Language help!!

[Tony Smith]

Originally Posted by Alex van de Wetering

I wonder if that fancy phone app would work.....gives you a direct translation while filming the text.....
Alex

That's the problem with Kanji. There is no direct translation. You could have characters that symbolise "Fire", "King" and"House", these could equally translate to Gunnery Commander's Cupola, or the engine's Distributor Cap. The person doing the translating needs to know the context, and the technical meaning, before trying to translate. The character for "Fire" can also be used to describe Flame, Burn, Cook, or Oxidise.

I have used two people to translate '60s and 70's Suzuki and Toyota technical documents, and I get 2 different translations every time! It's then up to me to try decipher the technical meaning from the Nostradamus-like riddles. One person lived and worked in Japan for 14 years and is very fluent, but has no technical knowledge of auto mechanics, and we have trouble determining meanings.

The other Japanese alphabets are Katakana (which are phonetic syllables), and Hiragana (which is a blend of both!). Katakana, being syllables, is mostly used to describe foreign words, but it does not cover every letter sound used in European languages. For example, "Scotch" Whiskey is written with the two symbols Sco and Chu, and is pronounced "Scotchu". We think it's a spoken accent, but there are no syllables in the Japanese language to cover it. Hence, I turn up beauties in the translations such at "Fattory Ria Defrock" for Factory Rear Diff Lock. Katakana or Hiragana text would work better with a Phone App, but would still "sound" heavily accented.