Famed anime house has followers from dozens of countries, wants to connect with all of them.
It wasn’t until last December that Studio Ghibli started an official Twitter account. It’s no surprise that an anime studio that often and unabashedly does things the old-fashioned way would arrive late to the social media party, but now that they are on the platform, fans are happy for the chance to connect directly with the company co-founded by Hayao Miyazaki.
Really, there’s only one problem with the arrangement. Ghibli, as a Japanese company, understandably sends out its tweets in Japanese, but the studio’s inimitable anime films have won fans around the world. By the company’s estimation, the Ghibli Twitter account now has followers from 57 different countries, which means 56 of those are places where Japanese isn’t the population’s native language.
So how is the language barrier for Ghibli’s tweets being cleared? By international fans translating them into the local language, something that Ghibli is not only aware of, but thankful for.
The official recognition came in a tweet sent by the Ghibli account on Monday, and was followed by another in which the studio said it hopes the people will continue in the future.
A number of the account’s overseas followers were quick to heed the call, and the tweet’s reply thread now contains translations into languages such as Spanish, French…
…Hindi, Norwegian…
…Arabic, and and even Basque, from a region where localized releases of Ghibli anime are still few and far between.
Of course, there are still several languages left to go before all of the Ghibli account followers’ are represented, so now’s your chance to add your linguistic skills to the reply thread, and make sure to keep an eye out for the next time Ghibli gives followers the opportunity to ask them whatever they want about some of the greatest anime every made.
Source: Twitter/@JP_GHIBLI
Top image: Studio Ghibli
Insert images: Studio Ghibli
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Casey has followers from slightly fewer countries than Ghibli does, but you can follow him on Twitter anyway.