How many forms of “you” do you think Japanese has?In a sense, there are so many words that can refer to the second person (あなた、お前、貴様、君、そちら、御社、お宅…), but none of them is a pronoun in the same sense as in most European languages.When Japanese people need to directly address somebody, they usually use the person’s name with the [...]
Sometimes, the simplest question is the hardest to answer.People often ask me how to say “Hi” in Japanese, and when I answer that there is no such word, they seem confused. If you check the dictionary, you can find a few equivalent words in Japanese, such as やあ or ねえ, but none of them can [...]
One of the characteristics of Japanese language is its abundant variety of onomatopoeia. It’s a group of adjectives and adverbs used to describe the state or sound of something, typically with the same syllable repeated (among other formations).In many languages, words are created by imitating the sound of animals, but you can express more than [...]
Here is a test for your English proficiency:High touch (ハイタッチ)Sharp pencil (シャープペンシル)Baby car (ベビーカー)Skinship (スキンシップ)Salary man (サラリーマン)These are a few examples of Japanese words that Japanese people believe of English-origin. Technically, their origin is English, but no English speakers would understand their true meaning as they are used with a totally different one in Japanese.In [...]
Once a client told us that Japanese language looks too complicated to appeal to the audience, especially when the product is targeted for children. The product is translated into several languages in the app store, and the results from it showed less preferable in Japanese. When you think about the possible cause, it is easy [...]
By Francesco Pugliano, Head of Mobile Localization - eBay. This post originally appeared on Francesco's blog, Localization in Silicon Valley, and is re-posted with permission. When designing a mobile app, one of the things a designer should keep in mind is translated text expansion. Probably this doesn’t come as something new; there’s a whole literature on the [...]