Gaba, Shame On You
Here’s a picture of an ad for Gaba, a big English conversation school in Japan, I snapped on a train recently. I felt the English sentence about Gaba’s satisfaction was extremely awkward, so I put it up on twitter to check with some other native speakers. My friends concurred. What do you think?
I personally think the sentence would be improved by removing the “the” in “the satisfaction.” Others offered “continues to rise” as possibly preferable to “continually rise.” English articles, especially the definiteness of abstract nouns, is very difficult for many non-native speakers. That being said, it’s sad for a sentence of such questionable acceptability to come from a company which, in theory, prides itself in its English ability and surely hires many native speakers. Gaba, shame on you.
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Tags: ads, English, Engrish, Gaba, Japan, linguistics, train
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January 12th, 2009 at 6:20 am
The idea of satisfaction "rising" sounds strange to me. "Level of satisfaction … rising" or "satisfaction … increasing" would be a better choice.
"Demanding" seems like an unnecessarily vague word choice. "Competitive" or another more specific word would be better.
Exactly who is being satisfied by gaba's lessons is also vague. We assume it's the students, but teachers, for example, would also make sense.
So, I guess "In an increasingly competitive industry, why does student satisfaction with gaba's lessons continue to increase?" would be one way to improve it.
But that's still kind of awkward.
Can a prepositional phrase be a misplaced modifier? Maybe that's it.
January 13th, 2009 at 9:38 am
The only glaring problem is that unnecessary article - I don't think it's entirely ungrammatical, but it's definitely awkward. "In an increasingly demanding industry, why is satisfaction with Gaba's lessons continually rising?" would be just fine to me, grammatically speaking, although the impersonality of the second half of the sentence is also a bit off-putting. It's definitely a little weird in English to leave the people who are experiencing the aforementioned satisfaction as merely implied rather than explicitly identified, no matter how easy it is to guess from the context of the sentence.
February 18th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
While many of the points people have raised seem valid, as a native speaker, the original sentence did not sound weird to me. And I usually pick up on weird-sounding sentences. So I'm not sure it's entirely inaccurate.
February 24th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
Well, I'm another native speaker and it doesn't sound horribly awkward, but once you chew on it for a second, it gets ugly.
One, the problem with 'demanding' is not that it is 'vague', it is simply the wrong word. They mean "competitive" and you cannot in any way use 'demanding' to replace it here. It is simply wrong. The 'demanding industry' collocation exists, but it doesn't work or even make sense here. No native speaker editor who thought about that sentence for a second would allow that because of the second part of the sentence.
The first part of the sentence is talking about the english teaching industry, but the second part is referring to student satisfaction, hence it creates this creeping confusion which builds as your roll it around your mouth some more. Furthermore, "the satisfaction" is completely unacceptable. We simply don't use 'the satisfaction' as a noun that way in english, it needs to be paired with something as the other commenters stated. So, no, it is not unclear who's satisfaction is increasing, but it is made 'awkward' by having the first part of the sentence referring to gaba itself, combined with the usage of 'the satisfaction'.
I think the big thing is the 'demanding'. That just screams out, wrong. The awkwardness of the second part could be 'overlooked' as ad-speak, but put all together, its reaches total fail. F- for you GABA! Back to night school!
Finally, even ad-speak english reverts to the most colloquial. I think we're just more comfortable with the least formal speech. So, of course, all this 'increasingly, satisfaction, blah, blah blah,' works, sometimes still seem awkward since no one in real life would ever say them.
Why are students increasingly satisfied with our classes? Why are more and more students attending/coming to our classes?
Less formal yes, but more in-use and hence less 'awkward.'
Anyway, the important thing there can be no logical connection that they are trying to draw between (demanding industry) and 'satisfaction', that is simply an incorrect use of demanding and it fucks up the whole thing. And even if they changed it to 'competitive' the sentence would still be too busy and trying to do two things in not a lot of space with not a lot of logical connection. Awkwardness is dying to come out there. FAIL.
And yes, level of satisfaction is not only better, it may be near-required.
April 29th, 2009 at 8:52 am
The sentence is fine. Gaba is a sweat shop charging $90 per hour to the customer and paying about $10 per hour to the employee. You're better off at McDonalds in America.
October 10th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
I work for this company in Japan. It's interesting to say the least. The corporate staff is Japanese, with a few sprinkled in foreigners to give it an international flair; however these foreigners are never consulted on advertising, so most of the ad work is done by non-native speakers. They also produce their own texts focusing on what they feel is native and natural English. In most cases if a student spoke to someone on the streets they would be understood but most of them rely on the instructors to give them proper phrases. GABA's prices for students are high and with the current situation, meaning finances GABA is doing everything they can to get rid of the higher paid instructors. Their contract is vague enough that they can use almost anything against you and if anyone is looking for a job with them I would advise not to. I make about $20 for a 40 minute lesson, and I have been their for 3 years. The average pay for an instructor is about $13 after taxes. There are some advantages though, such as working a schedule you like, but there are no other perks and absolutely no benefits. Training is free but cost to get there is at your expense, but is a tax break because you are basically your own company. You have to wear a black or very dark blue suit and tie for 9 months of the year. The students can evaluate your lesson quality for everything. If the network which GABA runs off of crashes the students can give you a negative evaluation and if they don't like your appearance or your cologne. Management for instructors are foreigners, but they are die-hard employees of GABA and though they are suppose to support you the instructor they will turn on you in a heart beat if it will save the company money or prestige. GABA is supposed to be the #1 English school in Japan, but it isn't by far. If anyone reads this and has considered working for GABA please reconsider. Currently, there are over 280 viable breach of contract investigations under way and even if one is successful and there will be GABA will fall just like Nova did a couple of years ago. The management is worried about putting students into their booths for lessons and are currently active looking for instructors in the US and Canada as well as Europe and Australia. What they tell you will only be partially true, such a your scheduling. The chances for advancement is almost zero and your base pay will be 1500 Japanese Yen per lesson, no matter what time slots you work. If you thought that the advertisement was bad ask to see their books. They are full of grammar mistakes and they will not make any corrections until their next run on text books. It isn't all that great and I find that I can make more money doing private lessons than I do at GABA. It is like a sweat shop, they demand a lot and don't give compensation for the efforts. They have a private file on every instructor, you are never allowed to see it or rebut it! They never put positive comments in it, only negative, this way when they want to get rid of you they show the negative and your gone. Your contract isn't reviewed or considered if the management in your area say No!
December 16th, 2009 at 8:40 am
The in depth comments posted by "Gladius" nine week ago should be enough to deter any of you new to the eikawa racket in Japan from entering into any contract situation with the Fascist organization know as GABA. However, I'd like to add my agreement to his/her warnings. This company is the absolute "sweat-shop slum-lord" of the corporate English scam companies that so ubiquitously populate the Japanese market. It should be legally tarred and feathered for its unlawful practices, senseless, draconian policies for employees, contract breaches and outright lies, slave-like scheduling, and general total disrespect for the unsuspecting foreigners who fall into the GABA pit. If you now work for this abomination of a company, get out. If you're thinking about it, DON'T!
March 18th, 2010 at 10:27 pm
Someone I'm closed to worked for Gaba for more than half a decade as an instructor - it must mean that not all instructors are ill-treated? I work in NYC as a designer and I too am only paid $10 an hour after tax for a crazy amount of work - and who can complain in this economic crisis? Besides, nobody's forcing you/me to live in Japan/NYC or to keep the job
Anyway, if you translate exactly what it says in Japanese, I think it would be something like this: "Why is it that students' satisfaction level towards the lessons at Gaba is rising while the quality of English conversation schools is ever more being questioned?"
I think the best way to translate anything from Japanese to English would be to ask a Japanese person to (pre) translate and then a native speaker to make it sound more natural.. I really don't know why they didn't just ask someone to make sure it sounded perfect..