Seeking someone with understanding of the Japanese language.

[Anonymous0]

First things first.. What posessed the Japanese to make a system that uses over 3300 characters for written language?!

And now that thats out of my system, I'm looking for someone who can read and translate some Japanese song lyrics. I have them in kanji, working on getting them converted to romaji as well, but the ultimate goal is to have some English translations for it.

I've scoured the interwebz for the lyrics to no avail, so its been left to my curiosity and determination to get this done..

If anyone is willing to give a hand either respond in here or send me a message (through the forums or the e-mail I have posted there works too)

[Tarryk]

That's actually the chinese alphabet, the japanese simply use it as well. See if you can find it in katakana, that's an actual alphabet that can be translated online.

[kawajiri]

sadly man im still learning to read write and speak it XD good look on that tho

[Anonymous0]

That's actually the chinese alphabet, the japanese simply use it as well.

Thanks for the clarification on that, wasn't aware.

See if you can find it in katakana

Actually, I've looked for them in absolutely any form, and the most I could get was the .jpg files that came in the album's files when I downloaded it.. So I'm sitting here staring at a character list to put it into a word document for translation XD.

[Anonymous0]

Just a quick update for anyone who cares; I've got all the kanji off the picture and into a word file. ^^
Going to try running it through a translator when I wake up to see if I can decode the moonspeak.

The song, by the way is Aki Misawa - Shinto Shrine. It's part of the Touhou project, released under the label of Alstroemeria Records.

[Jezebelle]

Uhm... have you tried any Japanese -> English translation software before? It might look less like moonspeak, but it usually ends up reading like the word salad spambots produce to counter Bayesian filtering. In other words, correctly spelled, gramatically ambiguous, absolute gibberish. It takes a human brain to consider all the subtexts and contexts and metaphors and idioms and determine what someone from a very different culture might say in a completely different language to convey the same idea.

Well, for now it does. Check back with Google in 50 or 60 years when PCs come standard with a laminated mouse brain on an expansion card for neural network pattern matching.

[Cheese]

Most of the English to Japanese translation software is terrible as the grammer gets thrown in a duffle bag and beaten against a telephone pole when you translate. Instead of sorting it out the auto translator just dumps the contents on the floor.

That being said I studied for a while and would be willing to help you out with the translatoins. I wont be super quick as I'm working in China now, but I can get it done no problem.
Post the lyrics if you can. If you have them in a word doc you can just copy and paste here. Or send me a file with them and I'll find a way to read it.

Now for the quiz show part:
The Chinese writing system or Kanji as it is known as in Japan was invented to unify the people of the different tribes of China under the new single government. Rather than use a phonetic system which would have required 70% of the system to learn to talk again they used the cuniform system to give ideas to the symbols then it could be read aloud in any of the dialects that still exist in China.

In the 1400's to 1500's those characters were used in Japan which had no domestic writing system of uniformity, only a well developed culture and language. Many writers were astounded at how the Japanese had reached such a height in scociety and culture with no common writing system.
Hence they quickly assylimated Kanji as their official writing system. This had inherent problems as they used a completely and todally different form of grammar in their language.
Over time grammar and domestic words adopted the phonetic system (hiragana and katakana) based on some of the simple Kanji and their sound.

The transitions continued over the years ending up with a unique system. Although the symbols are common, how they are paired and the meaning of the compounds can be different between China Korea and Japan.

An, interesting example 女湯 (woman + hot water) would mean "woman's bath" in Japanese, but to a Chinese tourist it means "woman soup"
Going the oppsite way if you wrote 手紙 (hand + paper) you get toilet paper in Chinese, which means letter to a Japanese person.
As you can imagine there are many fun little confusions to the system.
But it explains why the Chinese fear Japanese bath houses and dont read their letters to explain whats going on.

Thus cuniform writing ended up with 3 systems. Chinese where you use a simplified set of Kanji characters only, Japanese where you use 1650 (2100 ish after college) with phonetic alphabets to suppliment it, and Korean which has abandoned the Kanji (Hanja domestically) for its publishing purposes and uses their phonetic Hangul (한글).

Now if thats not too much informatin I dont know waht is.
Plus I'm really bored without any factory work to do today.