Follow Japanese Profiles On Social Media

#Japanese

Usually social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook are the sworn enemies of productive study time, gently beckoning you from your browser’s corner tab, but using this trick you can turn their addictiveness to your advantage: Follow a few Japanese celebrities or news outlets so that Japanese writing appears on websites that you visit often.

The extent you take this is totally up to you, add one or two profiles for an unintrusive sprinkling of kanji, or go crazy and make half of your entire newsfeed Japanese. Just make sure each one is something you’re actually interested in, and don’t add so many that using your account is no longer fun/useful. If you do you’ll end up irritatedly scrolling through and only reading your native language.

Here’s a few suggestions to get you started: @asahi (the Asahi Shimbun), @matomenaver (news aggregator Naver Matome), @pamyurin (the weird and wonderful Kyary Pamyu Pamyu) and @55_Kumamon (Japan’s mascot king, Kumamon).

Take it further: If you don’t need to trick yourself into studying, you can set up a separate account specifically for this purpose.

Listen to Japanese Music

There’s more to Japanese music than this, I promise

Japanese music is available anywhere in the world, and even things like Spotify, Last.fm, and iTunes Radio will let you listen to it for free, so there’s no excuses not to try this one.

Studies have shown that listening to music performed in your target language can help facilitate learning by subconsciously training you to recognise patterns of speech and boundaries between words. In basic terms, this means music teaches your mind to break down chunks of syllables and learn where separate words begin and end. This happens to some extent when listening to regular speech, but if words are attached to notes our brains can compartmentalise them more effectively.

Of course, the more engaged you are, the more you’ll learn from listening to Japanese music, but even having it on in the background as you do something else is beneficial. Notch it up to Hardcore Mode by listening to Japanese radio while practicing writing kanji.

Take it further: Expand on this approach by repeating segments of songs and trying to note down the lyrics (the sounds alone if you’re a beginner, the actual kanji and meaning for more advanced levels), then performing an online search afterwards to check your accuracy. If you’re confident enough you could even break out a microphone and give it a shot at karaoke. Or, quietly, into a shampoo bottle, alone in the shower.

Set Your Phone to Japanese

I take no responsibility for phones flung at walls in kanji-induced frustration

Urgh. I know, this one’s tough. There’ll be moments when you’re so frustrated you’ll want to set your phone ablaze in a sacrificial ceremony to the almighty gods of Kanji. But it does pay off.

When I lived in China I used this method to learn the different characters associated with actions on my phone. This resulted in situations where I embarrassed myself by repeatedly failing to put a new contact’s details in my phone, as well as mornings when my alarm would go off and I was unable to differentiate between “snooze” and “off,” forcing me to get out of bed in a fit of snoozeless rage (the most furious of all types of rage). After a while, though, I began to recognise those characters not only on my phone, but elsewhere. I’d use my office computer and understand commands that I’d never noticed before; I didn’t know how to pronounce them at this point, but I’d already done the (arguably) most difficult part of learning the characters.

This is an incredibly frustrating thing to try but if you persevere the spaced repetition involved in regularly seeing the same characters really helps you to retain the information.

Take it further: If you’re a real masochist, you can also go about setting your other devices and software in Japanese. Just remember to write down where the language settings section is…

Label Items With Kanji Sticky Notes

If you’re struggling with vocabulary get yourself some sticky notes and begin labeling things in your home like a family-friendly version of the movie Memento. Either include the kanji and furigana to help you memorize both, or just the kanji in order to test yourself on the pronunciation each time.

Color-coding can be a useful way of organising the information, either by categorising types of words (e.g. on the shower you could have the noun “shower”, シャワー, in one colour and the verb “wash”, 洗う, in another) or the stage of your learning (e.g. green for words you usually remember, orange for words you can sometimes recall and red for those ones that just won’t stick).

Take it further: You could take the Memento comparison more literally and have those “code red” stickers tattooed all over your silly, forgetful face… But I’d suggest just air-writing the kanji with your finger each time you see them instead.

Think In Japanese

Next time you find yourself with nothing to do, be it in a car, a doctor’s waiting room or while attempting to look busy at the office, think to yourself in Japanese. Not having your textbook is no longer a valid excuse for not studying!

An “in-head” review of the last thing you learned is probably the most efficient use of this method but anything from simple sentences about the location of things in the room to complex monologues about current events will do.

Take it further: Memorize dialogues from your textbook, then later try to go through them word-for-word in your head.

Use the Japanese Menu at Japanese Restaurants

You have to earn this

I have to admit that when I used to eat out in Japan I would rely on other people to do the ordering, or simply go off the pictures provided. Even when I’d selected something I wouldn’t bother to read the name most of the time, not when a quick point and “Kore okudasai” (this please) would suffice.

This is a huge missed opportunity though, as food words are amongst the most important vocabulary you can learn. And the brilliant thing about studying by reading menus is that it works for all levels of Japanese, beginners can practice reading hiragana and katakana, while even the most fluent Japanese speaker is bound to get tripped up by dish names every once in a while (I’m occasionally baffled by dish names in English).

Take it further: Ask for a copy of the menu (or take a picture) and take it away with you. Translate the dishes at home then test yourself next time you’re eating there. Who knows, maybe you’ll even discover a new favourite dish.

BONUS TIPS FOR READERS LIVING IN JAPAN

I’ve also included two extra tips to help people living in Japan take advantage of their surroundings and sponge up all that Japanese overflowing everywhere.

Eavesdrop On Conversations

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to listen in on the Japanese conversations around you. If you’re in Japan, you’re literally surrounded by listening exercises far more authentic than in any textbook. Whether in a coffee shop, on public transport or even in the office, stop tuning out other people’s conversations as background noise and start trying to decipher them.

Listening to other people’s conversations even has a few advantages over holding your own. For example, people often talk slower with more simple language when talking to non-native speakers, but by listening to others you get to feel the rhythm of a more natural conversation. And that doesn’t necessarily make it more difficult: negating a need for a response means you can focus solely on listening rather than simultaneously piecing together a reply.

As well as improving your listening ability you’ll pick up new vocabulary and, perhaps most importantly, there’s a good chance you’ll hear things you’ve been saying wrong but people have been too polite to correct you on.

By listening to various age groups and types of people you’ll also put yourself out of your Japanese comfort zone and hear how different people talk. If you work with kids for your day job or the majority of your conversations are with the opposite gender it’s important to do this in order to avoid sounding like them. Because, if nobody else has told you this yet, you almost certainly do. Sorry.

I’m not saying that you should be breaking out a newspaper with eyeholes and making everybody around you feel uncomfortable, though. Be discreet about it. Take a note from Japanese culture and “observe without watching,” or in this case “listen without gaping.” Also, if somebody is talking loudly enough to be heard by the general public it’s unlikely to concern anything they’d be troubled by a stranger hearing.

Plus, your heart is true and your motives pure. Go forth and eavesdrop.

Take it further: You probably shouldn’t take this one further, even if your motives are pure.

Translate Advertisements On The Train

Log out of Facebook, switch off Candy Crush, Farmville or whatever this month’s trashy yet surprisingly addictive game is, and start using your time on the train productively. If you can’t get a seat you may not be able to take out your textbook and study the way you’d like to, but you can get some real-world reading practice in.

Step one: Look up and select an advert. If you’re a beginner make sure it doesn’t have a huge block of text and, whatever level you are, choose one that looks at least remotely interesting.

Step two: Read. When you come across a phrase or kanji you don’t understand, use your dictionary to translate. And don’t say you don’t have one, because you were just playing Candy Crush a minute ago and if you’ve paid for that but not a dictionary we’ll have to have a serious talk.

If something comes up that your translation tools can’t make sense of, don’t give up or spend an inordinate amount of time on it, make a note and move on. You can ask a friend later.

Like setting your phone to Japanese and the sticky note method, this is especially effective because of spaced repetition. Whether you’re intending to study or not, each time you get on the train and see the same adverts you’ll be reminded of the kanji and vocabulary you learnt when you translated them.

Take it further: Before you get off at your stop, snap a picture of the advertisement. This will allow you finish translating at home or, if you’d already done, check your work and review it.

Did I miss anything? No doubt many of you have picked up a few small tricks of your own to improve your Japanese outside of the classroom.

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Bonus Wallpapers!

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It’s All Relative

As it turns out, there are lots of people out there who don’t speak any Japanese at all! So over the summer, I put on my big-girl suit (I don’t remember, it probably wasn’t a suit) and finally managed to convince some poor fool to pay me to translate Japanese for them. By which I mean I went to go talk to the curator of a private collection of samurai armor in my city and tried really, really hard to sound like I knew what I was talking about. I was actually asking for a job… but instead I was asked to translate papers that sometimes came with the armor they purchased (turns out the curator only speaks French).

Now I work a completely separate, full-time job, and every once in a while I get a request to translate documents (mostly auction materials) for this collection, which I do in the evenings. So although I’m getting paid, I’m not sure I would consider myself a professional translator. But since I’m sure there are plenty of Japanese students out there who have something they want to translate (books, manga, song lyrics, whatever), I thought I’d share my approach. I’d also love to hear what other people do, because frankly I’m pretty new at this.

*The collection I translate for will remain nameless for privacy reasons and because I don’t want anybody to steal my job.

Getting Ready To Translate

After dinner, I sit down to work. I open the e-mail, and take a moment to freak out when I can’t read anything on the page. Honestly, these articles should be considered way above my level, but this is the kind of situation where you “fake it ‘till you make it”.

The first thing I have to do is convert the images my client sends me into text. (Standard practice is to charge by the character, so at the very least I need it for an accurate character count). I can try a text-converting program or just type everything up myself, depending on the quality of the image. This time my client has sent me both the image and the converted text (plus a botched Google translation, to remind me that she needs me). I copy and paste the text into a Google Doc and prepare my workspace.

This involves opening several tabs: Google Translator, Jisho.org, and Kotobank.jp. I also turn Rikaichan on in my browser, which is especially useful because I can wave my mouse over any word in the Google Doc to get a definition. If this seems like cheating to you, wait a little while and you’ll see why I don’t waste time on relatively common vocabulary.

1. Rough Draft

Remember this: the key is just to get English on the page.

Now that it’s time to actually start translating, I wave my mouse over the first unfamiliar word (unfortunately, it’s the title of the article). Uh-oh. Rikaichan is only defining the individual characters. “Iron earth” is not an acceptable description for a helmet, so I copy and paste the phrase into Google Translator.

Still no good. Jisho and Kotobank don’t give me anything either so I put a star next to this and move on.

I spend 15 minutes trying to find the meaning of 車患 before I look at the original image and realize the text converter has badly misread 鯱. This is why you always need to double-check converted text. I go through and correct all of the misread kanji before continuing. (鯱, by the way, is しゃちほこ/shachihoko, a mythical dolphin/whale/fish thing. Nagoya Castle is famous for the two golden shachihoko on its roof).

鯱の胴体部は背を中心に鉄薄板に鱗を打出した二枚を左右から合わせ
形成し、これに眉庇を兼用する鯱の頭部の鬼面を被せ…
For the body of the dolphin / in the middle of the back / in iron lacquer / two plates with embossed fish scales / join on the left and right to take form / these scales also serve as mabisashi / and the dolphin’s head / covers a demon’s mask

Unlike English, the Japanese language does not frown upon run-on sentences. I think they would actually rather add modifiers to an existing sentence than make a new one if the subject of the sentence is the same. For this first draft I am trying to stay as close to the original Japanese meaning as possible, so I separate ideas with “/”. Later I will rearrange everything to make more sense with English grammar.

A lot of words I come across are jargon, specific to ancient Japanese armor. They either don’t appear in a Japanese-English dictionary or have a second, more common meaning. That’s when I go to Kotobank, a Japanese-Japanese dictionary, to find the more obscure definition. You can do this even if you still have a lower vocabulary level, because all you have to do is use Rikaichan on words you don’t know.

The key to getting this far is making educated guesses about the meanings you don’t know. If you’re still not sure you understand, you can try a search using the romanization of the word (in this case, マビサシ comes out to mabisashi). You might find something like this:

Number 12 is “Forehead plate – mabisashi (眉庇). Mystery solved! Thanks Wikipedia.

Everything I’ve written about so far has taken place in the first sentence of the text! Granted, it’s a run-on sentence that takes up most of the first paragraph, but you can see why this might take a while. And that was just the first draft–it has English words but makes no real sense in English. Plus, there were several words (I’m looking at you, 鉄地) that I couldn’t translate the first time around. Hopefully they’ll make more sense as I figure out the context that they are written in.

2. Second Draft

An English sentence like the one below isn’t exactly easy to understand:

For the body of the dolphin / in the middle of the back / in iron lacquer / two plates with embossed fish scales / join on the left and right to take form/ these scales also serve as mabisashi / and the dolphin’s head / covers a demon’s mask / on the left and right / large scales and koshimaki boards / are hammered into place with rivets.

This is actually where Google Translate is the most helpful, believe it or not.

Okay, so a key part of Google’s translating algorithm is based off of statistical survey of websites and documents that are written in multiple languages. The algorithm compares the English version with the Japanese (or Spanish, or Arabic) version to see how the words correspond. If, in several different sources, 日本 (nihon) corresponds with “Japan”, then that is how Google will translate it. The program is getting more sophisticated over time, and it can now recognize some common grammatical structures. This means that I can sometimes put a chunk of text into Google translator to see how the grammar is most commonly translated.

I’ll go ahead and use a different (shorter) sentence. Here, “鬼面の眼球には鍍金板が嵌入され” comes out to “Plating plate is fitted to the eye of the devil mask”. Uh… yeah, that doesn’t make sense. But I already figured out in my first draft that “in the eyeball of the kimen (a special armor term) / gilt strips are inlaid”. So now I can write “Gilt strips are fitted to the eye of the kimen”. That makes sense, right? This isn’t a foolproof method, but as one of several references, it can be helpful. I go through the whole first draft like this, to get a working English version. Sometimes I do a third draft as well.

3. Cleaning Up

Translating is more of an art than a science. The articles I translate need to be functional, because my client is trying to understand more about the piece of armor. There may be phrases I don’t understand (what the heck is 鉄地?!) and I need to come up with a reasonable guess. In the case of 鉄地 I decide to ignore the 地 (chi, earth) character because I thought “iron helmet” was more to the point, and “iron earth helmet” would have just been confusing. If I’m particularly concerned about something, I’ll include “Notes” in my translation. For instance, once a passage had several typos, including a wrong date and a wrong location. I translated the information as it was written, and corrected it in the Notes.

As a last resort, sometimes I just have to ask a native speaker of Japanese. There are lots of things I don’t know because I didn’t grow up in Japan, so if I absolutely can’t figure something out myself (whether a given location is, in fact, a typo, for instance) I’ll get in touch with one of my Japanese friends.

Waiting for the moment that you understand absolutely everything perfectly means never using your Japanese. Whether it’s for fun or for profit, it’s a good idea to take chances and use your Japanese, whatever level you’re at. Even if it didn’t have the added benefit of improving your Japanese, it’s rewarding to actually use a skill you’ve worked so hard to get.

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Bonus Wallpapers

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Unfortunately, online translations suck. We’ve covered before how online translators work, and why they’re notoriously awful; we’ve also seen how they can backfire if you don’t know what you’re doing.

So pretty much without exception, every Facebook translation I’ve seen of something in Japanese has been wrong. Or at least weird. It’s not really Facebook’s fault that machine translations are bad, but it’s their fault for implementing it and thinking it would work out.

I gathered up a bunch of translations from Japanese-speaking friends on Facebook that I thought were weird and funny. I apologize in advance to all of my Facebook friends for plundering their statuses, but I’ve blacked out their names for the sake of anonymity.

This translation isn’t actually all that awful, but for some reason Facebook thought it was necessary to translate the emoticon. I assume that “⌒” is some sort of mathematical or scientific symbol for “without,” but I’m not quite sure why Facebook translates it along with the Japanese.

One of my Facebook friends took a picture of an airplane with a bunch of Pokemon painted on it, and here were the comments:

The translation should look something like:

“Nice!”
“It almost looks like a plane version of those cars painted with anime characters, haha”

But instead, Facebook translates it to:

“A good?!”
“If you mistake one step’s flight based on versions of “itasha” w”

You can almost understand the meaning of the Facebook translation, but it still doesn’t make any sense.

Here’s a pretty straightforward interaction: somebody wishing another person a happy birthday. Here’s how it should be translated:

“Happy birthday! I haven’t seen you in a while, how’s your husband?”

Simple enough, but Facebook sees it as:

“Congratulations on your birthday and! I have not seen for some time, well my husband are you?”

The sentiment is there, but the grammar is f#@%ed.

Here, one of my Facebook friends is talking about how fast his new phone is.

It should be something like:

LTE feels about twice as fast as 3G . . . and on an iPhone 5, haha

But instead comes out as:

3 G LTE is more about twice about 7Mbps early. And from the iPhone5 w.

But I probably get the most joy out of when Facebook tries to translate emoticons, like on our status a few weeks ago about emoticons/emoji/kaomoji:

What’s really bizarre is when Facebook decides to translate the kaomoji, but not the actual Japanese.

Have you seen really bad Facebook translations before? Screencap and share ‘em with us in the comments!

Header photo by Robert Scoble

But people in English-speaking countries renamed it “Sukiyaki,” after a tasty Japanese dish which has absolutely nothing to do with what the song is about. It almost seems a little insulting — they might as well have renamed it “Sushi” or “Yakisoba.”

Little did we know that the Japanese have been exacting their revenge over our dumb translation for years, butchering American movie titles behind our backs. Fortunately, the all-knowing, all-seeing IMDB (Internet Movie Database) has the scoop on Japan’s translations and reinterpretations of movie titles.

Here are 10 of the worst Japanese translations and interpretations of American movie titles:

Napoleon Dynamite = “Bus Man”

I can’t really see many people outside of the US really “getting” Napoleon Dynamite. Its humor is pretty strange, and was even kind of hit-or-miss in the states.

So I guess it’s not too surprising that the Japanese misunderstood even the title. Maybe the Japanese distributors of Napoleon Dynamite were hoping to ride the coattails of the popular Japanese story Densha Otoko or “Train Man.”

Army of Darkness = “Captain Supermarket”

Actor Bruce Campbell and director Sam Raimi make a goofy pair, known for their over-the-top films; but even this weird title doesn’t make any sense.

A department store (S-Mart) appears in the film, but is only shown briefly. And how did he rise to the rank of captain? Nepotism? Hard work? Only the Japanese know.

Karate Kid = “The Best Kid”

I love it when a Japanese movie title cuts right to the chase and tells you what the movie is about. What’s Karate Kid about? A kid who’s the best (around). What more do you need to say, really?

Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me = “Austin Powers Deluxe”

It’s not surprising that the Japanese had a hard time translating the British slang term “shagged,” (I’m sure it was strange even for US audiences) but the new title “Austin Powers Deluxe,” makes it sound more like a fast food meal than a movie.

Rejected titles: Austin Powers Supreme, Austin Powers Combo, Premium Austin Powers.

You Only Live Twice = “007 Dies Twice”

Even though You Only Live Twice is the only James Bond movie set mostly in Japan, so it’s a little confusing to see the title of it mangled so strangely.

I can see why the Japanese had trouble with this one, since it’s a bit of a oxymoron, like Eight Days a Week. The Japanese title sounds cool though, in the right tone. It’s like they’re saying that 007 is such a badass that he dies twice.

Yet the Japanese translation of Quantum of Solace is pretty damn good — 慰めの報酬, or the “Comfort of Remuneration.” Go figure.

Ratatouille = “Remi’s Delicious Restaurant”

I’m really not surprised that the Japanese changed the name of this movie — when it was marketed in the US, the movie posters had a pronunciation guide on them (“rat・a・too・ee”).

Given that, the Japanese fell back on the basic tenent of translated film titles: explain the movie in the most literal sense possible. Hence, “Remi’s Delicious Restaurant.”

Almost Famous = “Back in Those Days with Penny Lane”

This one doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. The original title isn’t especially confusing or anything, but the renaming seems surprisingly apt. It fits well with the movie and makes sense to English speakers as well.

I just wonder why the Japanese weren’t satisfied with the original title. Just another mystery, I suppose.

Up = “Mr. Carl’s Flying House”

Sometimes Japanese movie titles forgo all subtlety and get right to the point. “Up” is kind of ambiguous; “Up” what? What goes “up?”

“Mr. Carl’s Flying House,” however, gets right to the point. This guy, Mr. Carl, has a flying house. Bam! The whole premise of the film is delivered just in title. You’re welcome.

Twilight = “Twilight: Puppy Love”

What’s “puppy love?” The dictionary defines it as “an intense but relatively shallow romantic attachment.” Twilight? Shallow? Sounds about right.

Fast Five = “Wild Speed: Mega Max”

Though one of the Fast and the Furious movies actually took place in the country, the franchise has always gone by the name “Wild Speed” in Japan for reasons unknown to me.

Even still, the subtitle “Mega Max” doesn’t really make any sense. None of the characters are named “Max,” so what is the title talking about? Pushing things to the max? It remains a mystery to all but the Japanese.

Honorable Mention: The Hunger Games = “Battle Royale”

The Japanese made a lot of changes to The Hunger Games when it came to their country. The cast was switched around, the premise was slightly tweaked, and the name was changed to “Battle Royale.”

There’s even Battle Royale books and manga too! Who knew the Japanese loved The Hunger Games that much?

For more, head on over to IMDB and search for your favorite movies. If you’re lucky, their titles have been mangled to absurdity by the Japanese.

Thanks to Aaron for the topic suggestion!

Header photo by Brian Talbot

Your best friend and worst enemy.

We’ve all been guilty of using online translators at one time or another. Maybe you were just translating some Japanese you found online, or trying to figure out what that Jpop song just said. Or maybe you were using online translators to finish your Japanese homework. (Don’t worry, I won’t tell your sensei.)

And even though we’ve written about how you really shouldn’t use online translators and how they can go terribly wrong, I won’t judge you. I definitely have used Google Translate late at night for my homework for Japanese class. But have you ever wondered about how online translators actually work, and why you shouldn’t use them?

There are two main ways that computers translate one human language to another: one based on rules, and one based on something a little more complicated.

Rules, Rules, Rules

The first and older one is based on rules. A computer is programmed with the basic rules of a language and is given a dictionary. Then, when somebody puts in some text, the computer translates the text according to those rules and gives you a rough translation.

However, that’s proven to be a really crappy way to translate things because pretty much every single language in the world has tons of exceptions to its rules and a lot of the time, a translation will just end up with something that’s garbled and nonsensical.

Friends don’t let friends use Babel Fish.

A great example of this is Google’s early version of Google Translate. In the early days of Google Translate, Google founder Sergey Brin got an email written in Korean from a Google fanboy. But when Brin plugged in the email to Google Translate, he got the translation “The sliced raw fish shoes it wishes. Google green onion thing!” Not quite what the author had in mind.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

The other, more recent way that computers translate one human language to another is with huge databases of official, human translations. That means that these programs are given translations from places like the United Nations and the European Union and use those to make translations. This kind of translation is called statistical machine translation.

Statistical translation is what Google Translate currently uses, which is why it sometimes seems better, more natural than other translators. (I’m lookin’ at you, Babel Fish.) And statistical translation definitely works well with Google’s way of doing things: statistical translation requires lots of disk space (for the databases) and computing power, which Google has in spades.

Why Online Translators Suck

But there are big problems with both methods. There’s a lot of nuance in language that’s hard for a machine to catch, machines have problems with metaphors, and there are things like slang and different dialects that even a native speaker might have a hard time with. So while machine translations have come a long way since Sergey Brin heard about Google’s “green onion thing,” there’s still a long way to go before us humans are rendered obsolete. (Humans: 1, Computers: 70,136,459,345.)

And what lies ahead for translation tools? It’s hard to say at the moment. At this point, computer scientists are trying hard to make statistical translation better and better by adding more and more information to pull from. But like I pointed out above, this method has its limits.

It’s hard to think of a way that translation tools can stay ahead of the curve, so it looks like for the foreseeable future, human translation will reign supreme.

If you’re interested to read more, check out these two New York Times articles: “Google’s Computing Power Refines Translation Tool,” and “I, Translator.”

P.S. In point, in the continuation of Twitter.
P.P.S. As our for the sake of, the favorite, Facebook.

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Believe me when I say that I understand the inclination towards using online Japanese-English translators, but trust me, you’re much better off just doing your best on your own. Why? I’m glad you asked (if you didn’t, humor me, please). There are three main reasons:

They Don’t Work

Online translators are generally unable to translate anything properly and will likely make you sound like either a robot or a lunatic. Harsh, but true. I have a theory, actually, that the people who’ve created these programs have done this on purpose, just for kicks. After all, if you don’t know enough Japanese to translate your English text yourself, how will you check whether the translated version sounds correct or not? You can’t. It’s a brilliant and diabolical scheme, no?

To illustrate my point, here’s a snippet of the Japanese folktale, Momotarō (桃太郎):

成長した桃太郎は、鬼ヶ島の鬼が人々を苦しめていることを知り、鬼退治を決意する。両親から黍団子を餞別に貰い、道中にそれを分け与えてイヌ、サル、キジ を家来に従える。鬼ヶ島で鬼と戦い、見事に勝利を収め、鬼が方々から奪っていった財宝を持ち帰り、お爺さん・お婆さんの元に返り、幸せに暮らしたとさ。

Now, here’s the “translated” version from Babelfish and Google Translate, respectively:

Momotarou who grew the ogre knows that the ogre of the island has tormented the people, determines ogre suppression. From the parents you receive the millet dumpling in the parting gift, distribute that in the road and attend the dog, the monkey and the pheasant in the servant. That the ogre it fought with the ogre with the island, supplied victory beautifully, it carried back the treasure which the ogre keeps taking from the people, the grandfather returned to the origin of the grandmother, lived happily.

and

Momotaro growth by the demon Onigashima bedeviling people to know that the determination to rid demon.黍parting gift from the parents to貰いball, it distributed along the way that dogs and monkeys, pheasant subject to the rule. Onigashima battle with a demon and the impressive victory, the Demons will treasure these people to go away from the elderly man to return to his grandmother’s original, and lived happiness.

While you may be able to glean the meaning of the original paragraph out of this jumbled mess, it’s largely incoherent, and it doesn’t sound natural. Can you imagine the confusion that would result if the English versions were translated back into Japanese using the same programs? I shudder at the thought. So, my point here is, unless you want your translated Japanese to sound like that translated English, don’t use online translators. They just don’t work, and will leave your readers, pen pals, teachers, etc scratching their heads in bewilderment.

They’ll Make You Lazy. And Fat.

Well, maybe just lazy. Even if translators did work, you’d still be doing yourself a disservice by using them. Relying too much on those kinds of programs will only serve to set you back in your Japanese studies in the long run—actually learning the language, no matter how hard it is or how long it takes, is so much better than the instant gratification that you’d get by not doing any of the work yourself.

Also, dependence on online translators isn’t really practical in the real world (e.g. actually visiting Japan or answering questions in class). Except, maybe, if you have an iPhone. But still. Don’t do it.

It’s Dishonest

It’s just not nice to mislead the person you’re presenting your translated material to.

So Basically…

If you’re someone who already uses online translators, you’re probably more than a little peeved at me right now, which is understandable. But as much as you may think that my goal was to portray you as a jerk, it wasn’t. I just want to encourage you to stop and discourage others from starting. Sadly, I’ve used online translators a bit in the past (high school, haha), so I’m speaking from experience. For all the aforementioned reasons, it’s just not a good thing to start.

This is what happens when Gojira and King Kong use online translators to chat:

A Possible (If More Time Consuming) Alternative

If I’m going to tell you not to use translators, I should give you some other options for what to do if you need something written in Japanese but don’t know exactly how to do it, right?

First, give it your best try. Write out your sentence, paragraph, whatever, in the best Japanese you can. For now, you can put in English words/phrases where you don’t know the Japanese ones. Then, fill in the gaps—grammar, vocabulary, particles etc by using a dictionary, online Japanese lesson pages, or one of the many Japanese Learning/Translating Communities on LiveJournal (if you use these, you should still do most of the work yourself). Make sure you get rid of the English, too.

I’m going to backtrack a bit to note that I feel it’s best to stick to the grammar points and sentence structures you know already and try to only look up new vocabulary words. It’s really up to you, though. The thing you should definitely try to do, though, is learn (rather than just copy) the vocabulary/grammar that you look up, so that you don’t have to look it up again.

Next, depending on your situation, you could have someone check it. This can be your teacher, penpal, or even one of us (if it’s not more than three lines and doesn’t need to be done quickly) as a last resort. If you’re writing something that seems too trivial to be checked (e.g. a short comment on someone’s blog) or that doesn’t have time to be checked (e.g. an instant message), it’s probably best to post it as-is. A mistake or two is definitely not the end of the world.

This applies to a longer block of text, as well. If you’re self-conscious (try not to be!) about what you’ve written, you could always preface it with something like “Please excuse any mistakes”.

Good luck, you guys!

Thoughts From Koichi

Don’t expect to be able to write in Japanese right away. It’s something that comes with time and practice. Don’t get discouraged when you’re trying to write something in Japanese and it just doesn’t come out right away. That’s because you haven’t studied enough. I know we want everything right away, but it’s really best if you just keep studying. Things will fall into place, I promise! Eventually you’ll be able to write fairly well, just don’t expect it to happen when you first start you Japanese studies. That’s all I’ve got to add, I think.

Momotarō Text Source: Wikepedia JP

Picture Sources: Unknown

Edit: Let’s not link to too many translator sites in the comments, please.