Saturday, January 19, 2008

Democracy Now in Japan

I was channel surfing and I found that Asahi Newsstar has Democracy Now (Japanese site http://democracynow.jp/). I'm not sure how long they have carried it. It even has Japanese subtitles -- and why not, since do a good job with the English transcripts, it's easy for another station to pick up the content. Unfortunately, though, according to the schedule, it's only on once(?) a week and rebroadcast a few times. Still, it's a great alternative to CNNjesusland and the Beebie-Sea. I haven't been listening to Democracy Now because the volume that it is recorded at is too quiet to be heard over the noise of the train on my commute.

They are calling it katakana デモクラシー and Romaji NOW! Who decides these things? But I guess the direct translation of 民主主義+現代 looks pretty strange. Democracy is a difficult word so they katakana-ized it so people could pronounce it and left NOW as it was. But sometimes katakanize it too, randomly.

Unfortunately, today's program is from May 9, 2007. What are they trying to pull? I just hope that they decide, after showing a few select shows for a month or so, to carry it on a daily basis.

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