young men and women confess their love to one another, they do not, like Westerners, say things like: “I love you.” Even without putting such words into speech, they simply gaze up at the full moon and say, “What a beautiful moon.” And by quietly looking up at the sky together, their feelings are fully understood. 

There is also a book from 1922 that claims that "I love you" cannot be translated into Japanese:

日本語には英語の『ラヴ』に相當する言葉が全く無い。『戀』とか『愛』とか云ふ字では感じがひどくちがう。" I love you "や" Je t'aime "に至つては、何としても之を日本語に譯すことが出來ない。 

Japanese has no word that truly corresponds to the English “love.” Words like koi or ai feel quite different in nuance. As for “I love you” or “Je t’aime,” there is simply no way to translate them into Japanese. 

Neither of these are by Soseki Natsume, but he does have the following:

「漱石文庫」に残された漱石のメモ書きの中に、ジョージ・メレディスというイギリスの小説家の作品を取り上げて、

"I love you,Signora Laura."―Vittoria p.113.

此 I love you ハ日本ニナキformulaナリ

と記した一節がある

In Sōseki’s notes preserved in the “Sōseki Bunko,” there is a passage where he takes up a work by the English novelist George Meredith and writes:

    “I love you, Signora Laura.” — Vittoria, p.113.

    “This ‘I love you’ is a formula that does not exist in Japanese.” 

A hatelabo user surmises that the story that Soseki believed "I love you" could not be translated to Japanese was conflated with the story that someone translated "I love you" as "What a beautiful moon," to create the hybrid story "Soseki said that 'I love you' should be translated as 'the moon is beautiful, isn't it'." 

The comments on the hatelabo post are quite revealing. Many of the users seem to think that it's quite normal to say "I love you", with one even talking about Japan's "confession culture," and some speculate that this may be a relic of a different Japanese culture. In short, the idea that 'ai' cannot be used to express "love" may have been true at one point in Japanese history and culture, but continued exposure to Western cultures has moved the meanings of those words closer, and Japanese culture itself changed to make direct declarations of love more acceptable. 

これは評価すべき増田だな。 しかしこれ読んで思ったが、『"当時"の愛という単語』は love に直訳できなかったが、 現代の日本語においては愛にloveの意味がおおむね正確に取り込まれているので、 "I love you"＝私はあなたを愛しています、で問題なさそうだ。

“This is a commendable piece by Masuda.  But reading this made me think: the word <ai> ‘back then’ couldn’t be translated directly as love, but in modern Japanese, <ai> has more or less accurately absorbed the meaning of love. So ‘I love you’ = ‘watashi wa anata o aishiteimasu’ seems basically fine.”

ホンマや。隔世の感ありやね。むしろ現代の日本人には当時の日本人の感性がよくわからんてこっちゃなぁ。

True. It really feels like a world away. If anything, it means modern Japanese people don’t really understand the sensibility of Japanese people back then.

As for the significance of the moon, one person I discussed this with suggested that the moon may be significant because it was historically an image associated with lovers - two young people would meet clandestinely under the moon. This would make referencing the moon a way to make salient the fact that they're doing something a little dangerous for love. An interesting bit of speculation. 

In any case, this zombie story has taken on a life of its own such that saying "the moon is beautiful, isn't it" has become reinterpreted as a covert love declaration. It seems that this story is so sticky that it memed its way into reality!

Cyrus: Perfectionistic, autistic?

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.

English Gerunds as Loan Words

A casual observation. It seems English gerunds or present participles, such as 'streaming', 'jogging', 'rock climbing', are fairly popular as loan words in other languages. Of course, any part of speech can become a loan word (and English has been a fruitful source of nouns and verbs), but I'm particularly fascinated by the popularity of the gerunds.

A handful of examples - my Russian professor in college spoke with special venom about English loanwords in Russian such as 'jogging' and 'rock climbing.' You can see such an example below:

In Russian, the official is ЛЕДОЛАЗАНИЕ (ledolazanie) but we also have АЙС КЛАЙМИНГ (ais klaiming).

In French, 'going jogging' is 'faire du jogging'.

In Japanese, there is the loan word 'トレーニング' (toreeningu, training) which can be turned into a verb by adding 'suru'.

In Spanish, the word 'streaming' has been borrowed for live digital transmissions, as in 'hacer streaming.'

My interest is in whether gerunds are especially popular as loan words. I can understand borrowing a noun, verb, or adjective, but the present participle of a verb being used as a noun? That's quite specific. No other verbal derivation seems popular. Past participles (bitten, ridden) don't seem to be borrowed much. Verbs are usually borrowed in their dictionary form, not a conjugated form (so no past tense or third person singular).

The simple explanation may be that since gerunds function as nouns ("I love swimming! Climbing is my favorite hobby. Labored breathing is a bad sign."), it doesn't really matter that they were derived from verbs. Gerunds are also very common in English and easy to form.

Why borrow gerunds then? There is a certain cosmopolitan cool factor in English loan words, and English gerunds are quite distinctive. I wonder, though, if it's really just that. I have an inkling gerunds may somehow be more convenient. There is already a word for 'ice climbing' in Russian, so why the English calque?

It is certainly easier to say 'hacer streaming' than to say 'hacer transmision en directo.' It's also much more compact - instead of using a noun phrase with an embedded prepositional phrase, you can just use this shorter noun phrase. (It helps that 'streaming' is a more particular activity than 'transimision en directo', which refers to any live streaming of data. A meteorologist on television may rely on live streaming data, but she is not a 'streamer.')

It may also be a matter of ignorance. If you somehow don't know how to say 'ice climbing' in Spanish ('escalada en hielo') but you know the English for some reason, instead of trying to figure out how you would say it (is there a single word for it, or is it a phrase?), you can just borrow the English and add 'hacer' to it if you need to turn it into a verb. Google search results gives 3 results for 'hacer ice climbing', so it's definitely very rare, but not unprecedented.

Link Haul - Japanese Trilled R and the Yakuza

A reader sent me an email asking me for information on the relationship between the Japanese trilled R, yakuza speech, and working class masculinity. I found some posts which I thought might be interesting for readers of this blog, as well:

First, this Stack Exchange post:

If you're referring to the kind of allophone on /r/ that typically appears in yakuza speech, as you said yourself, it is called 巻き舌 (まきじた) in Japanese. Phonetically speaking, it's the alveolar trill.

This is not one of the allophones the average native Japanese speaker would use when speaking in standard Japanese in normal context. As the Japanese Wikipedia article on the alveolar trill says, this allophone is most typically associated with the dialects(?) called べらんめえ調 spoken by 江戸っ子 (えどっこ) and 浜言葉 typically stereotyped as fishermen's speech, and a certain aggressive, hostile, and rough register in spoken language (such as typical yakuza speech).

And this one:

As you probably already read in the question on dialects, Yakuzas are often pictured speaking Hiroshima-ben on TV. According to Japanese friends, this has probably as much to do with the fact that Hiroshima-ben naturally sounds quite hard to the ear (whereas soft-spoken Kyoto-ben is the typical dialect choice for cute, feminine characters) as any real-world trend.

In reality, I'd say your average yakuza speaks a slang-heavy, ultra-masculine version of whatever his (or his clan's) native dialect is. As it happens, many yakuzas do come from Hiroshima and the West of Japan in general, so Kansai-ish accent is usually a safe bet (once again: Kansai-ben(s) tend to sound harsher and more direct than other dialects, so there's that too). Pretty sure the none-to-rare Osaka yakusa speaks exclusively osaka-ben...

As you already guessed, among obvious (possibly stereotypical) characteristics are:

1) extreme rolling of 'R's and ample exaggerated consonant gemination...

 Addendum: talked some more with (Japanese) friends about this and the consensus was that there ultimately isn't any fundamental difference between "Yakusa-speech" and heavily-masculinised working-class osaka-ben (or hiroshima-ben, or whatever you pick). 

Also found this humorous website that has some audio samples of yakuza speech in film. In the one titled 'stick out your finger', the trilled r is quite audible.

In short, someone wanting to learn more about this may want to investigate hiroshima-ben and its association with masculinity, working class identity, and yakuza. If you speak any Japanese, you could also try to search for '巻き舌 (まきじた)' on the Japanese net. I tried searching through JSTOR but didn't find anything on the alveolar trill in Japanese. 

Link Haul - Old English Mann and Japanese Long Vowels

Some interesting links I've found this month.

Old English Mann

"Mann and Gender in Old English Prose: A Pilot Study" - A look at the use of the word 'mann' in Old English hagiographies and  whether it was applied to mean "man" (as in male human) or "person." It appears that mann was often used in the same way we would use "person" today, though it had already begun taking on the implication of "male." Contrary to my expectations, there are actual references to women as "mann," though they are not common. As such, "mann" in Old English appears to be genuinely gender neutarl. 

Contrast this with something like "generic he." We may say "a student must carry his books" to refer to a generic student, but "a kindergarten teacher must care for his students" sounds odd, even though "kindergarten teacher" is not gendered like words such as "mother." This is because we know, in real life, that most kindergarten teachers are women and not men. This shows that "generic he" is not gender-neutral but "masculine as default." "mann," in contrast, is genuinely gender neutral as it can be applied to women:

Þæs dohter wæs gehaten Ercongota halifemne, & wundorlic man.
(this daughter was called Eorcengota holywoman, and wonderful man)
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Peterborough continuation) • Oxford, Laud Misc., year 636.

Several other female saints are described in similar terms in the Old English corpus, for example, Helen and Agatha by Ælfric: His modor wæs cristen. Elena gehaten. swiðe gelyfed mann. and ðearle eawfæst; ‘his [i.e. Constantine’s] mother was a Christian; [she was] called Helen, a very devout individual and firmly pious;’ and Hwæt ða Agathes inwerdlice clypode mid astrehtum handum to þam Hælende þus, Eala ðu min drihten, þe me to menn gesceope; ‘Well then Agatha called inwardly thus to the Saviour with her hands stretched out: Oh you my Lord, who made me a human being’. Of the holy woman Romula it is said that seo wæs wundorlicre geþylde man, ‘she was a person of amazing patience’. Mary of Egypt says of herself ic eom wifhades mann, ‘I am a female human being’.

The word 'mann' emphasized the humanity of a person, whereas the words 'wif' and 'wer' emphasized their sex. The paper elaborates on the consequences of this as applied to descriptors of Jesus. Referring to Jesus as 'mann' foregrounds his humanity. In contrast, Jesus is not referred to as 'wer', presumably because it is not relevant to foreground his male-ness. Angels are explicitly not called 'mann' as they are not human.

Numerous references to Christ as mann can easily be located in the corpus of Old English prose, and are clearly linked to the concept of his humanity. His identity as the Son of Man appears as mannes sunu in Old English (ca. 153 occurrences), in a clear example of gender-neutral mann, here understood to refer to the Virgin Mary and her human ancestry; the hypothetical weres sunu by contrast seems to be unattested in connection with Christ, which is unsurprising since Christ cannot possibly be the son of a gender-specific wer, a human male.

There are already examples of 'mann' acquiring the masculine connotation it would have in the future.

he genam hi þa onsundron and sæde hyre gewislice hwæt heo man ne wæs and hwylcere mægþe
He took her to one side and told her firmly that she was no male and (asked her) what kind she was

I recommend reading the paper for more; it's very insightful.

Origins of Japanese Vowel Length

The Japanese long vowels ei and ou. I have been studying kanji recently, and noticed something curious. The 'on' (Chinese) readings often had long vowels, such as 'shuu', 'shou', 'tei', while the 'lun' readings rarely had those long vowels. I wondered if these long vowels were a result of the borrowing (and thus later introduced into Japanese). This blog post has the following to say about the origins of the long vowels 'ou' and 'ei':

[...] if you take a closer look at -ei, you will find that these pronunciations have Chinese origins, writes Shota Kumono:

First group: 英 (えい), 精 (せい), 兵 (へい), 霊 (れい), etc.
Second group: 系 (けい), 制 (さい), 低 (てい), 例 (れい), etc.

The first group came from the Chinese -ng coda. As Japanese does not have an -ng coda, and has not developed the moraic nasal ん back when these characters were borrowed (the time of Go-on and Kan-on), the -ng coda of Chinese became -i or -u depending on the preceding vowel sound: it becomes i after /e/ and u after /a/, /u/* and /o/. [...] Here are the TCC (Chinese) pronunciations of the above kanji:

英 yēng, 精 dsiēng, 兵 piēng, 霊 liēng
系 ghêi, 制 cêi, 低 tê̄i, 例 lêi

As you can see, the -ng in such cases and the -i from Chinese both got borrowed into Sino-Japanese as -i.

I wonder if this is influenced by pre-velar raising. Meanwhile, when it comes to 'ou', the case is a little different. It is caused partially by vowel deletion and partially by borrowing from Chinese:

About the case with “ou”, it’s a bit different. Interpreting what Shota Kumono has written, /o:/ did not originally exist in native Japanese. This makes sense, as Japanese syllables originally consisted of a consonant-vowel structure. In modern Japanese, vowels aren’t necessarily preceded by a consonant.

The modern /o:/ came from 3 sources:
1. Historical お row + ほ (modern お row + お)
2. Historical お row + を (modern お row + お)
3. Chinese -ung (通 rime; TCC -ung or -ong), -âu, -au, -əu, etc.

Interesting! If I'm reading the blog post correctly, this means that words written with 'oo' (おおい - ooi, many) and 'ee' (ねえ - nee, sister) are native Japanese words. This certainly explains the preponderance of long vowels in the 'on' readings for Kanji.

Karuta, a Competitive Phonetics Game?

In the anime “Chihayafuru,” a team of high schoolers plays a card game called ‘karuta’. It’s based around hearing a reader read a poem aloud, and then finding the card corresponding to that poem on the floor. You can see an example in the following illustrative video:

There are 100 poems in the version of karuta played in the anime. The phonological qualities of the poems matter - for example, 7 of the poems begin with unique syllables (u, ho, me, mu, sa, se, su), so if you hear one of those syllables, you don’t have to wait to hear the rest of the card. Others share the starting syllable, so you have to wait longer, such as with the ‘chi’ cards.

One of the conceits in the game is that the main character, Chihaya, has amazing hearing. Other high-ranked characters also have great hearing. Some of the examples of this hearing:

• Chihaya can hear the sound before the f.
• The meijin can hear the difference between “su” and “se”

The ability to be able to anticipate a sound before it is completed grants you a competitive advantage. Is this actually linguistically possible?

Because of anticipatory coarticulation, it may be possible that the ’s’ in ‘su’ and the ’s’ in ‘se’ sound different. There is lip compression involved in the Japanese ‘u’ sound that is not present in the ‘e’, which could theoretically affect the ’s’ in ‘su’. Someone with very good hearing may be able to notice it.

What about ‘the sound before the ‘f’? This must be interpreted as some sort of artistic license, as there is no sound before the production of the Japanese bilabial fricative. Perhaps what is meant by this is that Chihaya can tell based on a very short sample and no vowel that the sound is going to be a bilabial fricative and not a glottal fricative or devoiced vowel.

Is there linguistic evidence that coarticulation affects Japanese consonants this way? I couldn’t find any articles on anticipatory coarticulation affecting consonants in Japanese, so I can’t tell you. Looking at the linked video, you can see that the participants do react rather quickly. If you'd like to see a high-level match commentated with English subtitles, you can look here also:

It would be interesting to ‘port’ this game to different languages with a different set of poems, and see how high-level players react. I also wonder if you could make a game like this that's cross-lingual - IPA recognition? Karuta isn't just about listening, but also about card layout and reflexes, so you could use that as a base to avoid making the game just about who has the better listening recognition.

Dr. Eggman - genius, gentleman, feminist?

Dr. Eggman, also known as Dr. Robotnik, is the primary antagonist of the Sonic video game series. He's a mad genius known for engineering all sorts of robotics to take over the world.

But according to the English-language Sonic Heroes manual, he has some hidden depths. He's also a feminist:

Eggman is a romanticist, a feminist, and a self-professed gentleman.

This quote has long confused Sonic fans because Dr. Eggman has never spoken about feminism or had any particular attitudes toward women. (If you want to determine for yourself whether Dr. Eggman is a feminist, I recommend reading this Vice article.) Imagine reading a description of Bowser from the Mario games that mentioned "Bowser is also a fiscal conservative" among random traits and you'll see how jarring this is.

There's been speculation that this is a mistranslation, because there's a Japanese word "feminisuto" that actually means something along the lines of "chivalrous, romantic." Considering the context that Dr. Eggman is both a "romanticist" (another strange translation) and "a self-professed gentleman," it makes more sense for the intention to be "chivalrous."

You can see an example of "feminisuto" to mean chivalrous in the following episode from the anime Revolutionary Girl utena:

In Japanese, "feminisuto" ("feminist"), actually means "chivalrous," as the poorly shot Utena clip demonstrates. Was feminist Eggman the result of a mistranslation? It gets odd. pic.twitter.com/uYEEy1mfFp

— Ace Linguist (@acelinguist) October 28, 2018

Ki-sama wa... (why you)
Feminisuto daraka na ore wa. (because I'm chivalrous)

The Japanese manual of Sonic Heroes does not mention whether or not Dr. Eggman is "feminisuto." This has basically been the end of most research.

However, it's worth pointing out that the translation for the English Sonic Heroes manual may not have come from the Japanese manual, but from another source. The official Japanese site for the anime Sonic X does indeed say that Dr. Eggman is "feminisuto":

ロマンチストかつフェミニスト。 自称紳士のええかっこしい。
Romantic and chivalrous. (?)A self proclaimed gentleman.(?)

It seems that they decided to use Sonic X descriptions for the English Sonic Heroes manual, but whoever was translating it was unaware that "feminisuto" meant "chivalrous." "feminisuto" does also refer to someone who is a feminist, so the translator may also simply have decided that "feminist" would make more sense. It's even possible they thought it was funny.

Whatever the cause, it's a humorous example of how strange translations can end up taking on a life of their own.

Note: this was originally published in abbreviated form on Twitter in October 2018.