A new camera phone application sold in Japan by MEDIASEEK called the Kamera Jiten ("Camera Dictionary") enables users to snap photos of English words, then TRANSLATES those words into Japanese, along with links to additional, online information such as pronunciation sound files and examples of how the word is used. Now the Japanese no longer have an excuse for bad Engrish!
12:05 PM * PERMALINK * 9 comments
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Comments:
"Now the Japanese no longer have an excuse for bad Engrish!"
Well, I guess you have a perfect japanese?
I think that it is a helpful feature.
Mike,
Please don't say "Engrish". I know it is supposed to be funny, but it's really never funny to make fun of the way a speaker pronounces words from a language that is not his/her native language. Mastering a foreign language is one of the most difficult tasks that any human being on this planet can do. Even if you yourself dedicated the rest of your life to studying Japanese, there is debate in the research community as to whether you could ever truly attain native-speaker fluency.
In reference to "Engrish", you should know that many languages do not have the sounds that we have in English; and likewise English is missing many sounds found in other languages. Perhaps you would like to try speaking Xhosa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xhosa_language) for a while; I'm sure native speakers could have many laughs, if they wanted, at the way you tried to pronounce the sounds of their language that are simply not to be found in English.
My Japanese isn't too bad, anata no nihongo wa doo desu ka?
That's kind of messed up with the "Engrish" comment! Don't be making fun of my people! I'm Japanese and as you can see I speak good enough "Engrish" to understand what you just said! Let's see YOU try to speak my language!!! I DIDN"T THINK SO!
さようならばか！
Would be great if you could speak and the phone would convery it to another language - I guess that will come in time.
You guys know that "Engrish" doesn't refer to people speaking english less than perfectly right? It refers to the ridiculous and sometimes humorous written English sometimes seen on foreign packages and signs.
Stuff like "Please is happy to be open on bag scissors" or something that is wrong grammatically.
Herro Ferras!
I see your getting butt hurt over a simple joke. Mmm grow up?
Would just love a gizmo like something off star trek to translate in real time. Soon I guess...
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