this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2026
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do Japanese people actually talk like that, or is the dialogue broken up like that to have it take up the entire manga page's layout?
A lot of it is literally just Japanese having different grammar and English translations historically being bad, and sometimes trying to account for the former by contorting the translated sentence as far as possible in English so that it begins or ends with the same word (etc.) as in Japanese because of the formatting of the text in the case of manga.
Also being overly-literal with how something is formulated in Japanese when the speaker is just speaking in a normal idiomatic way and so it would generally be better to make it idiomatic English, though that of course relates to bad translation in general.
Also also some things are just hard to translate in a way that sounds like actual English, stereotypical examples including honorifics and personal pronouns.
I wonder if it has to do with Japanese acting being inspired by kabuki theater, and it would be like English dialogue all being in iambic pentameter, because English writers still keeping the format of Shakespeare?
The answer to this actually ties into why the Japanese have such a reputation for toxic work culture. You might have heard about long hours at Japanese workplaces. The real reason for this is communication. For example, if the boss means to say ‘Hey Shinji, please write this report for me by 3:30 pm on Tuesday’, it will usually go
‘Hey Shinji…’
‘Yes?’
‘Could you…unless…’
‘Uhhh what?’
‘Write this report?’
‘Ok’
blush ‘by 3:30?’
‘Wtf there’s barely enough time wtf’
‘Oh, is that a problem?’
whips out gun and points at own head ‘I can’t!!’
‘Oh…could it be done by tuesday?’
collapses
5 hours from now, the employee has recovered from the unnecessary dialogue and is working on the assignment till 11:00 pm
Remove the emotes and it's your average AmeriKKKan MS Teams exchange with a boomer who starts every conversation with "Are you there?" as if chat is a synchronous medium and they need to wait for the fucking dial tone before sending over a request
Edit: I say "boomer" here, but my worst offender -- who is the one guy that I have called out on it -- is like 28
Absolutely love to get a Teams message that just says “Hi” with no follow up or context
And then a meeting request two hours later
My boss is Canadian and does the same thing, minus the deadline:
"It would be nice if X...."
"So do you want me to do X?"
"Let's circle back later and see if we have time."
Later:
"Hey, why isn't X done?"
I am mashing the A button in my mind right now to skip the bad dialogue.
Dialogue isn't actually written the way people talk. It's pretty much always smoother and cleverer
It's how they think English speakers talk so they're just doing good translation.
‘American slow and stupid, no? Must show respect to their culture’
English translations of anime/manga don't sound like everyday language because the original text doesn't sound like everyday language either. No one on Earth actually talks like a Jojo's character
I talk like this and so do most people I know. Do you people never pause in speech?