New Jack City

November 30, 2008 7:32 PM

What is the (english) name of this diving technique? I know the Japanese name.

I am trying to find the name of the technique used by police divers (frogmen) when searching an underwater surface for bodies (or anything else).

It involves anchoring a buoy to the centre of the search area. Then a wire is tied to the centre buoy line and swept around in circles by several divers. The seabed is like a clock face with a line of divers pushing one of the hands around.

In Japanese, this has a very specific name, ジャックシティ. This is difficult to google for since it basically reads "jak city" and hence turns up crap like this.

I think it is more specific than (or different to) a "tight wire search".

Thanks.

posted by theyexpectresults to technology (3 comments total)

Jackstay search?
posted by zamboni at 7:49 PM on November 30, 2008

Thanks a lot, Jackstay it is.

(I hate katakana words in Japanese).
posted by theyexpectresults at 10:16 PM on November 30, 2008

That is almost certainly a corruption/typo that, by virtue of the extremely limited circumstances it is used in, has not been corrected by its users. Googling for the spelling ジャックシティー , as spelt on the page you linked to , only turns up three hits germane to scuba recovery, one of them the above mentioned link.

There is no reason ジャックシティー should not be transliterated as Jack City - indeed, pages in Japanese about that New Jack City movie abound with this - correct - spelling.

What's puzzling, or suggestive, rather, is that ジャックシテイー　(with a "large" イ) would have been a good phonetic transliteration of the jackstay. The fact that it is spelt ジャックシティー ("small" ィ) suggests a completely different sound, namely something akin to the sound "tee," and not the テ・イ of "stay" that would, one assumes, be desired here.

Indeed, this "tee" sound as suggested by ティ is the standard spelling for city, as in New York City, etc, seen with a short or long vowel, as in シティ or シティー. You'll forgive me for lacking the technical term here, but this "hybridized" sound is a modern convention that aims to solve the apparent shortcoming between テ　and チ when trying to approximate a sound like the "ty" of "city." As it stands, the ジャックシティー spelling on the good Nakayoshino Fire Department's page seems to suggest the word "jackstee" -- which we know is not the case.

The takeaway is that you're not at fault here - rather, this seems to be a peculiar mistransliteration. In some cases, you'll see phonetic approximations that are designed to ease the difficulty for the Japanese tongue at the expense of the original spelling, but this looks like an honest mistake.
posted by softsantear at 9:36 AM on December 1, 2008