Home › Aikido › 日本語 Japanese

Web Tools for learning Japanese & Chinese

Tue, 01/15/2008 - 00:49 — csxdb

You may be like myself, learning a bit of Japanese and/or Chinese (maybe initially at a superficial level, to take advantage of info posted on the internet in these languages). If so, you may find the following free web-resident or downloadable resources invaluable.

Web-resident tools

Google Translate will translate entire web-pages for you, to/ from a number of languages. I've used "Chinese to English" on a number of occasions as part of my TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) related browsing and have been most impressed by the legibility of the output.

I haven't tried out  the "Japanese to English" option yet, but for the sake of this article, here goes: -

I am interested in "Kashima Shinryu", so I look it up on Wikipedia. The response article mentions in passing that Kashima Shinryu is rendered as "鹿島神流" in kanji Link to Wikipedia article on kanji.

I go to Wikipedia main page, scroll to bottom and click "日本語" for Wikipedia in Japanese.  On Japanese Wikipedia I enter "鹿島神流" as search term and am dished up an article on Kashima Shinryu written in Japanese. I can't read this page - can just make out a few characters at random - however, i note that the address of the page (visible on the browser's address bar) is :

"http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%B9%BF%E5%B3%B6%E7%A5%9E%E6%B5%81"

Right, I copy this address (highlight it and press Ctrl-C on my computer), go to Google Translate and paste it (Ctrl-V on my computer), select "Japanese to English" and press the "translate" button.  What do I get back? Why, of course  the entry on Kashima Shinryu in the Japanese version of Wikipedia as translated into English by Google translate :-)

In this case, the translation is poor,  however:

  • maybe the japanese-english translate is less mature/ developed than the chinese-english one which, as I said, I find excellent
  • the terms used in KSR are pretty obscure, probably deliberately so, for secrecy purposes

Having said that the translation is not complete, I must say that I would not even be able to "go there" without the Google Translate facility, so in this sense it's invaluable. I notice immediately that there is more information here than in the corresponding english language article I started off with. Personally, I am particularly interested in the second series of entries under "swordplay" & cut and paste same. Voila:

back太刀

  1. 面太刀付（めんたちつけ）太刀with plane (with their noodles)
  2. 袈裟太刀付（けさたちつけ）袈裟with太刀(who wear this morning)
  3. 胴太刀付（どうたちつけ）太刀torso with (what they wear)
  4. 下段籠手止（げだんこてどめ） Stop the lower hand cart (DANKO look for the dead)
  5. 虚太刀籠手斬（きょたちこてぎり）斬太刀imaginary hand cart (YOTACHIKOTEGIRI more)
  6. 続飯付（そくいづけ）続飯with (SOKUI scheme)
  7. 見切剣中体（みきりけんちゅうたい） During closing sword (MIKIRI clubbing YUUTAI tendon)
  8. 直体中剣（なおりたいちゅうけん） Direct sword in the body (an all-ORITA YUUKEN)
  9. 袈裟斬袖摺（けさぎりそですり）袈裟斬sleeve lath (GIRISODESURI this morning)
  10. 燕飛剣（えんびけん） Yan Fei sword (ENBI tendon)

 I have the correct names for the 10 "back太刀" (uratachi) techniques in kanji Link to Wikipedia article on kanji and also in hiragana Link to Wikipedia article on hirigana. The hiragana tells me exactly how the terms are pronounced and I can explore the kanji further using a tool such as "RikaiChan" mentioned below. Not bad for my first attempt!

Downloadable tools

  • RikaiChan is a popup Japanese-English dictionary extension for Firefox
  • Chinesepera-kun is a popup Chinese-English dictionary extension for Firefox