Sharuke 04: The Bundesliga in Japanese
By: Jan | August 1st, 2008Yesterday, VfL Bochum, as in Shinji Ono ft. Bochum, played out a friendly against the Yokohama F. Marinos which ended 1-1. At the same time Bayern Munich played against the recent Asian Champions League winners Urawa Red Diamonds and won 4-2. I don’t know about Bochum’s draw, but the Bayern game was quite entertaining. Head over to the Bayern Offside for the match report.
Both games were part of a short marketing trip to Japan organized by the Bundesliga. It was meant to increase awareness of the Bundesliga on the Japanese market, improve the brand image and unlock lucrative new revenue streams. Well, I completely made that up, but I’m convinced some of it could turn out to be true after all.
Entirely unrelated to this, I decided to browse the Japanese Wikipedia and look up the 18 clubs of the upcoming Bundesliga season. Their names were written using Katakana, a syllabary component of the Japanese writing system, which is most often used to transcribe foreign names. Katakana can, of course, be transcribed to our Roman alphabet as well. The Hepburn romanization is one of the most common ways to do this (don’t be fooled, I don’t really know anything about what I’ve just written there).
Anyway, here are the results of my findings:
バイエルン・ミュンヘン - Baierun Myunhen
ヴェルダー・ブレーメン - Veruda Buremen
シャルケ04 - Sharuke 04
ハンブルガーSV - Hanburuga SV
VｆLヴォルフスブルク - VfL Vorufusuburuku
VfBシュツットガルト - VfB Shutsutogaruto
バイヤー・レバークーゼン - Baiya Rebakuzen
ハノーヴァー96 - Hanova 96
アイントラハト・フランクフルト - Aintorahato Furankufuruto
ヘルタBSCベルリン - Heruta BSC Berurin
カールスルーエSC - Karusurue SC
VfLボーフム - VfL Bofumu
ボルシア・ドルトムント - Borushia Dorutomunto
エネルギー・コットブス - Enerugi Kotobusu
アルミニア・ビーレフェルト - Aruminia Bireferuto
ボルシア・メンヘングラッドバッハ - Borushia Menhenguradobaha
1899ホッフェンハイム - 1899 Hofenhaimu
1.FCケルン - 1. FC Kerun
I guess for someone who doesn’t speak German, it makes no difference trying to pronounce Mönchengladbach or Menhenguradobaha.
To cap off this post, here are the family names of some current and former Bundesliga players. See if you can name them all…
フリンクス - Furinkusu
ポドルスキ - Podorusuki
バシュテュルク - Bashutyuruku
シュヴァルツェンベック - Shuvarutsunbeku
シュヴァインシュタイガー - Shuvainshutaiga
シュラウドラフ - Shuraudorafu
ファン・デル・ファールト - fan deru Faruto
ヒッツルスペルガー - Hitsurusuperuga
リトバルスキー - Ritobarusuki
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I can’t name all actually.
My Japanese is only limited to the very basic (the greeting part, that is).Anyhow, for some reason the second one is telling me that it’s Podolski. Third from last…van der Vaart. The second last is Hitzlsperger. That is all I can guess.
And Jan, I dare you to find the Chinese equivalent of the name of the clubs.
Kidding. I went to take a look at the Chinese Wikipedia myself and even I had a struggle at times trying to pronounce some of the names of the clubs in its Chinese equivalent. And it’s my second language even.The Chinese Wikipedia page on the Bundesliga - http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%BE%B7%E5%9B%BD%E8%B6%B3%E7%90%83%E7%94%B2%E7%BA%A7%E8%81%94%E8%B5%9B
By the way, if your computer cannot support Chinese characters, whatever it’s on the page looks strange to you. I found an article from Wikipedia on what to do if you see strange characters on your computer screen - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Multilingual_support_%28East_Asian%29
Breaking news…the Champions League third qualifying round had just happened. And since you used Schalke’s Japanese equivalent Jan, this reminds me… they will be facing Atlético Madrid. The UEFA website reported that is the pick of the draw - http://www.uefa.com/competitions/ucl/news/kind=1/newsid=735569.html. There was also another very interesting pairing in regards to Fred Rutten’s former club.
Posted from
Singapore
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Hee! “Baiya Rebakuzen?” I really like that one. The transliteration of “Baierun Myunhen” isn’t too far off the mark, really.
Ok, this is fun! These are the best I can guess:
Podorusuki - Podolski
Shuvainshutaiga - Schweinsteiger
Hitsurusuperuga - Hiztlsperger
fan deru Faruto - van der VaartAs for today’s draws… It will be tough for Schalke, but I think they can do it. I’d be more confident of that if Neuer was back from injury. Heruta Berurin’s and Shutsutogaruto’s draw against teams I also can’t pronounce leads me to believe that they will progress from their next round of qualifiers.
Posted from
United States -
Ahh, isn’t that fun!
I’d have guessed Podolski, Schweinsteiger and Hitzlsperger as well. Apart from those:
Furinkusu - Frings
Bashutyuruku - Bastürk
Shuvarutsunbeku - Schwarzenbeck (okay, I had to look up the spelling first)
Ritobarusuki - Littbarski
Shuraudorafu - might be Schlaudraff?Posted from
Germany -
“And Jan, I dare you to find the Chinese equivalent of the name of the clubs.”
I’ll do so once the Bundesliga is on a marketing trip in China - or when I have nothing else to post.
“Ritobarusuki - Littbarski”
Wow, I thought no one would be able to get that one right.
Posted from
United States
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