Chinese Laundry

[Stephen A. Carter]

On Fri, 16 Jun 2000 23:16:38 -0700 (PDT), Bubbles wrote:
>Hmm...but under full-screen DOS session, it won't translate anything
>you view under PMMail or any PM app.

1. In PMMail, use Ctrl-S to save message to a file.
2. Start NJStar.
3. Open file.

>Well, not quite the same, but almost. Kanji (unless my terminology is
>off, this does not refer to the "newer" Japanese script which is used
>everyday) is just Japanese for HanZi, which is the Chinese words. It
>uses exactly the same characters (e.g. "words") and has the same
>meanings. It'll translate to English just fine, with almost full
>preservation of the original meaning.

Well, kanji are certainly used every day in Japan.

I speak, read, and write Japanese -- it's been my daily language at
home and at work for the past 15 years -- but my Chinese is pretty
much limited to the greeting "Ni hao ma."  That phrase is written
with three characters (or HanZi, or kanji, or hanja, or whatever you
want to call them).  The first and third characters aren't used in
Japanese at all.  The second one is used in Japanese, but usually in
a totally different sense.  There's *no way* a Japanese reader could
guess the meaning of that simple, everyday Chinese expression from
the characters, unless that (like me), at some point, somebody told
him or her that it's a Chinese greeting, and it means "How are you?".

There are some words that are written the same, or almost the same,
in both Chinese and Japanese, and sometimes that's enough for a
Japanese reader to get the general gist of something written in
Chinese, but being able to read Japanese doesn't give you the ability
to actually *read* Chinese with any real understanding.

Of course it's possible to translate Chinese to English, but if you
want "full preservation of the original meaning," knowing how to read
Japanese isn't enough -- you have to know Chinese, too.


-- 
Stephen Carter
scarter@hticn.com
Nagoya, Japan