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Yes, I wrote this, haha. Why do you ask?
http://www.excite.co.jp/world/english/
This is the most helpful though.
You might think so, but you'd be surprised at how many emails we get about using/not using online translators. Glad you're in the know, though.
>.>
http://www.romaji.org/ (日本 －＞ ロマジ)
It really helps me read most of the kanji that I have yet to learn. I've even recognized a few from just using this site regularly (ex： 道、中、日、大、愛、山、田、子 etc.). I also use the occasional Japanese/English online dictionary, but yet to find one I like.
PS: I didn't notice until Tyler mentioned it, but as I was reading, I thought this was an article by Koichi. I guess I didn't notice because you usually do "other" kinds of articles like the "Super Short Style" or the "Nissen Cup of Noodles" articles. By the way, thank you for those fashion sites.
Well that's my rant for today.
スパムむすび FTW！
Erin: ¡Me gusto tu articulo! ¡Lo hiciste muy bien! ¡Es posiblemente uno de tus mejores!
Excuse my lack of accents casue I'm lazy and forget the key codes.
Kevin just basically summarized my entire passage in about 2-3 sentences.
舞鳥！
"The rule of the sudoku: Each column, row, and 3x3 box must contain the numbers 1 to 9. Never have to guess a number. The solution provided can be reached only with the logic."
Yes, it came close, but it would look sloppy to a native speaker the other way around. Just imagine what it'll do to Japanese.
http://www.popjisyo.com/WebHint/Portal_e.aspx
This is so much faster than opening up a dictionary or even using Jim Breen. I've used it a few times and I have no complaints.
i tried translating the lyrics of a Korean song from Korean to English once.
Everytime the Korean word for 'heart' came up, it was translated into the word 'breast'. So the translation ended up becoming something like:
"Everytime I see you, my breast hurts"
What a dirty song.
^^ :D
best site to translate something is jimbreens i think. Cept it doesnt actually translate it just give s you the meaning of the words. you can at least get what their talking about if you know what words there using :P
And yeah, I agree with those who said that it doesn't work with Spanish either. Online Translators Suck!. I get a lot of Spanish friends tell me that they can speak English when they are obviously using Babelfish ("It's Dishonest...", not to mention they sound like idiots).
Omg。。。 Thank you for listing that site. It makes things a lot easier and faster. Now I can enjoy reading my blogs without "alt-tabing" every couple lines. Very exciting! Haha yeah I know... I'm a nerd.
o(^^o)(o^^)o わくわく
Of course, nothing beats learning a language (you can't carry a computer around you forever), and it's not very personal to constantly use a translator. But the day is coming soon. Computers already have good facial recognition technology (people use to say computers would never be able to recognize faces), and soon, good language skills.
I recieved a message from a Japanese person in English. They clearly used a translator.
I have no clue how to make left from right with their message. XD
The first sentence was understandable. Everything else after that was tragic.
I guess that's how they think when I use a translator.
Even if they do get that good (and I have no doubt they will), you said it yourself, "nothing beats learning a language (you can’t carry a computer around you forever), and it’s not very personal to constantly use a translator".
Translator's main problems are placing the meaning of a word into a sentence naturally... and figuring out what the word means based on the context. All languages have synonyms (fancy term for same word, different meaning), and that's what they struggle with the most.
i have studied japanese about a year in university, i often use online traslators for words or noun pharse and some time sentences. I think maybe we want the fast result without thinking or we busy, dont have much time ....(many reasons)
So, i also feel that i become lazy , and easy to forget any word that i ve studied, in my head now very difficult to call the those words that ve studied...( of course expect from greeting pharses : Ohaio / oyasumi...^_^)
now im trying to change the ways of studying japanese of mine before and do my brain active...
I think we not only memorise the new words but also know how to use them in sentences.,,,(if someone really like japanese and study seriously , by ur self is still good and main way.
がんばってくださいね！
チーより
This comment kind of sounds like it was put through an online translator.
がんばります！アス～！ (-_-)
Still no substitute for learning Japanese, but a little help for the people who haven't learned the language at all.
(I still remember a girl sending an email to a Korean company about doll eyes through one, and it being something about blood and some other goth poem nonsense when it all came back through it)
Anyway, booking it was easy but canceling over the system wasn't possible. In the end I had to write an email to the family. But my vocabulary wasn't advanced enough. My Japanese friends weren't online...... I confess: I did use a translator! *sob*
Julian
(Apologies for any typos or wrong word order... my English is getting worse day after day. - Just in case someone is trying to say i used a translator this time.)
Ah, the evils of romanji. Just for the record, Tofugu Team believes: 1) that romanji makes it harder to discern context, especially for beginning Japanese students, 2) romanji will slow you down in your hiragana/katakana/kanji learning, and 3) it's almost completely useless in the real world. As for the translation site, I wouldn't mind someone using it if they had at least basic hiragana down and used it for that. But romanji? Not so much. Then again, you're free to do what you want.
"Irony: people posting links to translator sites in response to this article."
It's no use Erin, it's a lost cause. Just like the Terminators, there's no stopping the Online Translators.
As for romaji converters, I completely agree, even though I did use it for my kanji (shame). But even since Veit post that popjisyo site, I'll never have to return to romaji.
You are absolutely right, haha.
The first page that turns up at the top of the rankings is quite helpful, and includes a lot of phrases that you might use when composing an email to a Japanese friend.
http://www.meijigakuin.ac.jp/~okamyo/flabo-mail...
This method has two advantages over the text translators; it usually finds stuff that people, (not machines) have written, and it usually puts the phrases you choose in to context.
Not to mention, that you actually have to use your brain to come up with the phrase in the first place. If you really want to improve you Japanese, give it a shot.
Erin wrote this article... (-_-) Koichi FTW! hehe jk.
Another solution could be that you actually just learn the language so you can pretty much say anything you want without having to find it on the web.
Haha, yeah, I was going to say, I didn't write this article, our esteemed writer Erin did. Nice comment though, I'll have to check out that site.
I mean, I understand no love for me, but extra love for Koichi? No fairs.
It's because he has the panda hat...
I think anyone past the beginner stage will soon give up on online translators (because they suck) so the problem solves itself. I remember using them way back when.
I am surprised not to see any mention of Rikaichan...!
http://www.polarcloud.com/rikaichan/
If you do online translation/reading on a regular basis YOU NEED THIS.
Thanks for listening to me!
I very rarely use online translators for translating paragraphs and/or sentences. Before I found WWWJDIC (http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/wwwjdic.html), I just used them for the occasional verb and/or noun that I didn't understand. Now, I use WWWJDIC for romanization of names and kanji, translations of paragraphs, and searching for words on Keitai..
Never trust translation sites like Google and Babel Fish... Unless you need a laugh... Here's somewhat sort of an example from my blog: http://nldream.endless-hope.net/2007/11/18/%e5%....
nope wrote by my self , not by any translators . i feel free if u can say why u think like this(like it too much mistake/funny,,,???) ,yeahh really my english still bad, not well..
どうもありがとう。
チー
Dont worry, I was just kidding. I only said that because I was comparing it to the examples Erin gave in the article. If you were offended, I apologize.
Ah,no i feel free . thanks for your message ..n_n..
No, it's some random internet person's :{
Language is our brains main thing and so it might take some thought about linguistics to understand what a mindboggling hard thing it is. Lots of concepts in each language are extremly ambivalent. And computers hate ambivalence.
This is a great article Erin!
Thank you! That's really sweet.
As for typing in Japanese here are the steps:
Start > Control Panel > Regional and Language Options > Languages > Details > Add
Add Japanese. Make sure that IME Standard shows up as one of the keyboard options. Hit ok, and then you should be able to type in Japanese. To switch from English to Japanese, press shift + alt. You should see the language bar (at the bottom of the screen) change from ENG to JP. I would suggest (if you've never written in Japanese on your computer) to right click anywhere on the bar and choose "Restore the Language Bar". Now, hover over the icons on the language bar so that you can see what they are. Do the following:
Input Style >> IME Standard
Input Mode >> Hiragana
Conversion Mode >> General
You should be able to type in Japanese now. To switch back to English, just press shift + alt again. I hope that helps; if you're unclear on something, shoot one of us an email or something, ok?
Spot on, too.
The only time I'll use a translator is if I don't know the meaning of a particular word.
I would never trust a translator to translate a whole paragraph, sentence etc.
These blogs have inspired to continue my Japanese studies.
Thanks again,
Matt.
- firefox + rikaichan extension:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/...
- www.jdic.com
- goole translate (english -> japanese), for common words which are hard to find on jdic.com. Check your result against what rikaichan says the word means.
Mostly note the use of rikaichan. It's an extension where, if I turn it on, I can mouse over kanji and get the definition.
I haven't needed to buy a dictionary yet because of these tools.
There is this awesome story...my mom tried to use an online thing so she could write to the company that made her favorite drink...but they were German....and MAN was it screwed up (we checked it later). She never got a reply from them because they couldn't understand a word she'd written. They probably thought she'd had too much of their drink.
I won't go near those thrice damned things.
Thats why I'm LEARNING Japanese. Don't need bad translators when you know the language yourself.
Thanks for actually posting this article though. People need to be put off those monstrosities.
Problem with this German company could may be that a lot of spam mails are translated by automated translation into german, so the company probably thought the mail was spam.