Here’s the second PenPen file: L4kanji2.lvl (right click, save)
| いみ | くんよみ | 漢字 | オンヨミ |
|---|---|---|---|
| New | あたらしい | 新しい | シン |
| Old | ふるい | 古い | コ |
| Long, eldest, chief | ながい | 長い | チョウ |
| Short | みじかい | 短い | タン |
| High, expensive | たかい | 高い | コウ |
| Safe, cheap | やすい | 安い | アン(cheap) |
| Low | ひくい | 低い | テイ |
| Dark | くらい | 暗い | アン |
| Many, much | おおい | 多い | タ |
| Few, little | すこし,すくない | 少し | ショウ |
And a cumulative file of all the kanji so far this level: L4kanji1_2.lvl.
Japanese classes have started again so it’s time to break out the penguin in earnest.
Here’s the first PenPen file: L4kanji1.lvl (right click, save)
| いみ | くんよみ | 漢字 | オンヨミ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flower | はな | 花 | カ |
| Tea | 茶 | チヤ、サ | |
| Flesh, meat | 肉 | ニク | |
| Pattern, letter, sentence | ふみ | 文 | ブン、モン |
| Letter, character | 字 | ジ | |
| Thing | もの | 物 | ブツ、モツ |
| Cattle, cow, bull, ox | うし | 牛 | ギュウ |
| Horse | うま | 馬 | バ |
| Bird | とり | 鳥 | チョウ |
| Fish | さかな、うお | 魚 | ギョ |
I promise you these document/augment a conversation that followed entirely logical thought-processes from one topic to another:
[non stick people drawn by the rather talented Orie Inoue]
trains of thought in an idle moment (click for full map).
Guest writer Ami Ko has written a few posts for this site now, so I thought it was about time I fashioned some sort of response.
Let’s take this as an example:
明日私は朝5時に起きなければなりません。なぜなら、8時には東京・上野の美術館に行かなければならないからです。
もうすぐ、卒業の時期。我が女子美術大学も卒業展（五美術展）の準備にとりかかっています。私は出品しないのですが、手伝いとしていってきます。
明日早く起きれるか・・・心配� ！！
My first response to Ami’s posts is typically to copy and paste it straight into an online translation service such as babel fish.
In this case it returns something like this:
Tomorrow I must rise morning at 5 o’clock. Because, at 8 o’clock you must go into Tokyo & Ueno fine arts museum, because, is. Already immediately, time of graduation. Also our Women’s College of Fine Arts graduation spreading/displaying (five fine arts spreading/displaying) has started preparation. I do, being not to exhibit, but it keeps helping. … It is worry whether tomorrow to be quick happening it is cut off,!
This is OK to get some sort of overall impression of what the subject matter is, but I’m rapidly losing faith in these things for getting any sort of accurate meaning. Not too bad when it’s just a description of events, but things get messier when you’re dealing with people’s opinions!
Let’s get our hands dirty and try translating it for ourself….
First of all, what can I read without any dictionaries?
明日 [a day reference? It’s not today (今日), but it sort of half looks the same so I’d guess at tomorrow or yesterday]私は [talking about herself as the subject of the sentence] 朝5時に起きなければなりません [something’s been made a negative]。なぜなら、8時には東京 [I think this is Tokyo] ・上野の美 [art? the ‘bi’ in Joshibi 術館に行 [iku: to go?]かなければならないから [from or because]です [sort of “is”]。
もうすぐ、卒業の時期。我が女子美[Joshibi]術大学も卒業展（五美術展）の準備。私は [talking about herself as the subject of the sentence]出品しないのです [sort of “is”]が [“but” : the next part of the sentence might contrast against the first part]、手伝いとしていってきます。
明日 [it’s the day reference again, I’ve not seen any -した endings so let’s guess “tomorrow” rather than “yesterday”早く起きれるか・・・心配� ！！
Ha! Even though I’ve just run the text through babel fish, it’s amazing how little I retained of what I read. Babel fish already told me it was “tomorrow”, there was no need to guess!
I think that’s a part of the reason why I wanted to write this post: I think perhaps me having to translate Ami’s writings myself will force me to actually interact with them rather than just scan-reading an approximation and then moving on. I think if this collaboration is going to develop into anything more substantial it needs more engagement from me.
Here is my eventual translation:
Tomorrow morning I must get up at 5 o’clock. The reason being that I must be at Tokyo and Ueno Art museum for 8 o’clock.
Graduation time is very soon. Preparation has started for our Joshibi graduation exhibition (5 art schools exhibition). I’m assisiting because I myself am not exhibiting any work.
I have to get up soon… worried!
The idea is quite simple and has been done by others before me.
Simply do a Google search on your name preceded by the word “unfortunately”.
Example results:
All well and good (or not, as the case may be), but I was wondering if this might be expanded to construct more of a narrative.
One day Nikki…; happily Nikki…; unpredictably Nikki…; unfortunately Nikki…; and then Nikki…; with the result that Nikki…
Last week I spent some time with a friend helping to get her website working more smoothly.
She hadn’t been aware there was any problems: sat in Tokyo, using a machine set with Japanese defaults, all the text on her site looked fine. Both the text in Japanese and the text in English:
Unfortunately, to me (sat in Birmingham with my machine set to rule-Britannia-there-couldn’t-possibly-be-anyone-speaking-any-other-language defaults, the pages looked like this:
A mixture of English and absolute garbage.
We tracked it down to a missing character set declaration and, with the addition of a simple line of code, I can see both types of text correctly now.
Great!
Ami’s website is here: www006.upp.so-net.ne.jp/AMIKO/. Most of the important pages have been fixed now. If you can’t see the Japanese script properly, at least now you know why!
Meanwhile…
I’d been asking around the Department for any posters that people could let me have.
I managed to get my hands on a couple of rejects. A few of the mistakes were fairly obvious, for example where the printer had jammed, however some were much more subtle.
Presumably the printing computer lacked the correct character set information to be able to display greek letters correctly. Thus, what we normally consider to be a fairly infallible discipline instead confessed its ignorance…
I don’t know if “henohenomohe” means anything. It sounds very strange even for us.
Machiko Kusahara
Made me think of faces I’ve seen made up of roman letters, but I can’t remember which blog I saw it on…
