Nick's Guide to Japanese for JAV

[Nick_Wells]

Part 1: Teach a man to fish...
There's a lot of questions that pop-up on the forum (as well as around the 'net) posted by novice JAV fans who seem to be overwhelmed by the English/Japanese 日本語 (nihongo) language barrier. When we can, those of us who happen to have answers to specific questions do our best to help out.

That being said, I like to also share some tips or tricks, if possible, when answering a question. That's because I tend to subscribe to the philosophy behind the saying, “Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime”.

I figure that a person won't necessarily have the opportunity to post every single time he has question. So I try to do what I can to empower people to find their own answers. In my experience, this can often lead to a person discovering something new that the rest of us were previously unaware of.

And ultimately, I think that's kind of the point of a forum. It's not just a place to find answers but also to understand the subject at hand. Because of that, the members of a forum can often come up with answers to questions that haven't been asked yet.

Of course, some people really do just want to ask a question, get an answer and move on. Great! That's fine, too. Not everyone has the same goals; however, I get the impression that most fans of JAV, especially those who've gone to the effort to be a part of this forum, have a deeper interest than just the superficial.

So that's really why I'm doing this project. Now, I certainly wouldn't call myself a JAV expert and I don't really speak much Japanese. In fact, I speak more German (nicht viel) than Japanese. But in my experience, you don't really have to speak/understand a lot. I've had a decent amount of success at navigating much of the Japanese only parts of the internet in the quest for all (OK, most) things JAV, regardless.

And that's what I want to share with people. Maybe what I've learned, both from others (here and other resources) as well as just charging blindly into (literally) foreign territory, will help others get up to speed quicker. Perhaps they'll be able to find something they're looking for quicker or even just discover that they have a deeper appreciation for JAV because they understand it better.

Whatever the motivations people have, I hope they get something out of it and if not, well... nobody's forcing you to keep reading. Anyway, I'll be posting several subtopics here that I hope will eventually all fit together logically and make sense to everyone.

And, as always, feedback is encouraged – so let me know what you think!

-Nick

 

[masterzek]

Amazing idea.Thanks a lot.

In a JAV, japanese words are very limited.So i think your course will very useful for us.

PS: Sorry for my english.

 

[Nick_Wells]

Amazing idea.Thanks a lot.

In a JAV, japanese words are very limited.So i think your course will very useful for us.

PS: Sorry for my english.

Well, I hope that it will help you in your exploration of JAV.

Also, don't worry about your English skills. Just keep it up. The more you practice (post), the better it will get.

-Nick

 

[Nick_Wells]

Part 2: The Basics
Being able to comprehend some Japanese, whether on your own or with the aid of software, can be a tremendous asset to anyone interested in JAV. And believe me when I say it doesn't take much. There are also several tools in the internet age that will make your life much easier in this task.

But before we get to that, you should at least be familiar with some basics concepts of written Japanese. The first thing to wrap your head around is the three “alphabets”: hiragana, katakana and kanji.

Hiragana and katakana are somewhat similar to alphabets in western languages. Like the Latin alphabet (used in the Germanic, Romance, and even some Slavic languages like Polish & Czech), Greek alphabet & Cyrillic alphabet (used in most Slavic languages such as Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, etc.), kana are symbols that represent specific sounds (more specifically syllables) that are combined to make up words.

For example: the Japanese word for scary, kowai, is written as こわい in hiragana, where こ=”ko” わ=”wa” and い=”i”. Similarly, the word for titty-fucking is paizuri. It is written in katakana as パイズリ where パ=”pa”, イ=”i”, ズ=”zu” and リ=”ri”. In case you're wondering, kowai is pronounced roughly like “koh-why” and paizuri is close to “pie-zoo-ree”.

And then finally you have kanji, which is not really an alphabet at all but logographic characters. That sounds complicated but all it means is that each symbol represents a whole word or syllable. Most words written in kanji have one to three symbols. Kanji originally come from Chinese and many of the characters mean the same thing in both languages (even if they are pronounced differently).

An example of kanji would be Wakana Kinoshita's name, 木下若菜, where 木=“ki(no)”, 下=”shita”, 若="waka" and 菜=”na”. I'll go over names in a little more detail later. The important thing to see here is that the kanji 木, 下, and 若 all represent multiple syllables unlike hiragana or katakana.

Incidentally, most native Japanese speakers would pronounce her name as "kee-noh-shda" "wah-kah-nah". I point this out because it doesn't necessarily look like that to most English speakers. In Part 4, I'll go over the reason why it would commonly be said that way.

So why three separate “alphabets” (or more accurately writing systems)? Well, 'why' is complicated - beyond the scope of this project. It's only important to get an idea of when each is used. While there are few absolute rules, kanji is the primary form of writing of native Japanese words.

Hiragana is often mixed in for smaller, common words (like desu です, the word for “to be”) or grammatic participles. Katakana is used primarily for foreign words (like fera フェラ, “fe-ra”, which is actually short for fellatio), sound effects (like pako-pako パコパコ, the sound of bodies slapping together during sex) or to draw attention to a word or phrase.

The other topic I want to cover in this part is names. Japanese names tend to be different from western names in that the order is reversed. The family name is given first, then the personal name. For example, when written in Japanese, Hitomi Kitagawa's name is written 北川瞳, or Kitagawa Hitomi. In this case, 北=”kita”, 川=”gawa” and 瞳=”hitomi”. And, yes, the pronunciation is fairly obvious - though all the "i"s are pronounced "ee" (true of all Japanese words).

Generally, names are written in kanji. The problem is that when it comes to names, specifically, kanji are not very consistent. The same kanji could be pronounced several different ways or the same name could be written with different kanji (more common with personal names).

For example, Anri Okita 沖田杏梨 and Anri Suma 須真杏里 both share the same personal name, Anri. But one uses the kanji 杏梨 while the other uses 杏里. For this reason, any official document (as well as the DMM website, which I'll discuss later) will have a place where the name is spelled out phonetically. Using the above example, Anri would be written あんり in hiragana, or “a-n-ri”, in both cases.

Of course, names aren't always written in kanji. When it comes to JAV girls, it's not uncommon to write one (or both) of their names in hiragana or katakana or even in rōmaji (Japanese written with the Latin alphabet – i.e. English).

Typically, if a name is written in katakana, it is supposed be a foreign name (like Sophia Kurasano 暮野ソフィア, where ソフィアis “so-fi-a” or Sophia) but sometimes this doesn't work out the way it was intended.

Kurea Muto 武藤クレア is a prime example of this. She probably meant for her personal name (クレア, ku-re-a) to be Clare, but problems with transliterating "R" and "L", as well as words ending in consonant sounds, led to the version that is most commonly out there on the net.

Sometimes, a Japanese name is written in katakana just to be cool or different. This is usually the case when someone only goes by one name – the J-equivalent of Cher or Madonna. This is more common with mainstream personalities (like baseball player Ichiro イチロー) than JAV girls, who instead tend to use rōmaji in that context: AIKA, JULIA, KAORI, RUMIKA, etc.

OK, I know that seems like a lot. But don't let it overwhelm you; if you re-read it, it's really just a few basic concepts with some examples and exceptions. It's not necessary to master any of these things (I certainly haven't), but it's helpful to be familiar with them. That way when you encounter them, they don't seem so well, um... foreign.

Anyway, the next part will focus more on hiragana and katakana and why it's helpful to pick-up a little proficiency with them. And as always, feedback is encouraged. Feel free to ask questions – even DM me if you'd prefer – and I'll do my best to clarify.

-Nick

 

[Nick_Wells]

Part 3: Kana
So if I wasn't clear in Part 2, Kana 仮名 refers specifically to hiragana and katakana, as opposed to kanji. In fact, these two sets of characters both represent the same groups of sounds (for the most part) but use slightly different, but related, symbols. If that seems complicated, don't worry, it won't after you've seen the tables.

OK, you may now be thinking to yourself, “If kanji is the way most Japanese is written, why do I need to worry about kana?” Or even, “Why do I care about this at all?”

The answer to the first question is that, unfortunately, learning kanji is a HUGE deal. There are literally 2000+ kanji in common usage. Luckily, thanks to the modern miracle of the internet, in most cases, you can use kana (usually hiragana) to find the kanji for a specific word or name.

I'll get into more detail later, but the basic concept is that you sound the word out, type the hiragana and then enter it into Google. Now, if there are one or more standard kanji for the word you entered, it will usually return those results. Also, this doesn't rely on any special software or add-ons/extensions so any browser, even in its most basic form, will allow you to do this.

As far as the second question, well, I think the first answer gives you an idea of the value of learning kana. If you're bothering to read this, then you're probably more than a casual JAV fan and realize that there are some “secrets” that are hidden away from those that can't access them via the Japanese language.

In later parts, I'll go into detail about how to extract some of this hidden information from fairly common sites like DMM and Wikipedia Japan; but you'll need to be familiar with this stuff before you can get the most out of that.

Now before I give you some kana “charts”, I should go over a few concepts that help clarify the distinctions between Japanese and most western languages. The first thing to understand is that, with one minor yet consistent exception, Japanese doesn't use consonant sounds by themselves.

As I alluded to in Part 2, the individual characters in kana represent actual syllables and always end in a vowel sound – except for ん or ン which is equivalent to “n”. Of course there are occasional exceptions to this rule; but in comparison to English, these are extremely rare and usually won't be an issue in the context of exploring JAV.

Also, unlike western alphabets such as Latin, Greek and Cyrillic, which are written in a linear fashion (A-Z, Α-Ω, and А-Я respectively) kana are normally written in a table, using an ordering called gojūon 五十音 (don't worry, you don't really need to remember that term).

The most common layout (as you'll see below) is that you have the vowel sounds (a, i, u, e, o) across the x-axis with the consonant sounds (K-,S-,T-,N-,H-,M-,Y-,R-,W-) they combine with down the y-axis. “N” by itself is at the end and then there are some kana which have symbols (called dakuten 濁点) added to them that create some additional sounds (like G-, Z-, D-, B-, P-).

Also, there are some characters that can be combined with others that additionally modify or create variations of the above sounds. These are called yōon 拗音 and often depicted in “satellite” charts or tables.

Again, it sounds way more complicated than it actually is. And like everything else here, the important part is to just make sure you understand the concept at work - not necessarily the details.

And one last thing before the tables – if you're wondering about the way I'm spelling Japanese words in rōmaji, I'm using the Hepburn system which I'll touch on a bit later. Don't let it distract you; just know that it's written that way for a reason.

So, without further ado, here's the tables. These are .jpg's I made; just click on the thumbnail and it will take you to larger images (1000x700) at ImageVenue.

Unfortunately, since formatting in these posts is problematic, I wasn't able to include actual text here. That would have been my preferred method (and just linking to the .jpg's); then you would be able to copy/paste the characters as needed.

If anyone knows how to get strict columns with standard text in a post, let me know and I'll update this entry. You can also use Google to find other versions of these tables, if you prefer.






There's just a few more things to address now that you've had a chance to see the tables. First, you probably noticed that the progressions of certain letters aren't entirely consistent (from a western language standpoint). If you didn't, “Shi” in the “S-” progression, “Chi” and “Tsu” in the “T-” and “Fu” in the “H-” all initially seem to be out of place.

Again, don't worry about why; just be aware that it's considered normal and there's not really exact equivalents to “Si”, “Ti”, “Tu” and “Hu” in the Japanese language. I'll clarify a little bit more in Part 4, but it's not something to lose any sleep over.

Also, the tables appear to have gaps in them where “Yi”, “Ye”, “Wi”, “Wu” and “We” should be. This is the same idea as the omitted sounds above.

“Di” and “Du” (actually “Ji” and “Zu”) also appear to be missing. But in this case, I left them out because they are more or less duplicates of other sounds and are used infrequently. Explaining their usage would probably just cause unnecessary confusion at this point.

OK, I know that's a lot of info to digest. But remember, you don't need to memorize any of it. In fact, you'll probably find that now that it's been spelled out for you, you're probably familiar with lots of it already. Also, the more you see it, the more you'll start to recognize it from memory.

So, now that you have the basics down, Parts 4 & 5 will focus on pronunciation and transliteration (not as technical as it sounds). Then in Part 6, I'll tie it together with some tools & techniques for “creating” Japanese on your own computer.

As always, feedback is encouraged. If something is unclear, please, speak up! I'm wasting everyone's time if I'm just confusing people.

-Nick

 

[Nick_Wells]

Part 4: Pronunciation
So, the obvious question here is, “If this is supposed to be a guide to 'written' Japanese [which it is], then what difference does pronunciation make?”

Well, since Japanese is such a fairly standardized language (especially in pronunciation) when compared to most western languages – especially English – knowing how a word is pronounced can help you figure out how it should probably be written. Part 6 will illustrate how that's useful in exploring JAV on the internet.

The first thing to remember about the Japanese-language is that it is almost entirely phonetic. What does that mean? It means that, for the most part, if it's written it's pronounced. There aren't really 'silent' letters the way there are in several western languages (notably French and English).

Now before I get blasted by a nihongo expert, yes, there are certain characters that are not pronounced exactly as they are written; but they tend to be consistent and used very specifically. Also, since it is a 'living' form of human communication, Japanese is subject to things like slang, dialects, etc. just as any other language might be.

Then again we won't necessarily be worrying about those things unless they pertain to JAV. And just as there is Queen's English, there is a general standard for Japanese. Of course, the world of pornography isn't exactly known for it's adherence to academic standards.

But this isn't an in-depth language course; so if the basics we learn are the 'official' form, then we don't have to worry if we learned something 'wrong' - we just have to learn the relevant exceptions.

Anyway, back to topic at hand: pronunciation. The vowels in Japanese are generally accepted to be nearly identical in pronunciation to Spanish. For those unfamiliar, I'll give examples from an English speaking perspective: a=”ah” i=”ee” u=”oo” e=”eh” o=”oh”.

There are also long vowels but the term is literal (unlike in English). A long vowel is just held longer – almost like an accented syllable. Since Japanese words, contrary to typical western pronunciations of them, do NOT normally have accented syllables, this way of pronouncing long vowels will usually increase accuracy.

When these long vowels are written in hiragana, it's typically just a doubling of the letter. For example, Saki Ōtsuka 大塚咲 would be written as おおつか さき (o-o-tsu-ka sa-ki).

Sometimes, this is transliterated as Ootsuka; but this is confusing since the sound at the beginning is not an English “oo” sound but rather a long “o” or “oh”. This is why it is written Ōtsuka when using the Hepburn system (more on this in Part 5).

By the way, even though it's not technically 'proper', “u” and “i” sounds in the middle of words are typically 'swallowed' by most native speakers. In the above example, the common pronunciation of Saki's 'family' name would be close to “OAT-ska” (with an emphasis on the “oat”).

This also demonstrates the 'flat' pronunciation concept. Most western speakers would probably (incorrectly) pronounce the name aht-SOO-ka, with an accent on the “su”. Of course the “su” really goes with the “t” because the kana is つ (tsu). Swallowing the “u” gets rid of the 'false' syllable accent and emphasizes the おお or long “o”.

A “u” at the end of a word is usually swallowed as well. In fact, one of the most common words in Japanese, desu です (“to be”), is really pronounced “des”.

With these concepts in mind, when someone says what sounds like "skee des kah" they are actually saying Suki desu ka? (すき です か ?) – which translates to “Do you like/love it?”

In katakana, a long-vowel is denoted with the vowel followed by ー, or chōonpu (pronounced “CHOH-own-poo”). For instance, 'stewardess' would be written スチュワーデス or su-chu-WA-de-su. While the kana breakdown looks almost unrelated to the original word, it would be pronounced closer to "s-choo-WAH-des" or stewardess with a Japanese accent... go figure.

Technically, Japanese does not have diphthongs – when two vowels are combined to make one sound. But to the western ear, it kind of does. There will be exceptions where this 'shortcut' will be inaccurate, but the intricacies of it are well beyond the scope of this project.

Suffice it to say, when you see the following combinations, using these pronunciation will give you a reasonably close result: a-i=”eye”; a-o=”ow”; e-i=A, pronounced like the letter; o-i=”oy"; u-e=”way”.

Again, nihongo purists may cringe (or worse) when seeing this, but we're just trying to get close. It's often said that Japanese is an easy language to pick up the basics but VERY difficult to master – something I've found to be absolutely true.

An example of where this shortcut might make a little since is the name Aoi Miyama 宮間葵 (みやま あおい mi-ya-ma a-o-i). Her personal name is pronounced almost like the childish slang term, “owie”. No, it's not 100% accurate, but it's close. If you are familiar with French, ah oui, is even closer.

Two things to keep in mind with these 'lazy' diphthongs are that first, when starting with rōmaji, you should always try to break a word down into it's individual kana. Using a previous example, paizuri, remember that it is pa-i-zu-ri.

And second, the rōmaji still transliterates back to the individual kana (we'll see why that's in important in Part 5). For example, “ai” in this case is still a-i not just the letter 'I' (like the sound it makes from an English perspective) .

The consonant sounds in Japanese are regular and generally similar to their English equivalents. The one notable exception is “R”. There isn't exactly an “R” or “L” sound in Japanese, but one sound that is 'in-between'. The standard, however, is to transcribe it as “R” - ra, ri, ru, re and ro from the kana table (gojūon) in Part 3.

When words are written in kanji or hiragana it can be assumed that “R” is accurate. Since words written in katakana are often foreign, ラ リ ル レ or ロ could potentially be intended to have an "L" sound instead. If it isn't obvious, assuming "R" is a reasonable bet.

For example, Alice Ozawa is written 小沢アリス, where アリス is a-ri-su or Alice. However, Risa Tsukino is written 月野りさ where りさ is ri-sa, still pronounced Risa (a relatively common Japanese name) NOT Lisa.

Also, note that “CH” is always pronounced as it is in the word “cherry”, never as in French (which is similar to “SH”) or German/Scottish (where it is almost a cross between “H” and “K”). "S" is always pronounced as "S" and never as "Z". “Z” is pronounced as in “zebra" and “J” as in “jail”.

In actuality, the exact pronunciations of "Z" and "J" in Japanese are slightly different but these examples are closer approximations than the soft versions of these letters sometimes used in English.

A kana that can indirectly affect pronunciation is っ, the sokuon or 'little' つ. This character isn't actually voiced. It typically denotes a double consonant sound. For example the word for “more”, motto, is written もっと - not to be misinterpreted as mo-tsu-to.

More specifically, the sukuon makes it so the following consonant sound is pronounced in a more staccato manner. Using the above example, motto is pronounced more like “moht-toh” than “moh-toh”.

There are a few other circumstances where っ is used, but they will rarely, if ever, apply to what we're doing here.

Congratulations! You've made it through the longest part of the 'academic' stuff. It will be worth it though, because understanding how these concepts work is one of the keys to everything else that will follow.

Part 5, Transliteration, will build on what we've just learned and then we'll start to put it into practice in Part 6.

And if all this info seems overwhelming, remember what I've been saying all along (I know it's starting to sound like a mantra)... you don't need to memorize all the details, you only really need to understand the concepts.

Remember, feedback is encouraged! Feel free to ask questions!

-Nick

 

[Nick_Wells]

Part 5: Transliteration
Now that we've got a handle on pronunciation, I want to cover transliteration. Simply put, transliteration is just taking words (or sounds) written with one alphabet (or writing system) and writing them with another.

With that in mind, you can now see that's exactly what rōmaji is – a form of transliteration. And the Hepburn romanization method is just a specific form of rōmaji.

Without going into a long history, Hepburn is designed to write Japanese words in a way that is specifically familiar to English speakers (as much as possible). And since it was originally conceived by an American, it has a bit of bias toward that as well.

Since it's the most common version of rōmaji in standard usage and I also live in the US, it's naturally the method I use. Regardless, it's still the most logical method for anyone familiar with English, in my opinion.

Anyway, the reason I bring it up is that sometimes, when people write Japanese words in rōmaji (whether they realize it or not), they don't necessarily transliterate correctly. I don't say that to be snarky or condescending but rather to point out that if you're attempting to find the kanji for a word, the rōmaji/hiragana might not be accurate due to a faulty source.

OK, that may have seemed a bit convoluted, but let me explain. In common usage, Yoko is a typical western spelling of a very common Japanese name. But if you were to transliterate back into hiragana as よこ (yo-ko), it would be inaccurate.

Huh? Well, that's because when Yoko is broken down phonetically (regardless of which kanji are used – there could be several), it is ようこ or yo-u-ko. A proper transliteration would be Youko or Yōko (using Hepburn). However, it's pronounced “YOH-koh” not “yoh-oo-koh”. The vowel sounds in the kana よう (yo-u) actually just make a long “o”.

So that means that o-o and o-u are (normally) BOTH considered long “o” and best written as “ō”. It's potentially confusing, I know. But just remember that now that you've seen it, you won't be surprised when it comes up.

So, when writing long-vowels with Hepburn, a-a is written “ā”, i-i is stays “ii”, u-u becomes “ū”, e-e becomes “ē” and o-o and o-u are BOTH written as "ō".

There may also be occurrences of compound-words doubling up vowels which are not intended to be a long vowel. In these situations, the vowels are intended to be pronounced individually.

An example would be koodori 小躍り (to dance) which is a compound of 小 (こ ko) and 躍り (おどり o-do-ri). In this case, the o-o combination is NOT a long vowel, so it would be pronounced “koh-oh-doh-ree”.

Again, it's pretty rare. So rare, in fact, that when I tried to find an example that would be relevant specifically to JAV, I couldn't find anything... and that's an hour of my life I'll never get back - LOL. Anyway, be aware that the exception exists but don't worry about it coming up all the time.

The last sound to worry about in Hepburn is “N” (ん and ン). Due to natural tendencies in pronunciation, it is written as an "M" when it is before "B" or "P".

Try saying the following words both ways (using "N" or "M") and you'll see why it makes sense: shimbun しんぶん (shi-n-bu-n), the word for newspaper and kampai 乾杯 (かんぱい ka-n-pa-i) which means Cheers! (as in a toast).

It's also important to remember that "N" is distinct from na, ni, nu, ne, and no. This won't matter in most situations, but if the “N” is followed by a syllable that starts with a vowel or “Y”, then an apostrophe is added.

To show why it matters, look at the name Jun'ichi 純一. The proper hiragana is じゅんいち (ju-n-i-chi) NOT じゅにち (ju-ni-chi). You might think of it like a homophone in English – “witch” and “which”, for instance.

And while it may seem like a subtle difference, using the wrong one could make it nearly impossible to find the right kanji (using the method I'll detail in Part 6).

So there you go! The next Part will focus specifically on how you can start using this knowledge. And remember the mantra, “You don't need to memorize all the details, you only really need to understand the concepts.”

Again, feedback is encouraged! Feel free to ask questions!

-Nick

 

[Nick_Wells]

Part 6: Text manipulation
OK, are you ready for the internet “secret” that will allow you to potentially type ANY Japanese character? It's simple – copy and paste. No, seriously. It might seem obvious, but thanks to Unicode (specifically UTF-8), if a web-page is coded even remotely properly, all the kanji, hiragana and katakana will display beautifully and you can access them via your mouse (or touchpad, trackball, etc.)

Alright, I know that might be a “duh!” moment but it's important to keep in mind. As long as it's not part of a graphic, you can select ANY text on ANY web-page and copy it to your clipboard to use as you like.

Now, to illustrate why understanding pronunciation and transliteration might be useful, I'll use one of my favorite Japanese words: nakadashi 中出し, which means creampie (internal ejaculation). Say you wanted to find JAV videos with that keyword – perhaps on a Japanese-language only website.

Occasionally, you can type the word in using rōmaji; but most likely, only keywords in kana or kanji will get you anywhere. In this case, I've included the kanji for it, 中出し, so you could simply copy & paste.

But what if I hadn't and you didn't know what the kanji was? Fortunately, the spelling of most Japanese words is very phonetic (as discussed in Part 4). So, assuming the rōmaji spelling you have is accurate (not always the case – see Part 5) or at least close, you can cross reference your kana tables and figure out what the hiragana would be.

Our intro to pronunciation showed us that you would likely break this example down as na-ka-da-shi, which in hiragana would be なかだし. Now, you can do one of two things. First you could try inputing the hiragana directly into the search field. The problem with this is that hiragana alone won't always work any better than rōmaji.

The second (and better) option would be to put the hiragana into Google. When you do that, it will show you several results where なかだし is highlighted. But as you look through the results, you'll see others where 中出し is emphasized instead. As an added bonus it will direct you to even more sites related to your search. Nice!

Now you can also see why it's helpful to be familiar with what the different types of writing look like. It won't be long before the difference between hiragana, katakana and kanji is immediately obvious to you (if it isn't already).

And since you now have the kanji for nakadashi, you can put that into the search field for your Japanese website. This is the process that I alluded to in the beginning of Part 3.

Note that sometimes Google will even ask if you meant “*” instead, where “*” is the kanji for whatever hiragana you just entered. And if you happen to be using Chrome, you can use the Google Translate extension.

The translations aren't always 100% accurate, but they tend to be a very helpful starting point. And it will usually help you get an idea of what your search results are more specifically.

So this is great and all, but I'm sure you're thinking this is a bit tedious – especially if you have to always do it this way. Of course, that's potentially true. Keep in mind, however, you won't have to do it every single time.

For instance, you can create a list in a word processor, spreadsheet or even a basic text editor (if it supports Unicode – most do). Then, whenever you find a new kanji, you can add it to your list, to be copied & pasted as necessary.

I plan on posting a list of common Japanese words that are JAV-related before too long, so you can use that to get started. I'll be taking requests, so start thinking about all those fun words you'd like to see and get 'em my way.

Speaking of word processors and spreadsheets, most have a function (usually under an Insert menu) for adding special characters. If you have any Japanese fonts installed, it's relatively easy to generate your kana this way.

Be aware that while any font with Unicode support will display Japanese characters, accessing them isn't always so easy. For this reason I recommend installing a true Japanese Unicode font.

The ones here http://cooltext.com/Fonts-Unicode-Japanese all fit the bill; but personally, I tend to use the standard Microsoft J-fonts, if for no other reason than they're, well, standard.

See? We've now gotten some practical applications that are possible due to the culmination of all the previous stuff we've covered. In Part 7, I'll finally(!) get into deciphering some specific websites (starting with DMM, in several parts).

Also, remember the mantra, “You don't need to memorize all the details, you only really need to understand the concepts”. And, as always, feedback is encouraged! Feel free to ask questions!

-Nick

 

[Nick_Wells]

Part 7: DMM, 1-Introduction
OK, now it's ON! We've finally gotten to what many JAV fans consider the Holy Grail of internet resources: DMM.co.jp/top. For those who are unaware, it is the most comprehensive retailer of pornographic material in Japan.

However, the retail function is not the primary reason so many JAV fans outside of Japan are interested in it. Unfortunately, due to the nature of shipping/customs, decency laws, cultural idiosyncrasies, etc., DMM does NOT ship physical product outside of the country. To make matters worse, they block access to a portion of their website to foreign IP addresses.

The good news is that they DO allow access (at least to IP addresses in the US) to their download side. This means two things: first, if you are so inclined, you can pay to download videos (with DRM) from the single largest catalog of JAV on the internet; but second, and possibly more universally useful, you can use it as an information resource.

Now to clarify the whole IP-blocking issue, yes, it is possible to access pretty much any portion of their website from pretty much anywhere in the world... if you know what you're doing. But it generally requires pretty savvy computer skills and/or software that may or may not be something you want on your computer (not to mention content restrictions from your country of origin).

Anyway, if that still interests you, there's a whole thread on this very topic HERE. Keep in mind, however, that simply accessing the 'restricted' parts of their site will still NOT allow you to receive 'physical product' from them.

The 'word' is that there's a much larger catalog of titles on that side but I can't personally verify it because I've never tried to get past the restriction. For me, I've been able to find pretty much every title I've ever looked for either through the download side of DMM or through a manufacturer's website directly – YRMV.

That said, we're just going to focus on the download side here – deciphering the layout, finding titles & performers, interpreting results, etc. But the first thing I want to show you are your options for translating it.

So, let's actually go to the site and take a look. Clicking on THIS LINK will take you there. Initially, you may get a page that's verifying that you are at least 18 years old.

If so, the options in the middle of the screen are はい(アダルトへ) and いいえ(DMM.comへ). These are (not surprisingly) hai (yes) and iie (no). So, assuming you are of legal age, click on the one on the left (はい).

Now we can see what it looks like in its normal, unadulterated format:

You should be aware that this screen-shot shows the site using Chrome, at a resolution of 1024x768. The reason I point this out is that first, if you are using a different browser it will be displayed slightly differently and second, if you are using a higher screen resolution, there will be more content on your screen.

Before we get into the actual content of the site, I want to draw your attention to the “pop-up” just below the address bar. This is the Google Translate extension I've been referring to. It pops up whenever it detects a foreign language in the text of a web-page.

We'll be using it here in a just a minute but I want you to just look over the layout for a second. Notice that there's a little bit of rōmaji, which is nice; but what might get your attention even more is right at the top-center of the site just below [Translate] on the pop-up bar. DMM actually has an English(!) version.

Before you get your hopes up, I'm going to show you screen-caps for both their English version and Google's translated version. I'll then compare/contrast some specific things and explain why I don't use DMM's 'native' English version.

Here's DMM's English version:

The first thing you'll probably notice is that you search bar is now gone! This is consistent throughout the English version of their site. You can click on all sorts of links, but there's no 'search' function.

For this reason alone, their English version is all but useless in most situations. Now let's take a look at Google's translated version of the same page (from the original Japanese source):

Hey, look at that! It looks pretty much the same as the Japanese version except... it's in English! Now, when we get into some later pages, you'll see that Google's translate function will alter the layout a bit; but for the most part, the only difference is that any (true) text will be changed to English.

To clarify when I say 'true' text, I mean non-graphics. Notice that the text on the buttons didn't change – that's because they're not text at all but graphic elements (just pixels).

Anyway, that gives you an idea of what the DMM site is, why you might want to use it and some basics on how you can decipher it.

In Part 8, we'll break it down even more. I'll show you how to actually search for specific videos, performers and keywords.

And, as always, remember the mantra, “You don't need to memorize all the details, you only really need to understand the concepts”. Also, feedback is encouraged! Feel free to ask questions!

-Nick

 

[Nick_Wells]

Just a quick note to let you guys know that I had to temporarily delete the post for Part 8. I realized there were some privacy issues that I needed to fix.

That said, I will re-post it shortly. Sorry for any confusion it may have caused.

-Nick

 

[Nick_Wells]

Part 8: DMM, 2-Searching
So, now that we have a feel for what the DMM site is and how to actually read it, let's get more specific. We're going to get into how to actually find things.

For the sake of argument, we'll start with performers, so let's use Hibiki Ōstuki. OK, I purposely didn't include the conventional 'spelling' in Japanese because we're also going to review (and expand on) how we can find that. Remember, at this point we don't know if her name is normally written in kanji, kana or rōmaji – or even some combination of all of the above!

First, we know that Japanese names are 'reversed' from western names, so we're going to be looking for Ōtsuki Hibiki. Also, when written in kana/kanji both names are typically combined. So, taking all of this into account and remembering our guidelines for transliterating, we'll go with o-o-tsu-ki-hi-bi-ki or おおつきひびき.

But what if you thought her name was just Otsuki not Ōtsuki (or Ootsuki)? Well, that might not be a huge problem but there are some 'spelling' tendencies that can be helpful. In this case, it's nice to know that when names start with “o”, it's usually a long “o” or for our purposes here, “o-o”.

Let's go ahead and put our hiragana into Google and see what we come up with:

Here you can see what I was alluding to in Part 6. Google is basically telling us that the way おおつきひびき is normally written is 大槻ひびき. In case you had any doubts, the first result is from Wikipedia (Japan) which, believe it or not, is a fairly comprehensive source of info on JAV performers.

Also note that just below ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/大槻ひびき in green, is 大槻 ひびき（おおつき ひびき、1988年2月21日 - ). This demonstrates how the different 'readings' of kanji are clarified when it comes to names (as we touched on way back in Part 2).

OK, now that we have the correct Japanese text, we're just about ready to search. Before we do, I want to show you what the different options are next to the search bar on DMM's homepage.

In nearly all situations, the default option, "All Products", will work just fine. However, if you do want to get more specific, you now know what your options are.

Now, let's go ahead and put 大槻ひびき into the search bar and see what comes up.

You'll notice that the layout on this page is slightly different than the homepage but not enough to really be confusing. The main new feature that's useful here is the new drop-down menu just above the video covers. If we translate the page and take a look, we can see what our new options are.

Personally, I sort the results by 'Newest' most of the time (I'll explain why in a minute) but again, you have options. Also, if you look to the right of the drop down, you'll see various other options for displaying the results.

I tend to leave them on the default but you should go with whatever works for you; they are pretty much web standard (irrespective of language).

Now, the reason I tend to sort by 'Newest' is that, as you can see, there can be A LOT of videos that come up. And two other issues that complicate the matter are false results and compilations.

Not surprisingly, search results are not 100% accurate. In other words, not every single one of the 809 titles here contains Hibiki Ōtsuki. Some might just contain a Hibiki or an Ōtsuki or even some name (or keyword or title) that's just close.

Also, I rarely have any interest in compilations in the first place and they tend to be difficult to extract info from in any circumstance. So I take a few extra steps to make sure I'm dealing with accurate results.

By sorting by 'Newest', I can click on the [To last] or [最後へ] option at the end and it will take me to her older videos. Let's look at our current search and see why that might be helpful:

These should be Hibiki's earliest videos. The advantage of looking at the older stuff is that a performer rarely, if ever, has compilation releases early in her career. Without those cluttering the results, we can look for a video that just focuses on the performer at hand.

Unfortunately, this next step is not an exact science, but if you know what the girl you're searching looks like, it shouldn't be too difficult. You can click on any cover, really; we're just trying to find a video where 大槻ひびき (Hibiki Ōtsuki) is listed as a performer.

In this case, I chose the one in the second column from the left on the second row from the bottom – because it appeared to be her by herself. This is the video that came up:

Sure enough, there's only one performer and it's her. I'll get into breaking down all the info on a video page in Part 9, but for now, know that 出演者：大槻ひびき means “Performer: Hibiki Ōtsuki” (running a translation will confirm it).

Now, if I click on her name, ALL of the results that come up with definitely have her as a performer. And now there are only 388 titles which tells us that OVER HALF of our original results were not what we were looking for. At this point, you can peruse these titles to your heart's content, sorting as you prefer.

OK, say that instead of a specific performer, you wanted to look up a specific video. Well, if you're not already familiar with typical JAV codes there are a few things to bare in mind.

In most cases, you'll have a code or SKU that consists of a few letters (usually 2-4) followed by, typically, a three digit number. Sometimes there are more or less numbers; but for the most part, the majority of studios conform to this standard.

We're going to stick with Hibiki for our next example and go with her latest release from kira☆kira: BLK-088. Now, logically, you might think that you can just put BLK-088 in the search bar and it would come up.

Oh, no – that would be WAY too obvious. Let's take a look at what happens when you do that:

"BLK-088"に一致する商品は見つかりませんでした。検索のヒント translates to “Match any products in "BLK-088" was not found. Search Tips”. But I'm guessing you could figure that out right away. Even if you take the hyphen out and search with BLK088, you'll get the same result... nothing.

However, if you put in BLK 088, it WILL come up. Unfortunately, just separating the letters and numbers won't work 100% of the time (for reasons we'll go over in Part 9).

So I advise this: try it XXX ### first; but if it doesn't come up, try putting your letters in followed by two zeroes (with no space) then your numbers. Using our current example, it would be blk00088. I've found this to work fairly consistently.

You may, however, have to adjust the number of zeroes depending on how many numbers (and occasionally letters) are in the original SKU. For instance, XV-1099 would be xv01099 because (I assume) it has four digits (instead of three) in the number portion of the code.

Now that we've covered how to search for Performers and Videos, you've got a pretty good idea of how to search for keywords. Using the example from earlier, ONEM-021, we can take a look at what some of DMM's 'standard' keywords are:

The line ジャンル：騎乗位 ランジェリー 中出し is what we're looking for. Using Google translate we come up with 'Genre: Cowgirl lingerie creampie'. 騎乗位 (きじょうい or kijōi) actually translates to 'sexual position with woman on top'.

As opposed to western porn, where there is a distinction between cowgirl and reverse-cowgirl, kijōi would cover both positions as well as other variations.

It's also odd that they specify this as a keyword, as the vast majority of male-female scenes with actual intercourse include this ubiquitous position. Even more unusual is that sometimes it's not even included as a keyword when every fuck scene in the video contains 'women on top' sex.

Again, I'll be posting a list of keywords later (focusing on DMM's standard options). But for now, know that you can try typing any Japanese keywords into the search bar to see what - 'ahem' - pops up.

At this point, you should have a handle on the basics of how to find things on DMM's site. Of course, the more you do it, the more it will start to make sense. In Part 9, we'll take a look at the page for BLK-088 and break it down so that (at least most of) it makes sense.

And, as always, remember the mantra, “You don't need to memorize all the details, you only really need to understand the concepts”. Also, feedback is encouraged! Feel free to ask questions!

-Nick

PS Don't forget to send me any keywords you'd like to see on the list! You can even send me the English version and I'll do my best to translate it!

 

[Nick_Wells]

Part 9: DMM, 3-Breaking it down
OK, now we're going to go through a specific page on the DMM site and get a good look at what all the different text means. As I alluded to at the end of Part 7, a lot of what you find here will apply to many other sites. Eventually, you'll probably be able to get a good idea of what info is on a page without even having to translate it.

So, let's bring up the page for one of the videos we were just dealing with: BLK-088. I'll give you a screen-cap here, but you might try practicing the new techniques from Part 8 and then follow along on a 'live' version - especially since the screen-cap doesn't have the whole page.

This is the page in its original, untranslated version:

Everything seems straight forward, albeit (likely) somewhat incomprehensible.

Now let's look at the same page after Google has worked its magic:

Alright, as you look this over, it will probably make sense for the most part (aside from the title of the video). The title, however, demonstrates something you should always be aware of when dealing with JAV: the English and Japanese languages are NOT related in ANY way.

Well, duh! But I point it out because there's a certain amount of getting in a different mindset when trying to decipher JAV content in Japanese. Learning to alter your perspective in that way will also help you appreciate the actual content more. The more you watch JAV and try to get into a Japanese 'state-of-mind', the more things that once seemed odd will start to make sense.

From a more academic perspective, literal word-for-word translations of Japanese will often be misleading, confusing or just flat-out nonsensical. This mostly applies to phrases or full sentences as you can see on this particular page.

Most of the translated text seems to be what you might expect in a catalog entry but the title, "[Exclusive New] [top] Hibiki Ohtsuki ☆ FUCK ON THE BEACH massive squirting cum black girls kira ☆ kira BLACK GAL BEACH"... WTF?!

For what's it's worth, the word order in a Japanese sentence is different. For instance, verbs always come at the end (or close to it). Unfortunately, this can make the translation process very difficult (especially with a language that has so many intricate subtleties).

Of course, the details of all this are beyond the scope of what we're trying to do here; but learning to recognize some of the words in Japanese will help you get a better idea of what is really being conveyed as opposed to relying entirely on an automated translation.

Using the title as an example, Google is having trouble breaking the grammar down – mainly because it's not a real sentence. I'll break it down for you, not because you need to know exactly what it says, but more so you can understand what is happening between the original Japanese and Google's translation. You can then apply that knowledge, as necessary, to future situations.

The first part in red, [独占], is dokusen which just means "exclusive". You'll see it quite a bit on DMM's site because, well, they're the 800 lb. gorilla of the JAV retail market. The next one, [最新作], is also easy enough. It basically just means "latest (or newest) performance".

In this case, it's a reference to Hibiki Ōtsuki 大槻ひびき. This is her most recent video (for the studio in question); presumably, they'll remove this from the title when her next kira☆kira video comes out.

As an aside, some performers are 'Contract Girls' – they only shoot for one studio. Nana Ogura 小倉奈々 is a prime example – she only works for Max-A. In these cases, 最新作 would be the absolute most recent release from said performer.

Since Hibiki works for many different studios (woohoo!), BLK-088 is just her most recent release from them. In fact, as of this writing, it's not even her most recent release overall; that would be QEDZ-025 for JANES/QUEENDOM (ジャネス / クイーンダム).

Back to BLK-088... since the next part of the title is in rōmaji, it's obvious: kira☆kira BLACK GAL BEACH. Keep in mind however, BLACK GAL is a specific JAV genre. It doesn't generically mean African Girl; in fact it specifically DOESN'T mean that at all. We'll get into some genres later but for now, (if you don't know already) BLACK means the girl is extremely tan.

The next bit, 黒ギャル (kuroi gyaru), means oddly enough... Black Gal. Go figure. After that is 大量潮吹き (tairyō shiofuki) which means 'massive' (as in quantity) 'squirting' (as in female ejaculation). The last part before more rōmaji, 中出し (nakadashi), should be familiar by now; it means 'creampie'.

'FUCK ON THE BEACH ' is self-explanatory but it does illustrate a common theme with JAV titles: they LOVE to include 'dirty' English words and phrases. And finally, we have Hibiki's name, 大槻ひびき.

Two things about her name at the end are worth pointing out. First, it's not really part of the title. It's normal for DMM to include the performer's name (if there's only one or two of them) at the end. But if you go HERE, to the kira☆kira website, you can see it's not included.

Second, you may have noticed that Google transliterated 大槻 as Ohtsuki as opposed to Ōtsuki. It's just a different way of writing the long 'o' in rōmaji. Since there's no ABSOLUTE standard for transliteration (not even Hepburn), be aware that you'll see a variety of options.

OK, now that we've gone through it phrase by phrase, let's put it all back together as a title that makes (some) sense in English:

[Exclusive] [Latest Release] kira☆kira BLACK GAL BEACH – BLACK GAL squirting massively and getting creampied ☆ FUCK ON THE BEACH

There! That's much better. Now you can also see how Google moved words around trying to compensate for the different word order of Japanese. Again, it failed miserably because it was trying to translate several separate (yet related) phrases as ONE sentence.

Alright, now that we've covered that, the mantra REALLY applies here. You may never – and I mean ever – care what the title of a video translates to. However, if you are trying to find something and all you have is the title... well, being able to decipher it might actually help track it down.

Besides, wasn't that at least kind of fun?

Now, back to the entry. Let's just go down the line. As you saw from the Google translation most of these are fairly self-explanatory but there's a little bit of extra info that might be pertinent with some of them.

Directly below the cover you have イメージを拡大 “See larger image” which obviously just gives a pop-up of the cover (in this case, it's the full cover: front & back). Then you have a button you can click (無料サンプル動画を見る “Watch Video Free Sample”) which will take you to a short (lo-fi) trailer of the video. Below that is something called 9エロいね！which I believe relates to Japanese language social media stuff.

Honestly, I don't know what the exact translation is. エロ means ero which is 'Japlish' (English words that have been adopted and modified) for "erotic" but いね could mean many things here. The most common usage of it is "rice" and while I don't think that's what it refers to here, colloquialisms are hard to predict. Suffice it to say, if you can't read Japanese already, trying to communicate in it with native speakers would probably be a bit overwhelming.

Back to the main column, you have お気に入り登録数 “Favorited” followed by 対応デバイス “Enabled Device” which just shows you what devices you can view the digital download/stream on. Next are 配信開始日 and 商品発売日. These are the “First Delivery Date” and “Product Release Date”. There are two dates because (as seen here) videos are often available for download before their official release dates.

The next several lines are fairly straight forward: 収録時間 “Duration”, 出演者 “Cast” and 監督 “Director”. It is helpful to become familiar with the kanji 出演者; you'll see it a lot while searching for JAV. If you learn to recognize it, you'll be able to quickly get an idea of who's in a video – assuming you recognize the name in Japanese as well...

The next three lines are all related: シリーズ “Series”, メーカー “Manufactured by” (literally “Maker”) and レーベル “Label”. These are common concepts in JAV and getting a feel for them is very beneficial. To help give you an idea of what their relationship is to each other, I'm going to 'nerd-out' a little. Forgive me, but I think it will really clarify the concept.

We're going to use the Star Wars movies (pre-Disney) to break this down (since they're SUPER popular in Japan, I think it's kind of appropriate). If they were JAV videos (oh my!), the Maker/Manufacturer (also commonly referred to as the Studio) would be Twentieth Century Fox. The Label would be Lucasfilms and the Series would be, naturally, Star Wars.

Now, not every video will have a Series listed but they will ALL have both a Maker and a Label. Those two may be the same (like most Max-A releases are on the Max-A label) but DMM will always have something for both entries.

In our example, the Series is kira☆kira BLACK GAL (the same as the Label). Logically, BLACK GAL BEACH would make more sense (see the title); but kira☆kira didn't see it that way (they don't usually specify a Series for their videos), so it's not 'official'.

The next entry is ジャンル which does, in fact, literally mean “Genre”; but it's really where you'll find the keywords. In this case you have ギャル “Gal”, 潮吹き “squirting”, スレンダー “slender”, 中出し “creampie”, 野外・露出 “outdoor exposure”, 独占配信 “Exclusive”, ハイビジョン “high-definition” and DVDトースター “DVD Toaster”.

These are all self-explanatory with the exception of the last one, DVD Toaster. It's an option that's not available outside of Japan (at least not in the US) so I don't worry about it. For what it's worth, I believe it has something to do with downloading and burning to a disc...

The next line, 品番 “Part Number”, is basically DMM's version of the Studio's SKU. I'm guessing that it's that long and convoluted because it's related to their database entries.

This one (blk00088 compared to BLK-088) isn't as bad as some (ONEM-021 is actually 118onem00021). Anyway, this is what I was referring to back in Part 8 about adding '00' into your SKU to try to find it.

After the Part Number, you have 平均評価 “Average rating” with レビューを見る “See reviews” which links you to a lower part of the page. This is followed by a description of the video.

As tedious as our attempt at properly translating the title was, can you imagine trying to turn a whole paragraph into comprehensible English?! Honestly, it's rarely necessary to know what it really says; but I have to admit the crazy translations (from Google) can be very amusing.

There's a brief section with 特集 “Special Features”. The first link, DVDトースターサービス would theoretically take you to the DVD Toaster option if it was available.

The next link ハイビジョン作品 “HDTV work” takes you to a page that just focuses on HD videos. And finally エロ★カワ ギャル特集 “Ero ★ Kawa Gal Special” takes you to a page that seems to focus on the ギャル “Gal” genre from various perspectives.

BTW, カワ “Kawa” is likely a shortened form of カワイイ (kawaii) which means “cute”. It's a very popular word/concept when dealing with Japanese girls – JAV or otherwise.

OK, after the Special Features we get サンプル画像 “Shot”; more accurately, it's sempuru gazō or “sample image”. Anyway, it's obviously screen-caps (which you can click on and enlarge). In this case you can see that the title we translated earlier appears to be pretty accurate – Hibiki squirts like a fountain in this one.

And finally, the last bit of text before the customer reviews (which we won't get into because it's way too comprehensive), is just stuff about registering and understanding that the cost of this download is in addition to any subscriptions you may have.

So there you have it. We've now 'de-coded' an entire entry to a JAV video on DMM! As I'm sure you can see, a lot of the info will be useful when applied to other sites as well.

In the next Part, we'll take a look at http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/メインペジ or Wikipedia (Japan). Among other things, you'll get a chance to see how much differently adult performers are viewed by Japanese society than they are in the West.

And, as always, remember the mantra, “You don't need to memorize all the details, you only really need to understand the concepts”. Also, feedback is encouraged! Feel free to ask questions!

-Nick

 

[vincent_z]

resourceful

This thread had searching tips I did not know.
I want to refer in here two more facilities I use to try learning Japanese from the W-WW:

1. Rikaichan - A Firefox add-on which when mousing-over Japanese text on a W-WW page will pop-up a small box with possible meanings for the kanji.
2. Jisho - Paste in the kana characters in the box labeled "Japanese", tick the box "Kana as romaji", and search.

Finally, I will be so bold as to paste in two terms which Nick is too much of a gentleman to mention; but which is a major component of JAVs:
ロリ : This is lolicon / roricon. If you want to search for JAVs in this genré, I suggest you try StartPage. It uses Google to search, but does not keep track of who was searching for it. Use it to lessen the possibility of the authorities kicking down your door in the upcoming months. :crash:
レイプ : This is r***. If you want to search for this, you are a horrible, evil, nasty, rotten person. We should go out for beers one of these nights. :thirsty:
Other W-WW sites where I have found JAV titles (and some images) besides DMM are Video Manial and Arzon.
I thank Nick again for this thread.

 

[walpola]

Amazing thread! I have had a quick read through and when I have time to properly study it I will try to put it to use. Many thanks!

 

[alaves22]

Off-Topic Question

I'm really sorry Nick_Wells for this off-topic question, but do you happen to know the name of the actress encircled in this screenshot you previously posted?

Thanks and sorry again for being O.T.

 

[tortex]

I'm really sorry Nick_Wells for this off-topic question, but do you happen to know the name of the actress encircled in this screenshot you previously posted?

Thanks and sorry again for being O.T.

You have a good eye my friend. Kanon Takigawa. Sometimes I've see Hana Takigawa. She has an amazing girl next door quality. You can find a pretty good run down of the work that she's done here http://forum.scanlover.com/showthread.php?t=79567

I think my favorite so far is TIN-003.

If you go to that link and get the JAV codes you can find many of them here.

 

[alaves22]

Thank you tortex for the info! :yahoo:

 

[Nick_Wells]

I'm really sorry Nick_Wells for this off-topic question, but do you happen to know the name of the actress encircled in this screenshot you previously posted?

Thanks and sorry again for being O.T.

Actually, it's not off-topic at all. In fact, it's a perfect opportunity to try out what we've learned here. Of course, thanks to tortex we already have the answer, but a little practice never hurt anybody (except maybe Allen Iverson). Also, we'll get to see a common problem that comes up when relying entirely on 'auto' translation features.

I'll apologize up front for not having any screenshots - I'm very busy these days, so I don't have time to be too thorough. Honestly, screenshots shouldn't be absolutely necessary to walk through the process.

OK, the best place to start is the video itself. If you were following along in your own browser, you could just click on it. If not, it's APAA-189; if you've been reading this thread, you should be able to bring it up with the SKU.

Once the page comes up you could just use Google translate to give you the answer. Unfortunately, the answer it give us is "Cast: Takigawa Hana sound". Well, that's clearly not right, so let's go to the next step.

At this point you should click on her name - "Takigawa Hana sound" if you still have the funky translation up or 瀧川花音 (next to 出演者 if you're looking at it in the original Japanese (preferred, IMO).

This now takes you to a search of the performer - and not just as a keyword but in the actual 'cast' field. Here, we get the hiragana breakdown of the kanji for her name, which appears as 瀧川花音 (たきがわかのん). Consulting our hiragana charts we can transliterate her name as ta-ki-ga-wa-ka-no-n or, more accurately, Kanon Takigawa.

Now, getting back to the confusion I alluded to before... if we were to use Google translate on THIS page, we find the 'alias' that tortex was referring to: Hana Takigawa.

But this is WRONG. It comes from a convoluted look at the translation. Remember when we translated the title from BLK-088? Japanese sentences don't use the same word order as most western languages. Because of this, auto-translate programs tend to make a mess of that. If you're not careful you can think it's saying something it's not.

Fortunately, when it comes to Japanese names at many Japanese language sites, they are spelled out phonetically using hiragana so that you know which reading of the kanji is accurate.

So, going back to our example, 瀧川花音 isn't really important anymore because we have たきがわかのん. When you have the hiragana, everything else is pretty much irrelevant when it comes to transliterating.

Even though "Takigawa Hana" appears in the middle of a bunch of words that are 'translated', it doesn't matter. The bottom line is, it doesn't match the hirgana, therefore it's not accurate. Of course, if it was an actual 'alias' (it's not but you'd need another source to verify), that's a different story...

There you go! What may have seemed like an off-topic question, turned into something very relevant. We were able to not only give a practical example of how to use some of our new-found skills to find something, but we also learned how to recognize a pitfall for non-Japanese speakers when relying exclusively on auto-translate.

I hope that was helpful! If it didn't make sense, please speak up and I'll do my best to clarify. Thanks to both alaves22 and tortex for their contributions here!

-Nick

PS I will EVENTUALLY get around to posting the next part (Wikipedia Japan - kind of relevant to the topic at hand) of this project but, as I stated earlier, I'm very busy these days. I'll get to it as soon as possible...

 

[jugulear]

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Thought some of youse guys might at least appreciate, if not benefit by, this treatise from Professor Nick_Wells. (Too bad he has taken off to non-JAVvy pastures. Also too bad his attachments have not survived. At the time, I recall finding his DMM tips especially helpful.)

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