What's the deal with letter grades in Japanese culture?

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Re: What's the deal with letter grades in Japanese culture?

Post by Revorse »

Yeah the using the grading system F-A is fine. But that S. I've always understood that is was to show something was above and beyond the general scale, but i never under the reason to use S.
Seems like such a random letter to use. But then again any letter would have been random considering that S-class is a made up thing.
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Re: What's the deal with letter grades in Japanese culture?

Post by Sauce »

Sauce Rank.

Duh.
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Re: What's the deal with letter grades in Japanese culture?

Post by butyoumight »

All I can think about when talking about S ranks is the support conversations in Fire Emblem: Awakening, and how certain pairs of units can reach an S-rank conversation in which they get married at the end, so I assumed the S in that case stood for Spouse |D
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Re: What's the deal with letter grades in Japanese culture?

Post by Darkwings »

What I was trying to convey the most is that it's not really an exclusive to Japan nor to fiction, they simply tend to use it a lot especially in such a context (Japanese fiction).

In my language for example there's a term indicating exactly the same thing: "fuoriclasse" (fuori = out; classe = class) so there is no need for another label.
It's commonly translated into "champion" or "excellence" but those terms lack the initial flavor of having something so good that it's on a class of its own.

In English you can say that something "outclasses" something else using the same meaning, but as far as I know there is no single noun to strictly indicate the exact same meaning so you find "champion" being used instead.
On the other hand in English you can refer to someone as an "outlaw" if it's "outside of the law" but you don't have a verb sharing the same root.

I see it simply as a language dependant thing. A simple labels like "S rank" is easier to write/read and doesn't even need to be translated.
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Re: What's the deal with letter grades in Japanese culture?

Post by Fat D »

Revorse wrote:Yeah the using the grading system F-A is fine. But that S. I've always understood that is was to show something was above and beyond the general scale, but i never under the reason to use S.
Seems like such a random letter to use. But then again any letter would have been random considering that S-class is a made up thing.
Super? Special? Many "above and beyond" words start with S.
In Germany, schools have two failing grades. Legend has it that a latin teacher had been grading an exam so exceptionally bad, it did not even merit the standard failing grade and labeled it "sub omni canone" - below all canon. The student, bad as he was at latin, translated it as "below all cannon", which remains a widespread German idiom. Interestingly, this starts with S as well, but it is not the greatest. It is the worst.
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Re: What's the deal with letter grades in Japanese culture?

Post by Darkwings »

Fat D wrote: Super? Special? Many "above and beyond" words start with S.
In Germany, schools have two failing grades. Legend has it that a latin teacher had been grading an exam so exceptionally bad, it did not even merit the standard failing grade and labeled it "sub omni canone" - below all canon. The student, bad as he was at latin, translated it as "below all cannon", which remains a widespread German idiom. Interestingly, this starts with S as well, but it is not the greatest. It is the worst.
You meant "canon" and not "cannon" :P

Anyway yeah, in Italy we have (or had) Insufficient and Not Classified as proper school grades but in this case the NC grade is meant as off scale on the lowest end, not the highest of course.

We also have Excellent, Magna Cum Laude (or just Cum Laude), Ad Honorem and other latin derived labels to indicate what in the end is an S-class result: something that you don't obtain just through regular means but due to exceptional talent or effort.

Super, Supremus, Magnus and Maximus were common affixes to military ranks, or even just for other forms of organizations and honorifics to describe what was the same as S-ranks in their category.

The point is always the same: once you go off the charts there's no more distinction nor quantification between results so there's little use for such a rank beyond bragging rights.

Wikipedia concisely says pretty much the same thing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-rank
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Re: What's the deal with letter grades in Japanese culture?

Post by Kogashi »

At first I just wanted to think 'well guess it's like letter grades in school' but then I remembered how food or the like, especially during or shortly after war time had letter grades to, that suggested how ripe, not overly preserved, or even just more visually pleasing the higher grade food was to the lower grade, despite them still being 'equally healthy and nutritious'... And then my mind wandered over to Fate/Stay Night and the whole Fate series where in along with E-S ranks, you also had EX which was like a side along rank. A rank that meant 'There's no real way to rank this ability or state at once/correctly.' It was effectively a rank for things that the usefulness would change depending on the context, or or that so many different parts of the ability that while the separate parts could be ranked the ability as a whole couldn't...

Main example, one character in the Fate series has an ability to steal and then use any other character's weapon he touches. That's an EX ranked ability, since the use of this would change based on the rank of the magical weapon he stole.
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Re: What's the deal with letter grades in Japanese culture?

Post by CrazyDreamer »

S-rank as "off-the-scale" or "incomparable" or "an excession" (to steal from the late, great Iain M. Banks) is probably the nominal definition, but it's not necessarily the original or most common actual usage. Sadly, I have no further data on that point.

I do want to say that I am reminded of Nanoha StrikerS, which deals with the subject of mage rankings within the military. The Midchildan military likes having data on how much power people have and to deal with personnel on that basis, but it's clear that for people not side-loaded into the system due to special circumstances (e.g., Hayate) the actual tests for mage rank promotion go well beyond merely measuring magical potential even though they're frequently taken as indications of such. Someone seeing an S-rank at full power for the first time usually has to pick their jaw up off the floor and reset their expectations.
[Discussing temporarily turning off a power limiter:]

Chrono: Considering your location [near a city], I cannot grant you permission for SS-rank. I can only release three ranks; will that suffice?

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If A-rank and S-rank are the same as "Ace" and "Striker" in Nanoha slang, then there A-rank is "the best of the best" and S-rank is "not necessarily the highest magical potential, but so much grit and determination that the mission will be completed no matter what, thus placing them in a category beyond the normal magic potential rating," IIRC.

As a side note, U.S. military ranks indicate pay grade, not responsibility or qualifications; the system is intended to promote qualified/outstanding individuals to a new pay grade and then give them more responsibilities to match their new rank, but that's not a guarantee. Thus, the bureaucratic definition of rank and the outside assumption of what comes with it may be two different things. This dichotomy may help inform your view of "S-rank" in some contexts.

EDIT: Here we go for the Nanoha-verse: http://nanoha.wikia.com/wiki/Mage_rank
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Re: What's the deal with letter grades in Japanese culture?

Post by Fat D »

Darkwings wrote:
Fat D wrote: Super? Special? Many "above and beyond" words start with S.
In Germany, schools have two failing grades. Legend has it that a latin teacher had been grading an exam so exceptionally bad, it did not even merit the standard failing grade and labeled it "sub omni canone" - below all canon. The student, bad as he was at latin, translated it as "below all cannon", which remains a widespread German idiom. Interestingly, this starts with S as well, but it is not the greatest. It is the worst.
You meant "canon" and not "cannon" :P

We also have Excellent, Magna Cum Laude (or just Cum Laude), Ad Honorem and other latin derived labels to indicate what in the end is an S-class result: something that you don't obtain just through regular means but due to exceptional talent or effort.
I did mention canon as the correct translation. However the mistranslation was indeed "cannon". The German word Kanone (cannon) sounds like the latin "canone", the form of canon used in the phrase. Hence the bad translation.
And the cum laude grades are common with more traditional universities and the degrees they award in Germany as well, with grades being
"summa cum laude" for (the German equivalent of) a+ (or "S" if you will - another point where the "extraordinarily good" starts with an S)
"magna cum laude" for a to a-
"cum laude" for b+ to b-
"rite" for c+ to d
"non rite" or "insufficienter" for failing grades
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Re: What's the deal with letter grades in Japanese culture?

Post by Eric »

Fat D wrote:I did mention canon as the correct translation. However the mistranslation was indeed "cannon". The German word Kanone (cannon) sounds like the latin "canone", the form of canon used in the phrase. Hence the bad translation.
And the cum laude grades are common with more traditional universities and the degrees they award in Germany as well, with grades being
"summa cum laude" for (the German equivalent of) a+ (or "S" if you will - another point where the "extraordinarily good" starts with an S)
"magna cum laude" for a to a-
"cum laude" for b+ to b-
"rite" for c+ to d
"non rite" or "insufficienter" for failing grades
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