Author Archives: Daniel

等号 Madness

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A set of equalities for keyboard 変換 fun:

イコール  　= 　＝

等号     　    =　 ＝

不等号         =      ≠

And surprisingly:

イコール      =      ≠

And also:

イコール      =     ≒

I was really excited to finally figure out how to 変換 to ≠ because it doesn’t have a key on the keyboard, and I often want to use it. It took a little putzing around on the Wikipedia page for 等号 (とうごう), which initially told me that ≠ = 等号否定. That wouldn’t 変換 for me, so I cut off the first part and slapped that drummer with a pie that smells – 不. I have no idea why I chose that over 無 or 非; it just felt right. Attach either of those two, and the resulting word will not 変換, by the way.

※Later discovered that on Windows, = on its own can 変換 into both ≠ and ≒. And, shit, NONE of the above 変換 other than “イコール = ＝” work on Kotoeri (Apple Japanese input). So, on Kotoeri:

ノットイコール    =      ≠

There’s a big list of names here.

How to Export a Blogsome Blog to WordPress (With Crazy Characters)

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Since there’s so little information on the internet about exporting Blogsome blogs to WordPress, I thought I’d write up a quick guide based on my experience. (Regular readers, feel free to hit the eject button here.) This guide is specifically for people who are working with Japanese (or other funky languages). It might be useful for people who are trying to move their blogs but are having trouble getting their characters to look right. When I first imported my SQL, all the Japanese text had been replaced with question marks. Yikes. The problem it seems was that while the input on Blogsome (and WordPress) is UTF8, the databases themselves are automatically set to Latin1 for some reason. (In my case, Swedish Latin1, I might add!) Mixing these character sets will garble all your kanjis. Here’s how you move your blog and fix garbled chars: Continue reading →

ようこそ！

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Welcome to How to Japonese! Last week I was racked by the sudden fear of a(n unlikely) Blogsome crash, which would leave me with nothing but Word backups of my data, so I went out and got hosting and a domain. Unfortunately the standard spelling of “How to Japanese” is already registered by someone selling a somewhat fishy-looking “CD-ROM”. [Christ, when was the last time you said “CD-ROM” out loud? The person running that site is clearly way old! I especially love the “Tanoshin de kudasai” on this page. ] The only thing I could think up on short notice was to substitute one vowel. Meh. At least the current spelling emphasizes the “po” aspects of the site – I’m not making any cash off this. At least not yet.

Aside from basic layout changes, most everything about the site should be the same. The one thing I’ve added is a twitter badge in the sidebar (under Insta-Hows) for the new How to Japonese twitter account (which is @howtojapanese, with an ‘a’…made it before buying the domain). I plan to post random language info as well as up-to-the-pint information about my drinking plans so that anyone can come and drink along.

今後ともよろしくお願いします！

Game Lingo – 倒す

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During the early-90s Nintendo of America was infamous for adjusting games to fit their strict content guidelines. They changed graphics, dialogue, anything that didn’t fit within their standards.  Thanks to younger American video game developers, raw language and content in games isn’t much of a problem anymore; companies can basically get away with whatever they want as long as they’re willing to suffer the rating. The change shows – Nintendo recently published the first Grand Theft Auto on a Nintendo platform.

Still, Japanese developers have probably been careful with their language choices, which means so should you. 倒す (たおす) frequently appears in games designed for younger children, and it’s a code word for “kill.” The verb literally means “knock down,” but it is most often translated as “defeat.” If you’re translating 龍が如く, of course you should probably be using “kill,” but otherwise (Yugioh, Dragonball, Pokemon, Mario etc.) it should be avoided at all costs, or at least commented on when delivering the translation. “Defeat” is a nice middle ground, and can even be used for 殺す sometimes.

Tonkatsu Update Part Deux

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Although tonkatsu is a good hangover cure, I was unsure whether I could actually hold them down yesterday – I was suffering from the wicked aftereffects of Saturday’s excellent hanami. After returning to human form, I remembered Maisen’s 限定 circular sandwiches in the GranSta in the basement of Tokyo Station. These are nice and small, a perfect snack serving size:


There’s also a yolky egg stuffed inside:

Not a bad buy at 470 yen. My only complaint is that they bag them while they’re hot, so the steam condenses on the inside of the bag and makes the bread slightly moist.

Hands

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When you speak Japanese, what are your hands doing? In the last couple of weeks, I’ve noticed that when foreigners speak Japanese, many of them seem to have a wicked case of what I’ve termed “charades hands.” We all wave our hands like Stan the used boat salesman from Monkey Island:

I’m tempted to say that ESL folks aren’t plagued by “Stan hands.” For whatever reason, Japanese just draws it out of us. There’s so much more I’m trying to express! Can’t you understand what my hands are trying to say! I’ll freely admit that my hands are as guilty as everyone else’s, but I’ve been trying to be better about it recently.

Do whatever it takes to keep them under control. Put them in your pockets. Sit on them. Hold something really heavy. I have a feeling that maintaining control of your hands will force you to make your word choices more accurate and your grammar more precise.

I think mastery of the passive tense probably cuts down on “charades hands” by about 50%, so go ahead and start there.

Game Lingo – 操作

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This is a term that is translated consistently in nearly every video game. 操作(そうさ) means “controls.” It’s a combination of 操る(あやつる) and 作る(つくる). 操る means “to control a device/vehicle/something.” It can be translated flexibly as “pilot,” “drive,” and “operate.” 操作 can be translated this way, too, but only when it refers to an in-game character operating/controlling/piloting something. In most cases, 操作 refers to the actual human player “controlling” the video game with an input device. 操作方法(ほうほう) is a common section of video game manuals and almost without exception should be translated as “Controls.”

Video Game Translation

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So you want to translate video games, eh? Well, first I’d strongly suggest that you pursue translation in other fields. Patents pay well. So do contracts. And they’re both easier to translate than video games. Yes, the startup requirements are a little bit higher. Both fields have large amounts of terminology that a translator needs to know in both Japanese and English as well as unique ways of writing. But once you’ve mastered these, you can be a Translation Terminator – line that shit up and knock it the fuck down. The phrases will become more and more familiar, and you’ll be able to do efficient, accurate translation in a field that will always have a huge demand.

Games on the other hand require the c-word – creativity. Games lie in an area between literature and technical writing; there are terms that you need to know and keep consistent, but you also need to be creative and flexible with your English. Perhaps that’s why so many people want to do game translation? People blinded by the sexiness of video game translation (a sexiness that wears off the first time you say, “I translate video games.” *adjusts nerd glasses*) fail to realize that creativity takes time, has a larger supply, and often requires you to read extremely poorly written Japanese and make sense of it.

So you still want to translate video games? Well, I tried my best. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I’m starting a new category of post today where I’ll try to introduce some lingo from game translation. Hope it’s interesting/helpful. Let me know if there’s anything you’d like to read about.

Cool Kanji – 橙

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This kanji is pronounced だいだい, and I bet you can figure out the meaning pretty easily if I give it to you in this set: 赤, 橙, 黄, 緑, 青, 藍, 紫.

Get it yet? No? Give those another quick look.

Yup, it’s the kanji for orange. You see it infrequently, almost always written. So yeah, supposedly it’s pronounced だいだい色(いろ), but I wonder if people just read it オレンジ. Can any native speakers confirm? 橙 is generally used as the color in the rainbow, but Wikipedia also tells me it came from the Chinese fruit the daidai…which looks like a mikan, except the English name is bitter orange? I’m keen to try one.

The other cool kanji in there that you might not know is 藍(あい), which is indigo. Wikipedia Japan says that Americans generally think the rainbow only has six colors, but I can personally confirm that is bogus. Clearly Wikipedia Japan hasn’t met Mr. Roy G. Biv – that’s the acronym I learned in elementary school to keep the colors straight.

号外 – Booze in the News

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This Japan Times piece about 第三ビール features none other than Chris Chuwy, the guy who runs the boozelist I’ve linked to several times. Chuwy is in fine form:

"Feels like I’ve just woken up and need to brush my teeth" (Chuwy on Reisei, a dai-san brewed from yellow-pea protein, 5 percent, ¥139)

And this non sequitur:

Chuwy opined that champagne was like a gassier version of Asahi’s Style Free (dai-san, 4 percent, ¥159), which he meant as a criticism, describing champagne as "unnecessary".