Talk:Transcribing English to Japanese

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I'm not yet done with this page, but now I'm going to bed. Zeimusu 14:52, 2004 May 2 (UTC)

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To whomever said otherwise: Japanese does allow the "je" sound. Otherwise you couldn't commute through じぇあーるなんばえき (that's how it's written in furigana). Sekicho 21:44, Sep 3, 2004 (UTC)

FYI, the example seems to be missing its Step 1. --OGoncho 05:31, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 Two questions 2 Table of transformations 3 More questions 4 Iron and more 5 katakana 6 compare with http://homepage3.nifty.com/jgrammar/grammar/jgr_loan.htm 7 Question(able?) on the English pronunciations... 8 エキジット for exit does not seem to be a good example 9 geminates before voiceless obstruents only? 10 Tu, Du, and Hu 11 Deletion 12 "My hovercraft is full of eels" 13 Transcriber

[edit] Two questions

• What happens with words where a sequence of consonants is transcribed the same in Japanese? Are they epenthesized separately or coalesced? For example, is sixths (/sɪksθs/) "sikusususu" or "sikusu"? Is Gilroy /gɪlɹɔɪ/ "giruroi" or "giroi or maybe "giiroi" (with compensatory lengthening)?
• From the examples given, it seems schwa (ə) is either "a" or "o", with "a" unless it is spelled with "o" (that is, the same rule as for ʌ). Is this observation correct, or are there cases where ə becomes "i", "e", or "u"? If the former, then the rule should be restated to be more specific. If the latter, then some examples of those types should be given. Nohat 20:16, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

In answer to my own first question:

• Gilroy appears to in fact be ギルロイ giruroi
• Sixths is hard to Google for, but Smithson is either スミスオン sumisuson or スミッソン sumisson, but not sumissuson. Clothes seems to be only クローズ kuroozu, not kuroozuzu.

Nohat 23:20, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Table of transformations

Not sure I understand the logic of this table very well. It seems a little arbitrary.--DannyWilde 02:06, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

Hm. The steps are supposed to mirror the steps laid out in the article. Step 1 is the English transcription. Step 2 is the transformation of the English transcription to Japanese sounds. Step 3 is the additional of epenthetic vowels to make the syllable structure valid for Japanese. Step 4 is the division of the sounds into morae. Step 5 is the Katakana corresponding to the morae in step 4.

I think perhaps Step 2 should be broken into two steps: one for transformation of vowels, and another for transformation of consonants. Vowels should come before consonants because some of the consonant transformation rules are dependent on the vowels. Nohat 02:30, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

is it clearer now? Nohat 02:51, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure of the purpose of the "steps". There is no meaning to the order of the steps as far as I can see. The usual method of transcribing the English word into katakana is probably more like a "grammar" in the computer programming sense than this "transform all the vowels, then transform all the consonants" stuff. For example, to transform "example" the Japanese person would probably look for the longest match of syllables one by one. Perhaps the results would be the same as this, but I'm not too sure what the purpose of describing the process by this table is. The same comment applies to the hovercraft example. Further, there are several other points which need to be addressed, such as word boundaries. --DannyWilde 03:01, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

Well, I didn't invent the steps, but they make sense to me. It does say at the top that Japanese speakers don't use a system with steps. If an English speaker wants to learn how to do this, however, they'll have to do it in steps. I agree that part of the ordering is arbitrary, but some of it is not. You can't figure out which obstruents are geminated unless you first know which vowels are short. They other steps could conceivably be reordered, but they will have to be presented in some order, because text is linear. I don't think there is anything particularly pathological about this ordering, do you?

The point of putting the steps in the table is it helps someone to see how all the deformations that Japanese transcription applies to English words come to be, in that they're not random or capricious (as someone who doesn't know better might suspect) but in fact quite orderly—not in the sense that they occur in a particular order but in the sense that they're not random.

What needs to be addressed for word boundaries?Nohat 05:43, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

In a phrase like "an engineer" in English, the words would be joined, so in Japanese the pronunciation would be best represented by "a ne n ji ni a" rather than "a n e n ji ni a". There is also the issue of the "middle dot" in joined words. See Katakana for this.--DannyWilde 06:42, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

Also, I think the hovercraft example is dumb. I don't think it is a very common practice to transcribe an entire English sentence into Japanese—it's usually just a single word or a short phrase. I think I'll remove it. Nohat 05:51, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

I think you should leave it there because it's possible in some cases that the Japanese people might want to transform an entire sentence. For example when writing an English textbook. OK it's not a common practice but I can imagine that people do it some times - why remove it? It might be a useful reference for someone.--DannyWilde 06:42, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] More questions

The katakana for Phillip appears to be フィリップ ja:フィリップ・グラス (fuiritsupu)? What is the purpose and sound of ッ here? Nohat 03:36, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

The small tsu is the consonant doubled. So in romaji we'd write "firippu" with two ps. This happens after a short vowel.--DannyWilde 05:15, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

Ah, of course. In fact I knew that but forgot that ッ was the symbol used. Nohat 05:44, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Iron and more

I thought you might want to talk about a case of "iron". It can be transcribed to "アイロン" and "アイアン". -- Taku 22:19, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

It seems "アイロン" is a "spelling kanatization"; i.e. the pronunciation has no "r" sound (at least in the nominal BrE pronunciation), but because there is an 'r' in the spelling, it is included in the transcription. How widespread is this, or is it pretty much limited to the word "iron", which is a very strange spelling in English. There are several other rules that rely on spelling, such as the transcription for schwa, and wedge (which is normally a, but can be o if it's o in the spelling). Nohat 22:49, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

I can't think of any more ones like that. I think it's just an exception. DannyWilde 00:13, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

Also, there is an issue whether a word "computer" should become コンピューター or コンピュータ. Similar cases abound like "user". It's amazing how much can be said about this topic. -- Taku 22:23, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

OK. This just seems to be that there are two rules for expanding final schwa—one as ア (a) and one as アー (aa). Are there any authorities on this topic which might provide information about why one might be preferred over the other?Nohat 22:49, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

As far as I can remember it's more like a process where the longer version gets dropped in favour of the shorter version. DannyWilde 00:13, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

Moreover, you might add some about so-called 当て字. e.g., "coffee" becomes 珈琲. -- Taku 22:25, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

I wish I could comment meaningfully on this, because I'm sure it's interesting, but I don't know Japanese. Something about using phonetically equivalent Kanji to represent English words? Nohat 22:49, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

"koohii" is from Dutch anyway. Most of the ateji uses actually just copied the Chinese writings of the words, and it hasn't been common to kanjify English words like this for the last hundred years or so, so I don't see much point in writing a lot about this. It probably belongs in a separate article ateji if such a thing exists. DannyWilde 00:13, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] katakana

Shouldn't we include the katakana version of transliterations in the table instep 2? Japanese people would not transcribe English in roomaji, but rather in kana. Philippe 13:40, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Well see discussion at section #Table of transformations. Basically the article as edited by User:Nohat is arguably exhibiting an obvious and strong English/foreign-speaker bias. We can effective tag the article for:

The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article or discuss the issue on the talk page.

Steps 2-4 cannot be covered with katakana because at that point, the intermediary results are still effectively in a mix of English and true romaji; that is, in those intermediary steps there are still sounds which are not exactly transcribable in katakana because katakana follows Japanese phonotactics rather than English phonotactics.

For a native Japanese, steps 2-4 is likely to happen on a more unconscious level. They are most likely to simply translate an english sound to what they perceive as the closest equivalent. This is especially since the Japanese do not transcribe sounds directly as vowels and consonants as English speakers do, but as moras—the kana systems for example are mora-based. The steps given would therefore be a possible analysis of what could be going on at the unconscious level, for a native Japanese. For an English speaker, steps 2-4 may indeed be the actual, conscious way they might choose to carry out the transcription, especially since English speakers do regularly think in terms of vowels and consonants.

As a first step towards revision, I could changes steps 2-4 as 2a-2c so that it is more clear they may be perceived not strictly as distinct steps, but as an analysis of a single step. We can also add explanation in the article to emphasize that the breakdown of steps does not necessary reflects what "actually" happens in the mind but is simply a useful way to describe the rules and analyze what is happening. 24.19.184.243 09:36, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] compare with http://homepage3.nifty.com/jgrammar/grammar/jgr_loan.htm

I just thought it might be useful to compare the rule description in this article with the rule description given by this external link. It is clear that the external link is more in the perspective of a native Japanese. Of course, that doesn't mean we need to drastically change anything in this article especially since this is the English Wikipedia after all. 24.19.184.243 10:05, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question(able?) on the English pronunciations...

• exit /ɛkzɪt/
• of /ɒv/ (from "My hovercraft is full of eels.")

Are those really the correct English pronunciation? I don't really hear the "s" sound in "exit" as voiced (ie. I perceive it as /ɛksɪt/). Similarly I don't think the final "f" sound in "of" is voiced (ie. shouldn't it be /ɒf/?).

Conceivably it could be a regional/dialectal variation or something, but just want to make sure. Helpful if someone can verify the accuracy of the given pronunciation against some English dictionary (and indicate which ones here). Would be embarassing if we can't even get the English pronunciation right ourselves!

24.19.184.243 10:05, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Here you are (from OneLook): exit, of; sorry if not enough. I already wrote about "exit" below, and we now know that the choice is not so stable; however, for "of" it's quite clear that they (we) call it オブ ... uh, wait, well... some might prefer オヴ :) but never オフ, except for the phrase "of course" in which case always "オフコース" or "オフ・コース", but I don't know why. --marsian 11:15, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] エキジット for exit does not seem to be a good example

I think it's better to remove or replace this example. At first I felt イグジット is the most often observed style, but was not so sure. Since basically there are 2 × 4 = 8 possibilities, I quick checked them by googling. The results as of 10:59, 19 July 2006 (UTC) are as follows:

beginning with イ:

• "イグジット" + exit = order of 10³ (appearently the most common)
• "イクジット" + exit = order of 10²
• "イキジット" + exit = 0
• "イギジット" + exit = 0

beginning with エ:

• "エグジット" + exit = order of 10²
• "エクジット" + exit = order of 10²
• "エキジット" + exit = order of 10² (seems used as a scuba diving term... what? wanna know whether スクーバ or スキューバ? forget it)
• "エギジット" + exit = order of 10¹

using シ instead of ジ (rare):

• "エクシット" + exit = order of 10¹
• the others = order of 10⁰

I also found a blog entry mentioning this exact topic [1]. --marsian 10:59, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] geminates before voiceless obstruents only?

The article only makes mention of the sokuon appearing between transcriptions of short vowels and voiceless consonants, but how do you explain transcriptions such as "ビッグ" and "ドッグ", where there's a sokuon before a voiced consonant? Or are those more exceptions to the rule?

I don't know enough about the language to say whether they are rare exceptions or reasons to modify the rules, but while you're at it you can add z (as in キッズ kizzu) and d (as in ウッド uddo) to the list of voiced consonants that can be doubled. -- Calcwatch 05:42, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tu, Du, and Hu

In which way are the syllables "tu", "du", and "hu" written in Katakana? --84.61.39.162 09:00, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

テゥ　デゥ　フ Jpatokal 14:28, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Well... normally トゥ, ドゥ, and フ. --marsian 15:17, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Oops, you're correct -- was thinking ti/di for some reason. Jpatokal 04:26, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Uh, no offence, but you know they're ティ (ti) and ディ (di). --marsian 05:47, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion

Maybe not quite ready for deletion by proposed deletion route. There are references out there. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Zeimusu (talk • contribs) 14:42, 2 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] "My hovercraft is full of eels"

Um, wha? Isn't there a better example sentence? Also, the sentence would be gibberish in Japanese anyway - katakana are useful for words, not whole phrases. Bronzey 06:09, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

How about "I love you"? "Ai rabu yuu" is not gibberish to Japanese. Or maybe "this is a pen" :) --Kusunose 07:51, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Transcriber

I found that the automatic transcriber gives the correct result for all the examples in the article. To make things work correctly, you should input English phonetic spelling, so something at step 3 or sometime at step 2 works. Anyway the transcriber is useful and can help to save some time. Also the link was wrong: the link for the english page is this http://www.negadrive.altervista.org/jap.php?lng=en I hope this help.