何々ように。。。

The word 「よう」took me a while to understand because it's kind of an abstract concept. It doesn't have a direct translation in English; if I had to take a shot I'd say it's something like "a situation or state of/where __"... The only way for me to understand it is in context. One place I hear this word often used is on the train when the conductor says "Be careful not to forget any of your personal belongings."「忘れ物ないようにご注意ください。」To directly translate this would be something like "Please be careful for a state of no forgotten things." That sounds pretty strange worded like that, but if you think about it it makes sense. The train conductor wants an end result of "no forgotten things" and for that purpose he/she would request that you be careful not to forget your things. 

Entering the previous sentence in Google translate yields this: "Please note as not left behind." 

Stomachs, intestines, etc.

When translating and writing a menu, it's important that I take the time to carefully consider my choice of words. In Japan, restaurants offer many things that are either unfamiliar or completely unknown to foreign customers who will be reading an English menu, so it's necessary to provide enough description so that they have a good idea of what it is they're ordering while not letting the menu become excessively long and wordy. Also, I want to make the items on the menu sound as appealing as possible so that people might actually want to order them.

How could I do that though with something like 赤セン (the 3rd stomach of a cow)? As far as I knew we didn't have any kind of elegant word for that in English, and, at least to me, nothing could be more unappealingly worded than "3rd stomach of a cow."  There must be some special culinary words out there for these things to make them sound less disgusting, I thought, and I was right. Here's an article I found on cooksinfo.com with a detailed explanation of the different stomachs of the cow which was very educational. For another example of a potentially unappetizingly worded dish,  ネギテッチャン (large intestine and green onions); still unsure if there's a better, more appealing word for intestine. Here is a case where a yakiniku restaurant's menu was poorly translated. We end up with things like "pig's tits." I'll have the pig's tits please. This is what we want to avoid. 

I've actually had テッチャン before and it's not that bad, chewy and soft, takes a while to swallow.

New menu translation gig!

Score! I got handed a menu a couple days ago for a high end 焼き肉 restaurant (the kind where you grill meat at your table, Korean style) in Kyoto, and I'll be translating it and re-designing it over the next few weeks, so I'll be posting updates on how that's going. So far its actually more difficult than I thought. Being a menu for a Korean style restaurant, there are a lot of Korean words which are written in katakana, so figuring out how to best translate them is a multi-step process of searching the word in Japanese, reading an explanation of what it means in Japanese, and thinking about how you'd say that in English in a way that would be both elegant and clear to someone looking at a menu. Here's one tasty example:

水菜のチョレギサラダ

水菜 (pronounced mizuna) is a type of green that resembles arugula to me (but may or may not be completely unrelated). I'm not sure whether or not it's ok to just say "mizuna" in the English menu. I mean, I bet a chef would know what mizuna is, but your average person probably doesn't. If you put 水菜 in a dictionary it comes up either as "mizuna" or "potherb mustard," something I've never heard of in my life... so I went with "mizuna greens," it's simple and you can get an idea of what it is you're ordering, which is the most important thing in this case.

チョレギ is a Korean word, so I looked it up in Japanese and found that what it means is "lightly or briefly pickled/soaked." So I was thinking it had some kind of pickled aspect, but then I asked somebody who said no it's not pickled, but the dressing has vinegar... so now I'm not really sure what to call this salad. It may just end up being "Mizuna greens choregi salad." Yes, I realize the fastest solution would be for me to go to the restaurant and taste everything on the menu. That would be both awesome because free food, and not awesome because I don't eat stomachs and intestines and stuff like that.

One example of how not to blow up your brain.

As you probably know by now, the order of words in Japanese grammar is quite different from English, completely backwards even at times, so as translators we'll encounter bits like this pretty often that take a little effort to work out. Here's one line in particular that made me scratch my head:

詳しくは「AWSのCloudWatchのメトリックからELB関連のメトリックをサービスメトリックに投稿する」をご参照ください。

This is a sentence pattern I see almost every day at work: "For more information, please refer to (article's name)," but this time it was the article's long and convoluted title that made me stop and think. Here's a breakdown of the main words we have here:

詳しくは「くわしくは」for details, more information...

関連「かんれん」relation, connection, relevance

投稿する「とうこうする」to submit, to post

ご参照「ごさんしょう」referring to, checking out

I find it helps to first find the essential pieces of the sentence, the verb and the D.O. or I.O. since in this case there's no subject. So the verb is 投稿する、and the D.O. is メトリック(we know that because it is immediately followed by を), and then the rest of that is just describing メトリック。Next step is to piece it together. Let's look at just the part in 「」, the title of the article.

AWSのCloudWatchのメトリックからELB関連のメトリックをサービスメトリックに投稿する

This being a how-to article, it'd be natural to begin with the verb "posting" and follow that with the D.O. "metrics" so, "Posting metrics..." which metrics? 「ELB関連のメトリックを」"metrics connected/related/linked to ELB." This part 「AWSのCloudWatchのメトリックから」ends with から so we know it's saying "from (here)", and this part 「サービスメトリックに」ends with に so in this context it's saying "to (here)", so... the basic idea is "Posting (these) metrics from (here) to (here)." Once you've got that your work is pretty much done, just fill in the blanks.

"Posting metrics linked to ELB from AWS CloudWatch metrics to service metrics." Then, in the context of the full sentence:

For more information please refer to "Posting metrics linked to ELB from AWS CloudWatch metrics to service metrics." 

I find using pencil and paper is best for translating Japanese, because you can draw arrows all over the place to help yourself understand this is describing this, or this is the D.O. of this verb, etc. Anyway, hope somebody finds this informative!

New blog, self introduction

Hi, I'm Connor Kirk, a 26 year old "expat" from Atlanta, USA. 

I live in Kyoto, Japan, making my way as a translator working primarily with Japanese text. At the moment I'm working for an excellent company, really an ideal place to work, Hatena, which is very well known in Japan for it's blog platform, news feed, and other internet based services. Within Hatena I'm a part of a team of guys working on a new server management system called Mackerel where you can see my translation mostly on their developer blog as well as within the system itself. 

As for this blog, I'm thinking about using it mainly to document my experiences as a translator i.e things I pick up day to day, some tips on translating, talking about Japanese, and other things like that. Some other stuff I like to get into like printmaking, design and illustration might get roped in too. 

よろしくお願いします！