Talk:Nansou Satomi Hakkenden
From DramaWiki
Free lesson on translating Japanese on the Japanese Wikipedia... You must follow the spaces between the Kanji characters carefully. What I see in the translation of the character names in this article is a total disregard for the spaces. As a result, you basically have a bunch of Romaji text stringed together that doesn't mean anything. Imagine finding an English-written web page showing "Kenneth Branagh as Franklindelanoroosevelt". Same thing. Keep in mind that even the Japanese (most of who can read English) use DramaWiki. So our goal should not only be to flood the Internet with drama information, but also to make sure the information is precise. Hence my inspiration for writing this...
So this is how you do it. Take for example 犬江 親兵衛 ?（??? ?ん?? ???）. On the article, it was recorded as Inue Shinbeemasashi. The surname Inue (犬江) is correct. However, 親兵衛 ? is actually two parts, which in Romaji is "Shinbee Masashi". Notice the space.
But in this example, you're lucky there's actually spaces separating the three parts of the name. Most of the time, there are no spaces between the surname and first name. Personally I'm totally for placing a space between the parts. And, on the Japanese Wikipedia I'd say this is practiced 50-percent of the time. But let's say you had 犬江親兵衛? to deal with, with no spaces. To help the reader out pronouncing the Kanji, just about all of the Japanese Wikipedia pages include the Hiragana characters. This is because even the most native of Japanese speakers may have difficulties pronouncing certain names. What's even better is that the Hiragana samples use spaces to further help the readers. So take a look at （??? ?ん?? ???）. Translating it to Romaji, you have I-nu-e Shi-n-be-e Ma-sa-shi.
I'll end with two tips: 1) ALWAYS trust the Hiragana, when provided. Kanji can fool you into writing the Romaji incorrectly. Hiragana never lies.
2) Never rely on just one translator tool. What I use are the following:
Nihon no Sei no Ichiran (http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E3%81%AE%E5%A7%93%E3%81%AE%E4%B8%80%E8%A6%A7), which means "A list of Japanese surnames". I use this to locate the Hiragana equivalent of Kanji written surnames. Bring up the entire page, and then use the search tool in your web browser to search for the Kanji within the page. This page is huge! Once I find the Hiragana equivalent, I can easily convert it to Romaji.
Kanji Romaji Hiragana Conversion (http://www.j-talk.com/nihongo/), which helps you convert Kanji and Hiragana to Romaji (Hepburn system). The writer claims 95-percent accuracy, but it's much less than that, which is why I use it stricly for converting Hiragana. It has a terrible time working with surnames and first names.
Japanese Wikipedia (http://ja.wikipedia.org/), which most people who work on DramaWiki use, so nothing new. But, now that you know about the Hiragana tip, it'll provide you with even more accurate information.
Groink 03:22, 7 Dec 2005 (EST)
