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Hoshi_Ryu
6th October 2002, 21:31
Does anyone know a online translator system that can translate romanji to english? The Bablefish one at www.altavista.com wont take romanji.

Jeff Hamacher
7th October 2002, 02:04
first of all, a minor nitpick ... it's romaji without an "n". and sadly, i don't know of online japanese-english dictionaries that will take romanized entries. you might do just as well to buy yourself a paper dictionary such as those for tourists to japan. as a student of japanese i don't recommend them, but if you just want to get quick translations for martial arts terms, for example, without trying to actually learn the whole language, i think it's an appropriate solution.

Tatsuko
7th October 2002, 03:03
Well, first, I highly suggest you don't use romaji... But if you must, there are online Japanese<->English dictionaries that will take romaji input. They aren't like Babelfish - they don't translate complete phrases, only words - but it may help.

http://linear.mv.com/cgi-bin/j-e/nocolor?SASE=/cgi-bin/j-e/sjis/nocolor/dict

http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/wwwjdic.html

Joseph Svinth
7th October 2002, 06:06
Some years ago, Tuttle published a little pamphlet and cassette tape by Alexander D. C. Kask called "Japanese for the Martial Arts." It is reviewed here: http://www.koryubooks.com/books/japanese.html . It appears to be out of print, but you can probably dig up a copy someplace on the Internet.

As for the bigger dictionaries, I own Takahashi's Pocket Romanized Japanese-English Dictionary. It has almost 1,600 pages of really small print, costs between US $50-80, and contains fewer martial art terms than does my copy of Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary. It's astonishing how many loan words there are in English related to the Japanese martial arts.