Confirmation of Japanese display on the Web Thread poster: jporven
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Hello,
I am managing a project which requires translation of English pages to Japanese. These pages will be displayed online. I would like to confirm any display concerns that must be accounted for, but have run into conflicting information. For example, I have read that line wrap of the translated text can be an issue. Depending on where the text is wrapped to a new line can change the meaning of a word or break up two distinct consecutive Kanji characters that make up one word int... See more Hello,
I am managing a project which requires translation of English pages to Japanese. These pages will be displayed online. I would like to confirm any display concerns that must be accounted for, but have run into conflicting information. For example, I have read that line wrap of the translated text can be an issue. Depending on where the text is wrapped to a new line can change the meaning of a word or break up two distinct consecutive Kanji characters that make up one word into two separate words.
In trying to research whether line wrap is indeed a consideration and what best practices exist, I have found two schools of thought:
1. That the line wrap rules of " kinsoku shori" should be followed for punctuation and then a native speakers must "manually" verify each line wrap.
2. That proper line wrap in the web medium is not necessary and Japanese kanji text can be allowed to freely wrap/flow within a websites text area.
If anyone can provide a definitive answer on line wrap treatment of Japanese characters online or any guidelines, it would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | I am not an expert, but... | Oct 31, 2012 |
jporven wrote:
Depending on where the text is wrapped to a new line can change the meaning of a word or break up two distinct consecutive Kanji characters that make up one word into two separate words.
As I said in the title, I am not an expert, but I don't think this is true.
Japanese has a continuous text flow, so separating the two kanjis of a word into separate lines does not change the meaning.
1. That the line wrap rules of " kinsoku shori" should be followed for punctuation and then a native speakers must "manually" verify each line wrap.
Kinsoku shori, as you said, is for punctuation. So, end-of-sentence punctuation and quotation marks should not be carried to a new line by themselves. In the rare case when there is a comma, that should also be kept with the preceding word. If you think about it, this rule is not different from English text, right?
The manual verification would probably be impractical for website content, as most text on websites displayed in a dynamic fashion - the font size, the field width, etc. changing all the time, depending on the client-end, so what is manually verified and set for let's say a certain size of display may not work for another.
If the text is used as part of a graphic, that is a different story - manual verification will work there, if needed, as the text is then turned into fixed graphical info and will not change during display.
I am not sure if there are any ways to automatically adjust the text during display to perform "kinsoku shori", but I would look around in the manuals of whatever coding language you use, and/or open source code forums. It is also possible that the browser itself performs this, if Japanese language support is installed on the computer - I am not sure about this, can anybody confirm?
Katalin
[Edited at 2012-10-31 17:56 GMT]
| | | | | it doesnt matter for a reader | Nov 1, 2012 |
As far as I know, it would not matter, nor would it change the meaning if kanjis are separated. A reader will understand where the word ends or begins, eventhough there are no spaces between words, or if a word is separated into parts. As for change of meaning, its impossible, as if a word is divided into two, it still does not make it two separate words, bcz syntax of japanese requires one to use particles after words in the sentence structure. For example,
天気が悪い日は、散歩... See more As far as I know, it would not matter, nor would it change the meaning if kanjis are separated. A reader will understand where the word ends or begins, eventhough there are no spaces between words, or if a word is separated into parts. As for change of meaning, its impossible, as if a word is divided into two, it still does not make it two separate words, bcz syntax of japanese requires one to use particles after words in the sentence structure. For example,
天気が悪い日は、散歩は行きません。
here, if the word 散歩 happens to be at the end of the line and is separated into 散 and 歩 in the beginning of a new line, it would not make it two different words (from context it is clearly one word, and if it were indeed two (its impossible here, but lets imagine), u will need to use a particle after each of them), nor does it change its meaning, because its still one word.
A better example, where you can see for yourself that in japanese its ok to separate words:
http://www.jma.go.jp/jp/yoho/
Here you can see a word 最新 separated (top right of the page, there is a sentence ブラウザの更新ボタンをクリックして最新の情報をお使いください。) But it is still clear, that its one word.
Hope this helps! ▲ Collapse
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[quote]Katalin Horváth McClure wrote:
I am not sure if there are any ways to automatically adjust the text during display to perform "kinsoku shori", but I would look around in the manuals of whatever coding language you use, and/or open source code forums. It is also possible that the browser itself performs this, if Japanese language support is installed on the computer - I am not sure about this, can anybody confirm?
Katalin
[Edited at 2012-10-31 17:56 GMT]
I am using Mozilla Firefox, and it does not.
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Thank you Svetlana and Katalin.
I appreciate the time each of you to provide the detailed answers. They cleared up this complex topic and helped me determine that stylistically we can present the text and let it free flow without mandated hyphenation, etc.
| | | | cranch (X)
Australia
Local time: 07:39
Japanese to English
+ ...
When I was writing my thesis for completing university in Japan, I was strictly told not to break up Kanji as it is not tidy. However when you are using the web unless you are good at programming and can set the font size at a determined size or save it as a graphic image then you really cannot control the line wrap. As the user is able to adjust the font size within their browser settings. As you will see in the example that Svetlana has shared.
So what I am trying to say is, that... See more When I was writing my thesis for completing university in Japan, I was strictly told not to break up Kanji as it is not tidy. However when you are using the web unless you are good at programming and can set the font size at a determined size or save it as a graphic image then you really cannot control the line wrap. As the user is able to adjust the font size within their browser settings. As you will see in the example that Svetlana has shared.
So what I am trying to say is, that it is possible if your client wants it that way it is just a little more work. ▲ Collapse
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