Asian Absolute Newsletter, Autumn 2007

For the past few decades, Japan has been one of the world’s key players in business and politics, as well as a big contributor to modern media and popular culture. It has, in a sense, set itself apart from the rest of Asia in these respects. Visitors from Asia as well as the rest of the world report a unique society – one of the most modern, but also one of the most traditional - that must be dealt with entirely in its own terms.

Since the Second World War, Japan has had European-styled political and legal systems, but retained the ancient tradition of the Emperor. As in most of Europe, however, the country is run by the democratically elected Prime Minister and his or her cabinet. Until the autumn of 2006 when he was replaced by Shinzo Abe, Junichiro Koizumi used his premiership to place Japan firmly among the world’s most powerful nations, cutting a charismatic figure at successive G8 conferences and donating large amounts of money to international aid. Somewhat controversially, however Japan remains barred from possessing its own army.

Through a combination of American-funded regeneration and military dependence, Japan was able to channel its post-war energies into industrial and economic advance, famously being the world’s second largest economy for the latter part of the 20th century. Its prodigious rise was based in industrial development, particularly automotives and electronics. Although these sectors remain strong, in the early 21st century, services now represent 75% of Japan’s GDP.

As well as heavy industry and technology, Japan successfully exports its culture, in the form of film, music and cuisine, to the rest of the world. Not only have trends such as manga and karaoke become household names globally, but Japan has inspired blockbuster Western films such as Lost in Translation and the Kill Bill series. This, combined with large numbers of Japanese travelling abroad, mean the nation has turned from one of the most insular to one of the most interactive in the world.

In spite of this, Japan’s language remains one of its most impenetrable aspects for Westerners. This brings about a big demand for localisation services. The following are a few facts and fallacies about the language and its rendition in localisation:

FACT: The Japanese language consists of three separate scripts. In addition to kanji, the Chinese characters used as the root of most Japanese words, there are two phonetic scripts which represent 71 sounds: hiragana and katakana. Generally, the former is used to represent pure Japanese words and the latter for imported foreign words, or sometimes for emphasis. All three scripts are used in combination.

FALLACY: Japanese is a tonal language. Although the script is based on that of China, Japan’s spoken language is completely different to Chinese, notably in that unlike its neighbour, it does not use tones.

FACT: A single kanji character can be pronounced in several different ways. The pictoral Chinese characters known as kanji take on different pronunciations depending on the word and context they are used in. Most characters have one or two readings which are used most commonly, but often have obscure readings which can appear in names or unusual words. Where this is the case, and the general public are unable to know the reading, the correct pronunciation will often be indicated in small hiragana characters next to the word.

FALLACY: Japanese is always written top to bottom, right to left. Traditionally, Japanese was set out in this way, but recently it has become more common to write it in a Western format, i.e. from left to right horizontally. This is particularly true of materials which were originally written in a Western language.

For more information on Japanese translations, click here.

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