Ping Takayuki or Cantate

Help! I have a question about Japanese, and I hope that either of you
(or anyone else who knows the language) can answer this.

I'm fixing a tech manual that was translated from Japanese to English.
I don't speak Japanese at all, but my job is to make sure the English
sounds natural. Anyway, there's some stuff in it about fetal ultrasounds.
It talks about calculating the number of gestational weeks and the
"expected date of confinement".

Date of *confinement*? I'm not sure how the translator came up with
that word. Could this mean the date of delivery?

Chakolate...

That's an old-fashioned way of saying the due date. It's perfectly good,
if archaic, English.

Helen Wheels...

EDC or expected date of confinement is, as far as I understand, the
usual medical term for the date the baby is expected to be born. Maybe
it's more common in UK English? I think confinement is just an old
fashioned term for labour and birth stage of a pregnancy.

Helen Wheels...

This manual doesn't say "All your babe are belong to us", does it?

jXwXeXrXmXoXnXt...

Sorry Helen, Mark Edwards beat you to that joke the other day! :)

It does say a lot of odd things, however.

Joyce, burning the 9:15PM oil

Jo Firey...

That used to be the "polite term". Back when you couldn't use words like
pregnant.

jXwXeXrXmXoXnXt...

I did a web search on this and I discovered that "date of confinement"
is very much an English-language term. I have never heard it before, but
have always heard the due date called, well, the "due date". :) Or maybe
the date of delivery. Confinement? What do they *do* in those maternity
wards, anyway??

And apparently the old term is in use in medicine, so I guess "confinement"
is going to stay. It's even referred to as "EDC" (estimated date of
confinement), so I can't exactly change that.

I really thought this was just a faulty translation, that perhaps there
was a Japanese word that means both confinement and delivery or something,
and they chose the wrong English word.

Takayuki...

I'm glad someone knew, because I had no idea. It's true that the
Japanese have what they call "wasei-eigo" terms, literally, Japanese
English. For example, "one up", meaning getting an extra life in a
video game... oh wait, except that those video games were exported to
English speaking countries in the 80s, ironically really making it
into a common English term.

jXwXeXrXmXoXnXt...

I wasn't thinking it was a wasei-eigo term, though. The manual was
originally written in Japanese, because the product is Japanese. But
now the company is going to market it in the US, so they translated
the manual to English. And I assumed, originally, that the translator
picked the word "confinement" because that was the closest to whatever
word in Japanese is used to mean "going into labor" or "delivery", etc.

If you could see this manual, you would understand why I thought it
was a mistake - there are a lot of odd phrasings in the book. The
translator, although he or she clearly knows enough English to get most
of it grammatically correct, nonetheless used words and phrases that
most English speakers would not use. So I just figured this was a poor
choice of an English word.

Pat...

The way Japanese people sometimes use English is one of the most hilarious
things in the world. I'll never forget how much I laughed at the few signs I
could read when I was over there.

One of my very favorite books on Japan that is filled with stories of
fractured English is Jack Seward's "Japanese in Action". And some of the
packaging on the Japanese foods sold over here cracks me up. ("You can make
sweet sandwich by placing natto between the breads.")

EvelynVogtGamble(Divamanque)...

I'm reminded of the snack food that its Janglish package
suggested as "good friend to beer". (Well, "friend",
"companion" - same thing, right?)

Many examples may be found at:

Except that it turned out I was wrong about that. Maybe I'm too young
to know this old-fashioned term, or maybe it's because I've never

Marina...

I think I'm a little younger than you but I knew it. But then, I read a
lot of old literature. Very common term in older novels.

EvelynVogtGamble(Divamanque)...

I think it also has a longer history in English than in
American - Only the Eastern states concerned themselves with
that sort of ultra "niceness" of language in
Victorian/Edwardian days - pioneer women didn't have the
time for such nonsense.

worked in medicine before, or because I never had kids, but that word
just escaped me. I really think it's a bizarre word for labor...

William Hamblen...

"Expected date of confinement", also "EDC", is real medical
terminology for the answer to the question, "When are you due?" MDs
know what it means.

Monique Y. Mudama...

I just want to know whose confinement they're talking about.

EvelynVogtGamble(Divamanque)...

That's what it meant in Victorian days (when any word
remotely connected with female parts or functions had its
euphemism)! The translator must have had a very old
dictionary.

jXwXeXrXmXoXnXt...

Well, as others have observed, the term has managed to stick around
and be very current in medical usage.