Japanese Dialects and Language Translation Software
When you translate Japanese it is important to remember that there are three
major Japanese dialects. Learning more about dialects can be important when
working with language translation and language translation software.
Japanese is spoken by over 130 million people worldwide. Pronunciation and
usage of the spoken Japanese language varies between countries, but regional
differences are not so great as to make the language unintelligible to speakers
from different areas.
The differences between the three major dialects of Japanese are about the
same as the difference between British and American English.
What is a Dialect?
A dialect refers to the differences in a language from one geographical
or social area to another. A dialect applies to the vocabulary, grammar and
pronunciation characteristics of a particular area or region.
English Dialects / American English Compared to UK English
The differences between Standard Italian and many of the dialects can be
thought of as being similar to the differences between English in the US
and in the United Kingdom. While the language can be understood by speakers
of either dialect, there are words and pronunciations which vary. For example,
the UK speaker may say, “I need to go to the market and buy some tinned
meat.” Here in the US we would say “I need to go to the market
and by some canned tuna.” While the UK speaker referrers to “canned” items
as “tinned”, you can still get the idea of what they are saying.
Systran’s Language Translation Software has built in the ability to
translate by using either British English or American English to account
for the two major English dialects.
Spoken Japanese Dialects
There are three main dialects of the Japanese language. They are: Tokyo-type,
Western-type, and the lesser used Kyushu-type.
Written Japanese
When working with translation software you will pay more attention
to written Japanese than the spoken dialects.
Written Japanese has a much larger alphabet than the English language.
Japanese uses 4 distinct alphabets:
- Kanji - used to write parts of the Japanese language such as
nouns, adjective stems and verb stems.
- Hiragana - used to write inflected verbs and adjective
endings (okurigana), particles, native Japanese words, and words
where the kanji is too difficult
to read or remember.
- Katakana - used for representing onomatopoeia
and non-Japanese loanwords.
- Romaji - is the romanization of Japanese using the
Latin alphabet to write the Japanese language.
What is Localization?
Localization is when you modify the translation for a certain dialect, region
or culture. With Japanese this can even include using colors which can have
a lot of symbolism.
Systran’s translation software and Japanese Language
You can easily
customize the Japanese translation by training
the software to recognize different words by building
your
own
custom dictionaries
and building
translation memory.
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