Asian Languages

Japanese

Translation Issues

Japanese is the native language only of Japan, but is the eighth most widely used language in the world.

The degree of formality adopted in Japanese is extremely important: translators and interpreters should be made aware of the nature of the group/s to be targeted.

Transliteration: company and individuals names should be transliterated using the phonetic script Katakana. There may be more than one correct way of transliterating a name into Japanese.

It is often considered cool or modern to retain some English within Japanese translations. An editor should be allowed to exercise his/her discretion in this regard.

Japanese is written using Kanji (Chinese characters) and Hiragana and Katakana (the two Japanese 'alphabets').

DTP

Rubi is Hiragana written above/below or on the right of a Kanji character, as a guide to its pronunciation. It is often used for Kanji which are likely to be unfamiliar to the target audience of a publication. It is rarely necessary to use Rubi on localized materials.

Japanese may be written left-to-right or top-to-bottom. Newspapers and literature use the latter, and magazines may use either. Localised materials (excluding literature) should almost always be written left-to-right.

Graphic input requires Japanese Quark.