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Features articles of interest on language translation and localization, culture, language technology and other related topics. The goal of the Global Advisor Newsletter is to inform and entertain.

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First Edition

 Quick Tour Through Japan's Written Language

Non-Japanese speakers often find Japanese characters perplexing. The symbols look like a jumble of strokes with no connection to the ideas or objects they represent. To the untrained eye, there is no distinguishable difference between the Japanese and Chinese characters.

Kanji, the Chinese pictographic system, originated more than 2500 years ago. As early as 90 A.D., 9,353 of the characters were explained in a Chinese book. Throughout their millenary history, the Chinese have formulated more than 50,000 characters. Japan adopted the Chinese system of writing toward the end of the sixth century and since then it has evolved until, in their present form, they differ considerably from the Chinese pictograms. (Refer to Kanji Characters.)

In the Japanese system, 1500 basic Chinese Kanji characters are supplemented by Kana, the characters of the phonetic alphabet. There are 46 Kana characters which represent sounds resembling the English "oh" and "shi". With the addition of special characters, such as the ~ tilde and subscripted characters, it is possible to construct more than one hundred different forms. However, this is not enough to build an entire vocabulary, so most Japanese writing contains Kanji characters.

The Japanese language has fewer sounds than English and they are pronounced with a crisp, clean accent, all syllables stressed equally. A change in pitch takes the place of an in European languages and may be the only difference between two otherwise identical words. Careful listening is essential to ensure proper comprehension.

Gairaigo or loan words, continue to flood the Japanese language. Gairaigo are foreign words imported from German, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, English and other languages, reproduced phonetically with kana characters. Some sounds cannot be recreated identically in Japanese, so kana adjusts them. Thus, California is pronounced Kaliforunia, violin biorin and beefsteak bifuteki.

Japanese has few words to express abstract concepts and more than thirty percent of them are Chinese compounds. However, they have been part of the Japanese language for a very long time, so they are not considered Gairaigo. An example of a foreign word or Gairaigo used to represent a concept is maihoomushugi, from the English my home. It expresses the concept of owning one's home and devoting oneself to family and self. Maihoomuzoku is the name given to people who advocate the idea of maihoomushugi. The antonym of Maihoomuzoku is Mooretsushugi, people who devote themselves to hard-work without any regard for the consequences.

The Japanese pictograph system is a challenge to any automated text input system. Imagine trying to enter two or three thousand characters with a standard keyboard! Most computerized text editing system base the representation of character data on the 256 ASCII codes. These are not nearly enough for Japanese. The Japanese Standards Association, Japan's counterpart to the American National Standards Institute, ANSI, has identified 3418 primary and 3384 secondary kanji characters. Secondary characters include obsolete or historical characters, such as proper names. The first attempts at automation were limited to the use of kana. Then, in the 1960's IBM developed the Japanese answer to ASCII in a kanji code, an extension of the extended binary-coded-decimal-interchange-code, or EBCDIC. This was the basis of programming software for small computers. (Refer to Word-Processing Japanese Style.)

Proper translation into Asian languages requires cultural sensitivity and a general understanding of the subject being translated. It is important, for example, to know that the generation gap has created wide differences between the styles used by the older and younger Japanese. As businesses become increasingly global and interested in prospering from the opportunities that abound in the Pacific Rim, Westerners are more motivated than ever to bridge the gap between the Asian and European languages. This places high value on the quality of the translations of technical and promotional materials.

Kanji Characters

Kanji characters are pictographs. If one could trace each back to its original form and learn how they were conceived they would make more sense. For example, the character for friend or companion in its original form looked like two hands extended to welcome a friend.

The character for wife was composed of the silhouette of a woman, a hand and a broom, representing the idea (at that time) that the wife took care of the home,

while the character for man looked like a man, wearing a hat with hands and arms in motion as if on his way to work.

Japanese literature uses more than four thousand Kanji characters but to simplify the Japanese written language, in 1947 the Ministry of Education standardized 1900 characters for use in newspapers and magazines.

Word-Processing Japanese Style

To develop a Japanese word-processor it was necessary to figure out how to enter thousands of Japanese characters with basically the same keyboard used to input the letters of the Roman alphabet. The solution? The Kana-Kanji conversion system, invented in the early 1970's, which converts into Kana and Kanji characters words input phonetically.

Since many Japanese characters have the same phonetic reading, the conversion is not completely automated, it requires fine-tuning by an operator. The system submits all possibilities to a series of grammatical adjustments and presents to the operator only the most commonly used for that particular reading. The system retains in memory the selection made by the operator and chooses it first whenever the same reading appears again.

Translation Automation Tools

Even the most skilled human translator can generate a limited number of words of translated text per day. That number is usually between 1500 to 2000 words, depending on the translator's skill, the complexity of the subject and the availability of reference materials.

As competition becomes increasingly global and products cycle shorter, world-class businesses need translations of product instructions and promotional materials of excellent quality and delivery and competitive pricing. A good translation automation tool is invaluable to the translator working on a deadline.

Translation Memory Tools

These tools facilitate the reuse of previously translated text, thus reducing the cost and leadtime of translations. They are an excellent front-end to a machine translation tool. A translator uses the translation memory tool to locate and use previous translations, and sends to the machine translation system only the text that has never been translated before.

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