Foreigners in Japan

[Harvey]

Hello,

Has anyone read anything online or in a physical paper magazine about the popularity of Japan to foreigners?

Or anything about recent increased immigration trends of foreigners to Japan?

Or recent trends in the increase in the students of the Japanese language?

Anything would be appreciated... Trying to show a friend here that Japan really is gaining popularity among westerners.

[stephenmunday]

You could show your friend the number of people who take part in the forum here for one thing.

[Mike Cash]

So my name is マイケル・カッシュ

And here I've had wrong all this time. Darn it!

[ajm]

Originally Posted by mikecash

So my name is 繝槭う繧ｱ繝ｫ繝ｻ繧ｫ繝�繧ｷ繝･

And here I've had wrong all this time. Darn it!

That's not too bad.縲�It seems "譛ｬ逕ｰ蟄晄��" (just to enter a
random Japanese name) is in Japanese, actually "繝上�ｼ繝ｳ繝�繝ｻ繝�繝ｼ繧ｫ繝ｼ繧ｭsan."

[TwistedMac]

also, apparently, that's "your name on in kanji"... (I don't know what part to highlight... "on in" or "kanji"... )

I hope someone uses that guide to get a tattoo..

[stephenmunday]

I am guessing you guys are referring to the output from the name translator at www.japanese-name-translation.com, although ajm's post seems to have gotten messed up when being encoded.

The purpose of this translator is not to show you what Japanese names look like in Japanese (there will be a guide to popular Japanese surnames and first names on other pages in the site.) The idea is that you put in your name and then it will show you how it is written in katakana. It has been based on US phonetics, and has been tweaked to take account of common patterns in names. (For example, "Sch" is often pronounced "sh" in US names, whereas in the English language it is most often seen in the context of the word "school". In the name translator program, we have tweaked it so that it outputs the "sh" pronunciation, instead of the "sk" pronunciation.) So if I put my name in, it comes up with スティーブン・マンデイ, which is an accurate phonetic translation of "Stephen Munday".

Of course, it does not do all foreign names accurately, but that would be impossible, given the huge variety of pronunciation possibilities. However, in testing we have found that it gets it completely right about 90% of the time and gets US names 80% to 100% right 95% of the time.

When you put your name into the translator, the speech bubble that says "We have your name in Japanese kanji" pops up if that is one of the names we have in our database already. Clicking on this graphic will then take you to the download area, where you will be able to buy your name in kanji as an image file for $5. (Yes, the prices will be lower int he final version.)

We are working on this site now and are looking forward to launching in January 2005. There will be a lot of information on kanji, hiragana, katakana, calligaphy and Japanese names, it would be great to get your feedback then when you can see all of it.

[TwistedMac]

so then how exactly do you choose the kanji?.. based on the meaning of the word or how it's pronounced?.. both would seem silly to me...

My name is Daniel.. I've been told Daniel means "God is my judge".. usually shortened to just "judge".. so do you then offer me the kanji for judge? Which is either jajji, sai, hangan, saibannin, saibankan or hanji according to this dictionary (I don't really know much japanese and judge is not one of the rare few words I know). Whichever it is that is correct, none of them really sound like Daniel at all... so that would be silly

and it would be (if possible) even more silly to just find a kanji that sounds pretty much like daniel and use that O_o

so if you're really using kanji, not just the katakana, and you're not using those two methods.. what *are* you using?

In any case the system is not perfect.. wouldnt it be hilarious if someone used it to get a tattoo that turned out to be flawed?

[stephenmunday]

If you look around at other sites, you will see that there are some that offer to translate the meaning of your name into kanji, and others that will take the sound and put into a string of kanji with a similar meaning.

We have chosen the latter method, since people are much more aware of the sound of their name than the meaning and also because it can sound ridiculous ("Hi, i'm Judge" "Nice to meet you. I'm Crowned One" etc.).

However, we don't simply take the sound of the original name and just find matching kanji. We go through the following process:

1) Breakdown the name and find kanji (usually several in combination) that match the sound.
2) Choose kanji with a good meaning. (Which is particularly important for names like Ben!)
3) From those, try to select related kanji that are suitably masculine or feminine depending on the name.

Of course, to do this completely for every single name can be difficult, as for some names there is hardly any choice in the kanji that have a particular sound. But we have tried as far as possible to do this for each name.

For example, "Jim" comes out as two kanji "ji" "mu" that mean "rule" and "warrior" respectively. "Abby" comes out as "a" and "bi" that mean "Asian" "Beauty".

You can see some examples at our CafePress store here:

www.cafepress.com/japanese_names

It is not a perfect method, of course, but we think it is about as good as you can get. And there is a lot of demand out there from people who want kanji tattoos and other goods.

Our main site will be open from 5 Jan 2005, at which time all 2,200 names will be available for download for $5 each. Users will be able to browse thumbnail images of their names and check out both the pronunciation and the meaning of the kanji we have chosen, so they can decide for themselves whether to buy at that point.

Unfortunately, until January www.japanese-name-translation.com will only have the katakana name translator available.

Just to clarify:

The free name translator up on the site at the moment translates your name into katakana, not kanji. (We may change the design to avoid confusion about this.)

From January, users will also be able to download their name in kanji for $5 each.

[ajm]

Originally Posted by stephenmunday

I am guessing you guys are referring to the output from the name translator at www.japanese-name-translation.com, although ajm's post seems to have gotten messed up when being encoded.

The purpose of this translator is not to show you what Japanese names look like in Japanese (there will be a guide to popular Japanese surnames and first names on other pages in the site.) The idea is that you put in your name and then it will show you how it is written in katakana.

I know, I was just fooling around.

Yeah, I messed up the encoding, but there's something fishy going on with it:
the page source shows "content="text/html; charset=x-sjis"", so I first posted
in SJIS, but then looking at the thread, it was mojibaked unless I changed
my browser to view in SJIS (the forum seems to want to change it to 8859-1 even though the auto-detect is not on).

Then I edited the post and tried UTF, with similar results.
So how do you post "properly" here?

edit:

テスト
石の上にも三年。


Ooo I got it... You actually post in 8859-1. How queer!