Who knows Japanese?

[Martijn Meerts]

Simple question really ;)

 

I want to learn it myself, but I'm having a hard time with it. I did come across some new way of learning languages which supposedly works great, but I forgot what it was called or what the link was ;)

 

 

Anyways, I'm looking for someone who's reasonably skilled in Japanese to help with translation of things like locomotive instruction sheets, building instructions of plastic kits, building instructions of the C62 brass kit etc. The idea was to translate them, and put them online to help others. Initially it's only for the items I have myself, but it wouldn't be inconceivable to have people send in scans of manuals to be translated should it prove popular. It won't be an awful lot of work, and of course I'd be willing to compensate for the time used.

 

If anyone's interested, or knows someone who might be interested in helping out, let me know =)

[Bernard]

Martijn--I don't know if this suggestion will help you or not or the answer you're looking for but whenever we need a translation on a film we're doing, we call the country's embassy that we're doing a film on to get help. Is there a Japanese embassy in Oslo that you can call? (At least they might be able to point you in the right direction.) Just a suggestion.

[CaptOblivious]

Simple question really ;)

 

I want to learn it myself, but I'm having a hard time with it. I did come across some new way of learning languages which supposedly works great, but I forgot what it was called or what the link was ;)

 

 

Anyways, I'm looking for someone who's reasonably skilled in Japanese to help with translation of things like locomotive instruction sheets, building instructions of plastic kits, building instructions of the C62 brass kit etc. The idea was to translate them, and put them online to help others. Initially it's only for the items I have myself, but it wouldn't be inconceivable to have people send in scans of manuals to be translated should it prove popular. It won't be an awful lot of work, and of course I'd be willing to compensate for the time used.

 

If anyone's interested, or knows someone who might be interested in helping out, let me know =)

 

 

I speak and read just enough to survive in Tokyo: When does the next train to soandso arrive? I would like another beer, please. Where is the hostel? No mayo, please. In otherwords, I'd love to be of help, but no go. I have found, however, that just being able to read Kana can get you pretty far in model railroading, as the Japanese very frequently use the English word for a thing (even when a perfectly suitable Japanese word already exists)—but they don't write it with Roman letters.

 

I'm working on it though. I can heartily recommend the Japanese for Everyone textbooks (although the Kanji workbook is hard to find outside of Japan—I was lucky to find it in Japan for that matter—the main textbook is easy to get from Kodansha publishing.)

 

ProVoc is some very good (and free!) Mac software to help drill you on vocabulary. I have made datafiles for the first eight chapters of Japanese for Everyone, if you are interested.

 

There is also a very good free podcast on iTunes called Japanese Pod 101, but of course that's only conversational and doesn't teach reading.

 

Finally, I've started using the Rosetta Stone software, and it looks very promising, but very difficult. It uses total immersion, assumes you know kana (I do—it only takes about a week of dedicated practice to learn those for life), and dumps you into Kanji immediately. It is expensive, however.

[Martijn Meerts]

Bernard, I know of various translation services, but they're generally too expensive for what I need. It would also be nice to get someone who's somewhat into model trains, that'd make things a lot easier ;) There is of course an embassy here, so I might check that out if I can't find someone.

 

Cap, I know that just knowing kana is enough to get most out of the manuals, and that'd be a good start actually. But the C62 kit booklets for example have a LOT of text about various steam locomotives and detailed info about what certain parts do etc. Much of that is written in kanji.

 

 

I've started translating some of the easier things of the C62 kit though, using the Windows IME I can draw kanji, get a list of possible matches, and then pick the one I need. I build up a sentence like that, and than paste it into either google or Jim Breen's J-Dict page. That works great for smaller bits of text, but not for several pages worth of kanji ;)

 

 

Actually, I just remembered what that Japanese course was called. It's a series called Learn Language Now (Learn Japanese Now in the case of Japanese), and rather than presenting you with all sorts of theory and what not, they just get straight into it. Comes with a program and various sound and video files etc. as well.

[CaptOblivious]

I'll have to look at that service, sounds promising.

 

Look at JEDict for the Mac. It's an excellent free Japanese/Kanji dictionary. The standard way of looking Kanji up is to count the strokes; the kanji are then sorted by root and then radical. Learning how to count strokes, the stroke order that kanji are made in, and how to recognize roots and radicals in Kanji is actually really easy, and will help with the DIY translation a lot.