This is a question aimed at those who’ve played the Jap imports… if you aren’t sure what a kanji string means in a game, how can you find out? You can’t really copy and paste the characters into a web dictionary or a word processor, and I have no idea if there’s a way to enter the character strokes de novo. Any clues?
Ouch, it’s not going to be easy. JWPce has a radical lookup chart that you can try.
The same goes for NJWin:
If you need a Kanji that you don’t know how it’s pronounced, you have to get it from the Kanji-database by constructing it from its radicals.
On the other hand: If you know how they are pronounced, you can enter the Kanjis in NJWin by typing it’s phonems and selecting it from the list of Kanjis that have the currently typed pronounciation.
If you have the Kanji string written in NJStar, you can use the built-in-dictionary to get the meaning of it.
[This message has been edited by Unicorn (edited 07-16-2003).]
You can use the IME Pad to draw the character and then use the resulting character on some on-line dictionary like Jim Breen or Rikai.
Probably too time consuming to actually do, though.
Oh man, I was afraid of that. How did you guys learn japanese, if online? Was it through about.com? That’s mainly romanji…
I took classes for a year. Which, in essence, was mostly pointless since I forgot most of it. The rest I learned naturally, from family who doesn’t speak Japanese, only single words and a couple phrases. That’s what happens when you’re raised from an Americanized Japanese family.
Heh, I’ve taken Japanese lessons for a good majority of my life but still suck at it. Kanji is always fun though. Most of the time, I know what the symbol means, but can’t remember what the Japanese word for it is. (Or even rarer, I’ll know the Chinese word instead.)
For my money, electronic kanji dictionary radical lookups s**k. Nothing replaces your head. Get a nice thick KAN-EI dictionary and look them up yourself. It’s much more satisfying.
I recommend The New Nelson’s. Nothing has kanji like Nelson’s. Nothing!
Made in DNA
OR you could just post it here and we could tell you what it says.
Also… could we refrain from using the word “jap”. It’s incredibly racist. I’m sure you aren’t, but if you want to use a shortened version, use what I do: jpn, jp, jpnz.
[This message has been edited by Made in DNA (edited 07-18-2003).]
quote:
Originally posted by Made in DNA:
Also... could we refrain from using the word "jap". It's incredibly racist. I'm sure you aren't, but if you want to use a shortened version, use what I do: jpn, jp, jpnz.
Hmm, I was going to mention this as well but I couldn't think of a nice way to phrase it. It was one of the lessons I learned early on. We used to refer to our Japanese Language school as "Jap" until our elementary school principal overheard us one day. He told us about how people used it as a racial slur, especially around World War II. He also told us how he would get beat up for being a "Jap", while his brother didn't, because he had stronger Japanese features than his brother. Definitely made an impression on me since I still remember the talk after 20 years...
quote:
Originally posted by tkira13:
if you aren't sure what a kanji string means in a game, how can you find out? You can't really copy and paste the characters into a web dictionary or a word processor, and I have no idea if there's a way to enter the character strokes de novo. Any clues?
Actually, something simpler might just be to look to see if there is Hiragana or Katakana above the Kanji symbol. Some of the more complex Kanji now do this regularly as an aid to determining what the Kanji is. Doing this might not give the exact defintion of the Kanji, but it might help narrow your focus, or even clue you into what the Kanji depending on the rest of the sentance.
On a side note, there are a number of JPN word processor softwares that let you type in Hiragana and Katakana, and then the software attempts to come up with the appropriate Kanji for it, or a short list of what Kanji the software thinks you might have writen out.
[This message has been edited by Mike Thomas (edited 07-18-2003).]
I wasn’t going to help our friend tkira13 because he used the word “jap”, but I’ve changed my mind…
Some fans of these games have created programs that dump the entire scripts into text files. From them you can copy and paste the hanzi characters into your web dictionary or word processor for lookup. But there aren’t text dumping programs for every game, just the more popular ones like Key’s games, Leaf’s games, Circus’s games, and Kiminozo.
By the way, what’s “romanji”? I’ve heard of “romaji” but where did “romanji” come from?
quote:
Originally posted by gaogao:
By the way, what's "romanji"? I've heard of "romaji" but where did "romanji" come from?
Romanji is simply the English version, but not literal translation, of Japanese characters. It's the Japanese words in English that aren't translated yet. An example of such is how a lot of anime alternate between the English translation and Romanji of the theme songs.
Not sure if any of that made sense. :shrug:
lol, he was being sarcastic. romaji is mistakenly called romanji because it pleases our american senses. romaji is transliterating (if that ain’t the word I’m looking for it’s close enough) of the japanese phonetic alphabit into a roman character set.
-Justin
Japan-nerds, unite!
Thanks all for your help. Sorry about the use of the word Jap. The irony is that I am actually of Japanese heritage. Very westernized I guess, or less sensitive to such slang. My apologies.
quote:
Originally posted by tkira13:
Thanks all for your help. Sorry about the use of the word Jap. The irony is that I am actually of Japanese heritage. Very westernized I guess, or less sensitive to such slang. My apologies.
Well, one of the purposes of this board is to help educate people. It's what you do with that knowledge afterwards that really determine what you're made of.
quote:
Originally posted by tkira13:
Thanks all for your help. Sorry about the use of the word Jap. The irony is that I am actually of Japanese heritage. Very westernized I guess, or less sensitive to such slang. My apologies.
Hi,
Not a problem. I'm a little over-sensitive I guess do to the fact that I am involved in interational relationships. The last thing I want is for anyone to refer to my gf or lover as a "(insert slang term here)", and I do well to educate my family to that as well. For instance, I made a comment to my sister the other day that her gf looked slightly Asian. I thought it was possible since my sister had mentioned she had spent time in Japan. She replied, "no, she's not Japanese." .... It wasn't meant as a insult in any way, but it was the slip of thinking that all Asians are Japanese or visa versa that made me grind my teeth.
I think what holds us back in really respecting other people and cultures is not making the concious choice to actually realize that just because people may "look alike" or may live in the same Earth-spacial region, doesn't mean they are the same, let alone even understand each other. And this goes for everyone. I don't know how many times Japanese people have said, "YOU LOOK LIKE TOM CRUISE!" Get real, I look nothing like Mr. Cruise. Lord would I love to, but yeesh, give me a break... I wear glasses, I'm not blind.
On the other hand, I know a few Asian-Americans like yourself who think the same way. They don't allow things like that to bother them. More power to you. Perhaps yours is the way we need to go... just to stop worrying about it, and be human.
/preach session,
Made in DNA
quote:
Originally posted by Made in DNA:
I don't know how many times Japanese people have said, "YOU LOOK LIKE TOM CRUISE!" Get real, I look nothing like Mr. Cruise. Lord would I love to, but yeesh, give me a break... I wear glasses, I'm not blind.Made in DNA
Are you short? Like, really short? That may be why Japanese mistake you for Mr. Cruise.
Getting back to topic - it sounds like an application for OCR (optical character recognition software). If you could capture screenshots of the Kanji, you might be able to convert it to text form and then use other translation tools.
I don’t have any personal experience with the product, but one company that markets such OCR software is translation.net. They claim to have a 99% accuracy rate using a builtin 148,000 word Kanji recognition dictionary.
[This message has been edited by perigee (edited 08-05-2003).]
quote:
Originally posted by bokmeow:
Are you short? Like, really short? That may be why Japanese mistake you for Mr. Cruise.
No, thank god. That would be a death sentence here since most girls like guys taller than them.
Actually, most Japanese think any foreigner looks like whatever current actor/actress is popular. In the 80s and 90s, I was Tom Cruise. This decade I get to be (and this happens a lot to me in the States too) Jim Carrey. Love JC, but I don't know whether to be flattered or insulted... Come to think of it, I heard Jim Carrey being mentioned a lot around me when I was in Thailand too.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahllrighty then,
Made in DNA
quote:
Originally posted by Made in DNA:
No, thank god. That would be a death sentence here since most girls like guys taller than them.Actually, most Japanese think any foreigner looks like whatever current actor/actress is popular. In the 80s and 90s, I was Tom Cruise. This decade I get to be (and this happens a lot to me in the States too) Jim Carrey. Love JC, but I don't know whether to be flattered or insulted... Come to think of it, I heard Jim Carrey being mentioned a lot around me when I was in Thailand too.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahllrighty then,
Made in DNA
I see no one mistakes you for Schwa-chan. I sincerely hope not.