"Gobbledygook"

 

About 15 years ago a Japanese publisher (Idononippon) specialized in Oriental medicine asked be to write a book about some of my personal views regarding the practice of acupuncture. Apparently the director of that publisher who used to come for treatments did like my approach.

The published (printed on old-fashioned paper) was made available to all bookstores in Japan as well as Amazon (where it may possibly still available ).

The title of the book written in Japanese is "トーマス先生の話を聞いてみませんか"　(Thomas sensei no hanashi wo kiite mimasen ka).　

However, when you switch the site language to English, you get a "title" that makes absolute no sense (regardless of whether you can read the Japanese or not):

"Gentleman Acupuncturist Thomas Teacher You Have To Listen To Me. A Good Night Sleep – Good Forever Birthday For The Health Of Law"

Well done, Amazon!

If that is the level of computer aided translation, maybe there is after all still some work to be done as a translator.

My books - a little boasting ...

 

My books in the order of their publishing

Preparing my sixth book, is something I think I can be a little proud of.

1) Printed (published) book pertaining to acupuncture written in Japanese by me

トーマス先生の話を聞いてみませんか

Amazon

2) My autobiography, written on patient request 10 years ago; Japanese = original

鍼灸界の異端者 ebook

ISBN: 9781311666192

Amazon

3) My autobiography, written on patient request 10 years ago; Japanese = original

Sonderling in Ost und West ebook

ISBN: 9781310040382

Amazon

4) Some personal views regarding acupuncture

Acupuncture: The Easy Way - Or the Hard Way ebook

ISBN: 9781311525796

Amazon

5) Translation of the autobiography of a Japanese priest involved in kyudo

"Startanew - Look again" ebook

ISBN: 9798224117635

Amazon

6) coming soon: my autobiography in English, rewritten

Ever wondered why???

I got this via one of the many translator sites I am registered at:

"Hi,
We need German to Japanese translators urgently.
Pls send your resume to anithagomathy@gmail.com ASAP.
From: anitha gomathy / India / Company: Aabheri Transco"

I did contact the lady and said, I do Japanese-German translations (the post said: German<->Japanese).
She sent me the file to have a look at and wrote:

"Please let me know if you are available for the attached job.
Language Pair: DE<>Japanese
Please deliver the project by Tuesday morning (THAT would be the following day!) 11 AM IST (24-03-2014).
Payment: 140 USD total in 25 days via PayPal"

File size: 4964 words. = 0.028/word
appr. 31 pages worth of translation, to be done in (less than) one day.
The file shows, that CAT tools will NOT be of much help.
I use "160 words/page" as a rough yardstick for technical translations.
Such a page would be 3.2 USD.

OK. Everybody who wishes to work through the night in super high speed for 3 USD per page raise your hands.
No one? Funny.
Actually, this lady posted - and keeps on posting; she seems to be getting desparate -
this job on just about ALL translator sites I know of,
but apparently nowhere anybody has responded (the counter always says "0 bids").

Strange, isn't it?
I wonder whether that Indian lady ever wonders why nobody is offering her any help ...

Japanese-English glossary

Three years ago I posted the below text on an acupuncture forum (http://acmac.net/forum/), where it has been viewed about 300 times ... although nobody is responding ...

Maybe it can be seen from my profile, that I am apart from being a (German) acupuncturist practicing for 30 years in Japan also a translator.

During my translation work, I occasionally also get work related to oriental medicine. Here comes the problem then.
To the best of my knowledge (I did a rather extensive search), there is only one VERY little Japanese-English Dictionary of oriental medicine.

So, during translation work I do rely on several "standard" Chinese-English dictionaries and other source. If I find something that suits the context, as well as my interpretation of the matter, I note that term in a spread sheet. Including items like:
-> Chinese characters / Japanese reading in Kana / romanized Japanese reading / English translation / alternative translation / romanized Chinese reading / links (if any) / pictures (if any) / comments / discussion.
(I am thinking of adding German translations too)

My question / request:
Are there any people on this list that speak/write Japanese, who might be willing to help me by contributing a few possible terms?


Wordwide everybody tends to believe that Chinese acupuncture (or oriental medicine in a wider sense) is the one and only "authentic" branch in this field of knowledge. However, it is common knowledge and need not to be detailed here, that in China EVERY piece of information is censored. There is absolutely no reason to assume, that oriental medicine is an exception.
If the world then has access to only one (permissible) interpretation, it very much restricts its horizon.
Here in Japan nobody (I mean of people in power and with influence) really gives a "r**ts a**" about oriental medicine. That precisely provides for real freedom of speech. And given the fact, that there is a 1500-year history of oriental medicine here, the Japanese have quit a bit to say, that differs from the Chinese points of view.
Even with basic concepts like yin and yang, I am always under the impression, that interpretations vary. Therefore the use of Chinese-English dictionaries does not provide satisfactory results when translating Japanese material.

* Material: the Japanese have a funny way of collecting all sorts of "material". To the best of my knowledge (again), the largest collection of Buddhist sripts is found in Japan, the largest character dictionary of the world has been edited by a Japanese and is standard issue in every library. I would have to check, how these superlatives read in correlation to classic oriental medical scripts, but I would not be surprised, if they have here a larger collection .....
And if they do, you could be rather sure, that those not replicas modified to suit communist party guidelines.

I would like to help make some of these materials available to the world. The Japanese themselves are apparently not very keen to do so.
And if anybody could help me out with hints at possible translation (I can provide the file I made so far), this could be a first step.
I also have a lot of fancy ideas (dreams) about other = further aspects, but maybe I should not get ahead of myself.

Thank you.
Thomas Blasejewicz

Term Assist

A littel earlier today I received an advertisement from Proz.com for "Term Assist", something that is supposed to "make your translation easier and faster by helping finding terms".

No offense, but after trying it out A LITTLE, I find it at best "useless".
I set my language combination to Japanese-English.
Select a term.
-> NOT the term selected is displayed, but the different characters taken apart and translation for the individual characters given.
That is NOT what I am looking for.
The given translation are "strange" too.

Apparent "Term Assist" is a Chinese product.

Obviously another example of the "Chinese quality" I have referred to several times before. The kind of "quality" nobody in his or her right mind would spend any money on.

I have seen similar things with "StarDict" - a dictionary software for Linux.
Even considering it being "free" (most of its contents seems to be pirated anyway), that thing too is for me as a translator useless.
I have other software (als FREE!) that works a hundred times better!

Why do I still do this?

Keyboard-of-Japanese-language (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today - again - I got an inquiry from a German company about a medical translation from German into Japanese. Naturally(!), as a native German I am NOT SUPPOSED to translate into Japanese.
In the mail I was asked, whether I can do it, of if not, maybe recommend someone who can. The rate offered was about 25% of what Japanese companies usually pay me for a Japanese-German translation.

Since I do not translate into Japanese, I offered to asked someone else.
Response: "YES. Please do."

So, I actually contact a colleague, write some mails, even get on the phone.
Naturally, even for a Japanese translator in Japan working in the German-Japanese language pair (which is cheaper than the other way round), the offered rate was still well below 50% of the "normal" rate.
And that from a rich country like Germany!

My colleague recline the offer. No wonder.
And I communicated these things to the company in Germany.


I ***DO NOT*** mind referring jobs to colleagues at all.
What I ***DO MIND*** is the fact, that the company in questions did not even say thank you.
I spend "considerable" time and effort - even phone costs - to find THEM(!), not me or my colleague, someone who can help out and do not even get this little "thank you".

I should probably stop being so nice ...

With all due deference ...

Human brain (Photo credit: EUSKALANATO)

Ishibutai Kofun in Asuka, Nara Prefecture, Japan. 日本語: 石舞台古墳, 奈良県明日香村 Camera: Sony DSLR-A700 Lens: Sony SAL1680Z (Carl Zeiss) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The entire human race uses "language", with the exception of the comparatively few people suffering from some sort of impairment, as a matter of course. Although there are differences regarding region/land and historical time, people in a specific location and at a specific time take the use of their "native" language for communication with other people of the same time and region for granted. While there are differences among different languages in the way how certain things/concepts are handled, the basic idea of conveying information between people is probably everywhere the same.

To quote from the Wikipedia(1):
"(language as) A tool for communication
Yet another definition defines language as a system of communication that enables humans to cooperate. This definition stresses the social functions of language and the fact that humans use it to express themselves, and to manipulate things in the world."

Again from the Wikipedia, pertaining to communication(2):
"Human communication
Human spoken and written languages can be described as a system of symbols (sometimes known as lexemes) and the grammars (rules) by which the symbols are manipulated. The word "language" is also used to refer to common properties of languages. Language learning is normal in human childhood. Most human languages use patterns of sound or gesture for symbols which enable communication with others around them."

Problems arise, when people of one specific region try to communicate with people in or from other regions. These problems arise already during communication related to common things like food, housing, directions etc., occasionally even among speakers of different dialects of the same language, but become much more complex in areas of high specialization. Oriental medicine is one such area. Even if one assumes, that the people who try to study and/or communicate about oriental medicine are already experts in their field, communication of specific concepts using different languages may represent a very challenging task. Assuming that there is a wealth of valuable information, which I will define for the sake of this discussion as information originating in Japan, this is and remains of very little use. That is because it is (encrypted) in Japanese, which mainly precludes access to it by most people of the world and information becomes only then really useful, if it is made available/accessible.

I am not a scholar and do not speak on behalf of any particular group of people or organization, but would like to formulate a few of my personal concepts related to this topic. In particular I would like to focus on aspects of the Japanese language, how it seems to be currently handled and understood in this field of learning and what potential future students of oriental medicine might expect or would like to see.


As stated above, language is used to convey concepts among people. This is an extremely simplified statement, but since I do not want to/can delve into all the complexities of research into language, communication and information exchange, I would appreciate, if you will permit me to leave it standing as it is.  

The Japanese language is quite different from both English or other European languages and other oriental languages like Chinese. It does not use articles, rarely distinguishes between plural and singular and handles nouns and verbs differently from the way this is done in English for example(5). This may contribute to the impression, that Japanese is complicated and so difficult to learn, that most foreigners are not expected to have much success. Yet, Japanese is a highly developed, delicate and elegant language. Examples of highly refined typical Japanese literature like the "Genji Monogatari" for example, even though they use the writing system imported from China, antedate comparable works sometimes almost by centuries.

Yet, the Japanese people themselves seem to suffer from an inferiority complex about their language precisely because it seems to be so difficult and inaccessible. In a very illuminating book written by the linguist Suzuki Takao "The World of the Closed Language Japanese"(8) the author points out, that Japanese is actually one of the top 10 most spoken languages of the world. In his book he cited Japanese to be on rank 6, but while the rank has dropped  to "9"(6) since its publication 30 years ago, it still remains among the most frequently, widely spoken languages of the world. There is nothing to be ashamed (shame is also a concept of special cultural significance in Japan) of. Rather on the contrary: I firmly believe that Japanese people should take more pride in their language and their achievements, which are largely expressed through this language. This in turn suggests, that materials explaining these achievements should be made assessible to the world through translation.

However, because of their fear, that other people/languages may be superior to their own and in conjunction with the aggressive promotion of a "standard TCM terminology" by the Chinese through the WHO(7), the Japanese have adopted a quite restrained behavior of promoting/displaying their own concepts and practice of oriental medicine through the use of Chinese dominated language. The result is an almost unbearable mixture of expressions, circumscriptions etc. that make even comparatively simple ideas almost unintelligible for many students of the matter throughout the world. I will try to illustrate with a few examples.

Occasionally I translate Japanese articles meant for magazines etc. that have the purpose of promoting the Japanese concepts pertaining to the use of Chinese herbal medicine, called Kampo, as well as research into acupuncture and oriental medicine in a wider sense.

Yet, while the use of Chinese herbal medicines in the Japanese way, namely Kampo, should be considered an original Japanese application, editors sometimes/often cling to the Chinese form of an alphabetical notation (there are different version in use) of the relevant terms. For example, certain editors follow the recommendations by an authoritative (Japanese) academic society for the research into Kampo medicine and thus demand from me, that I write the name for prescriptions as ONE word, listed in third place after English and Chinese like:
* Cassia Twig and Tuckahoe Pill plus Coix Seed  
* Gui-Zhi-Fu-Ling-Wan-Liao-Jia-Yi-Yi-Ren
* keishibukuryoganryokayokuinin
(the Chinese characters for the prescription are NOT given)

Here I can understand the use of an English translation. That certainly facilitates access to this information. The Chinese notation at least shows the breaks between individual characters, helping the student to search in dictionaries and possibly also provides clues about the pronunciation. While the Japanese ... (12)

The above shown Japanese "word" has 29 (!) characters. There are even longer ones, like for example “ryokeijutsukantogotokishakuyakusan” with no less than 34 characters or even "yokukansankachinpihangegotokishakuyakusan" (41 characters). And, while the English and Chinese terms are treated as proper nouns and thus capitalized, the Japanese term appears here (not in all publications) only in lower letters, as if it were no proper noun.

I once asked a scholar about the necessity of expressing the Japanese terms as single words. The answer was, it would be very difficult to decide, where to put any possible breaks. Again, I have great difficulties in believing, that the current approach will facilitate the declared purpose(9) of disseminating relevant information.
For example, one could easily break down the expression for the prescription called "Keishikaryukotsuboreito"in the following way:

*    Keishi        =    drug name

*    Ka            ＝    processing instruction

*    Ryukotsu borei    =    names of TWO drugs

*    To             =     drug form.

Not even Japanese persons would consider "Keishikaryukotsuboreito" to be ONE word, even if it is ONE name. For a Japanese person the term becomes immediately intelligible by looking at its elements, in particular since the Japanese know the associated Chinese characters for this term. This latter information and the underlying structure is presumably NOT available to many possible students of the material, unless they have previously acquired a considerable knowledge of the Japanese language, and thus makes comprehension very difficult, it not impossible. This includes also the difficulties encountered during attempts of looking up the term in dictionaries, that are newly created by this notation.

When I showed terms like "ryokeijutsukantogotokishakuyakusan" to Japanese people and asked them to read that for me, ALL were struggling very hard or could not figure it out at all, although they could read, naturally, the term when it is written in Chinese characters. Even if the above are treated as 'single terms', I am convinced that native speakers of the respective language pronounce these terms with a certain intonational structure, revealing to the listener clues about the makeup of the relevant terms.

A little search about the use of long words in the English language showed, that the longest non-coined and nontechnical word is "Antidisestablishmentarianism" with 28 characters and the longest word in Shakespeare's works is "Honorificabilitudinitatibus" with 27 characters(4). So, for any "reasonable" discussion words of less than 20 characters should be suitable/comprehensible. "yokukansankachinpihangegotokishakuyakusan" (41 characters) is simply incomprehensible. The use of notations like "Thisisalonggreenhouseattheroadside” or "Lelangageestunsystme de signesidentifis permettantunecommunication entreune ouplusieursentits" would definitely NOT help any learner of English of French respectively. Further, I believe that MOST people will have difficulties pronouncing the English word "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" (pronounced /ˌsuːpərˌkælɪˌfrædʒəlˌɪstɪkˌɛkspiːˌælɪˈdoʊʃəs/) with 34 letters, that was in the song with the same title in the Disney musical film Mary Poppins(10), without any practice.

Following the same argument, I think it would help both foreign students as well as ultimately also the Japanese practitioners, if terms related to acupuncture like "Seppi", "Hinai Shin" etc. were left in Japanese and maybe provided with a descriptive English translation. In a similar fashion the technical terms related to Judo or other forms of martial arts are used WITHOUT translation. If the provision of such word pairs would be too difficult to integrate into every text, it should be no problem at all to set up a frequently updated online database with the relevant terms. Personally, I would like to see such an online dictionary as soon as possible.

After all, anyone who starts learning a certain subject, here oriental medicine, or a particular language, here Japanese, WILL have to refer to dictionaries and other reference materials. In this respect, with all due deference, I am under the impression that the highly educated scholars who have apparently been working on the above mentioned standard terminology, or representatives of the academic societies that strive to study oriental medicine and disseminate the relevant information, may have lost touch with basic problems learners have to face. In particular regarding the use of terminology, I firmly believe that the currently used Japanese approach is wrong.

Let's consider the use of dictionaries in an attempt to find out more about "keigairengyoto" = Jing-Jie-Lian-Qiao-Tang.
If you use a Chinese-English dictionary that provides alphabetized entries, you will know, that you are looking at a term consisting of 5 characters and can look up each according to its reading. However, there are naturally a large number of characters reading "Jing" and in ordinary language most probably no combination like "Jing-Jie". For that purpose you need a special dictionary.

The Japanese is worse, much worse. Here you are offered only ONE term. Even if the learner suspects, that this term consists for more than one character, HOW should this learner look for the relevant characters? The term could be split like:

• ke iga iren gyo to
• kei gairen gyoto
• keiga iren gyoto
• keigai rengyo to    etc.

That gives the student many possible dictionary entries to look up – a largely futile effort.

For anyone who does not know the language (Japanese), all of the listed divisions are equally possible. Depending on how the individual terms/characters are listed in the particular dictionary, this may render a search almost impossible. If the particular dictionary does NOT provide alphabetized notations, most foreign readers are denied access to this information right from the start. I have experienced this myself many times. Unfortunately, to my knowledge there are, with one little exception(11), no Japanese-English dictionaries that would help foreign students getting access to the required information. The shortest, and only, way would always require the combined use of several Chinese-English, Chinese character, Japanese-English dictionaries. Sometimes more than one of each type.

Apart from the standard dictionaries of the relevant languages there are a number of special dictionaries for oriental, in this context mostly Chinese medicine. Sometimes the tycoons in the field publishing those dictionaries argue about who has the “right” translation, which will invariably be different from what is found in dictionaries published in China and among the latter ones again, each gives something different and here the English rendition itself more often than not appears to be rather dubious. What the WHO has published recently as the “agreed upon standard terminology” still feels in many instances not right, at least to me. And, naturally, that terminology apparently assumes that everything must be based on Chinese concepts.

Since people are basically dealing with “Chinese medicine”, this consensus is of course not wrong, but what happened to the Japanese views and all those aspects special to Japan? The basic concepts of acupuncture and herbal medicine have initially been brought to Japan about 1,500 years ago and subsequently over centuries through imported books and by practioners who studied in China. Yet, that is a long enough period for some original, independent developments to take place. Take for example the use of guiding tubes for acupuncture: a purely Japanese invention. In conjunction with cultural, climatic and geographic differences and not least the mentality of the Japanese people this period of 1,500 years of development has led, I believe, to the establishment of conceptional systems and practical applications that are clearly distinct from the Chinese practice – even though many Japanese practitioners strongly assert, that they are practicing CHINESE medicine.

In spite of the thus historically formed system of a typical Japanese approach to oriental medicine, the insistence of leaders in the field to NOT make this information publicly known, or to choose deliberately expressions/notations that are/will be incomprehensible for many/most non-Japanese persons, is a waste of very valuable resources.

I do hope, and possible can help to stimulate the process to adopt a more enlightening approach to the “dissemination of information”, that the mountains of  intellectual treasures currently hidden behind the veils of the Japanese language will be made more easily accessible to the people of the world.



References:

(1)    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language

(2)    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication

(3)    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information

(4)    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_word_in_English

(5)    An Introduction to Japanese Syntax, Grammar & Language

    by Michiel Kamermans;     grammar.nihongoresources.com

    http://grammar.nihongoresources.com/doku.php

    http://www.thejapanshop.com/

(6)    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers

    http://www.photius.com/rankings/languages2.html

(7)    WHOIST

    WHO International Standard Terminologies on Traditional Medicine in the Western Pacific Region

(8)    鈴木孝夫：　閉ざされた言語・日本語の世界  (Suzuki Takao "The World of the Closed Language Japanese")

(9)    From the JSOM HP:

    "Objective:

    The intention of the society is to hold research presentations and seek communication, tie-up and promotion concerning oriental medicine and contribute to the progress and dissemination of oriental medicine, and thus contributing to the development of scientific culture."

(10)    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

(11)    Japanese-English Dictionary of Oriental Medicine; written and compiled by JONG-CHOL CYONG M.D. & Ph.D.; Oriental Medicine Research Center of the Kitasato Institute, Tokyo; ISEISHA

(12)    Comment pertaining to: "WHO International Standard Terminologies on Traditional Medicine in the Western Pacific Region":

*    In this dictionary the items are listed in the order "Code – Term – Chinese – Definition/Description". "Term" represents the column with the English terms and "Chinese" lists the corresponding Chinese terms ONLY in Chinese characters. That means, users cannot search the dictionary according to reading/pronunciation of Chinese terms and MUST know, what they are looking for in English. Or else they have to read through entire sections of the book.

*    The only section, that provides "pronunciation" is the one listing classical medical texts. However, this too looks to users who are NOT very familiar with the different involved languages like a deliberate attempt at making things as incomprehensible as possible:

Chinese:    素問玄機原病式     = Suwenxuanjiyuanbingshi
    "Suwen" may be known well enough, but xu-an-ji or xuan-ji?
Japanese:    百腹圖説     Hyakufukuzusetsu
    Should it be "pronounced" Hyakufu kuzu setsu or Hya kufu ku zusetsu?
    萬安方 Man’ampo – the approstrophe is almost a relief and very helpful!!!
Korean:    鄕藥救急方  Hyangyakgoogeupbang – I have no idea at all how this is         supposed to be pronounced!
Vietnamese:    保嬰良方 Bao Anh luong phuong – even though I do not know how to pronounce that, I can clearly infer, that the term is made of 4 characters and look up their respective meaning, if I have Vietnamese dictionary (with alphabetical notation).

Even if the above are 'single terms', I am convinced that native speakers of the respective language pronounce these terms using a certain intonational structure and thereby revealing to the listener clues about the makeup of the relevant terms. Without these clues, in the above example the apostrophe shows the listener/reader, that there is a break after "Man" and the term is not read Manam Po. Considering that even native speaker among themselves use these intonational structures, imagine what will happen, if someone, who does not know the proper pronunciation of the relevant languages, tries to read those terms / pronounce / use them during communication with other practitioners.
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Cheap bus tour results in an accident killing 7 people

The other day an accident occurred on a Japanese highway, killing 7 people. The driver of a bus - a driver hired by the day - fell asleep. Apparently, there was no co-driver on the bus, and the entire tour designed to be "first of all cheap", specifically targeting Chinese customers.

The accident is one thing, but what struck me this morning was a TV show where one of the commentators said:
"It is this fierce competitions nowadays for providing cheaper and cheaper services/product, REQUIRING to cut costs where　ever possible, to has finally led to poor safety measures, the use of insufficiently qualified personnel etc. that led to the tragedy"

THIS sounds like something that could be applied IDENTICALLY to the translation business:
"lower your rates", "cut costs", "do NOT charge extra for rush jobs etc.", "no special expertise needed (= everybody can do it = makes prices cheap)".

Well, I tried to point this out many times already. Cutting costs to the bone, forcing "real" translators into starvation etc, WILL in the end lead to the use/employment of untrained, unskilled personnel with "no special expertise", whose inadequate translation make even lead to the death of people. Who knows??

Is THAT what clients want? It will certainly give them a few headlines.
Starving the real people in the end will force them to "recruit the crew for a space shuttle from a pool of cheap physical laborers with no special expertise". It will definitely cut costs, but will it benefit the space program?

NHKは外人を付き合わないのか？

Logo of the NHK (Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai) 日本語: 日本放送協会 3つのたまごロゴ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

先日メールにてＮＨＫで「問い合わせた」が、ＮＨＫのメールフォームでは自分の名前はあるべき形ではどうにも受け付けない。
＝普通のアルファベット文字、　＝　Thomas Blasejewicz　（当然半角だ！）
あるいは「正しい」カタカタ　＝トーマス　ブラーゼイェーヴィッツ
両方はだめでした。

「それはどういうつもりか。外人を付き合わない事を表現しているか」と言う内容でＮＨＫで問い合わせた所で、NHK から次の返事（抜粋）が来た：
「ご指摘の趣旨がわかりかねますが、ご記入いただいた文字列は、
実際のお名前と異なるのでしょうか。

こちらのメールシステムに特定の対象を拒否するような設定はありません。
ただし絵文字、特殊記号など使用されると文字化けすることがあります。」

それに対して私が以下のように答えた：
私は外人ですので、私の名前は「全角」文字ではなく、半角文字で表すのは正しい：
Thomas Blasejewicz　（特殊文字は何処にもない！純ＡＳＣＩＩ文字！）だ
横文字がそんなに大変であれば、何で貴社は自分の名前を横文字で表記するので しょうか　＝　NHK。日本語の言葉をどうしても横文字で略する必要性あるか。
それなのに私の名前は横文字（それは***半角文字***を意味している！)で苦労する？どうして？何処で何が難しいでしょうか。特殊文字などは何処にもない。

そしてそれを「全角カタカナ」で入力せよと要求されたら、自分の名前の正しい カタカナ表記：トーマス　ブラーゼイェーヴィッツだ。これも受け付けない。
そちらのコンピュータ気分に合わせる必要があった：
トマスブラゼイェヴィッツ
「「のばし」やスペース」などは受け付けない！だが「トマスブラゼイェヴィッツ」と言うのは私の名前ではない！

コンピュータ技術が発達した今の時代ではこれが少なくとも失礼だと思います。

それでは
スーパー
ペーパー
マーカー
コピー
コーヒー
等も皆「間違ったカタカナ表記」なのか？？？？？？？？？？？？？？？？？？

misunderstandings ...

Image via Wikipedia

Japanese language has a lot of aspects. Some of which can create for foreigners some unexpected "twists" either in their own expression, the way they are understood by others - or "the way you understand how the world works".
For example, the written language uses four different means to graphically express the spoken word: 1) Chinese characters, 2) TWO forms of Japanese alphabet = Hiragana and Katakana and the Latin alphabet. In particular the Japanese alphabets may sometimes cause confusion, because they render individual sounds where apart from the five vowels ALL other sounds are expressed in an alphabetic expression by TWO letters: a consonant and a vowel. Like
ka, sa, ta, na ...
The second of the mentioned alphabets is used MOSTLY for writing foreign words. Because of the additional vowels you hear as a foreigner, you may sometimes "mistake" what you really hear for something else.

For example, I remember when I first heard the word "windbreaker" = meaning a piece of clothing.
I was sort of stunned, because I could not for the life of me figure out, why people would like to "break windows".
THAT is how I recognized the spoken word with the additional vowels: "window breaker" ...

It took some explaining, but I finally got it.

Related articles

• Writing systems - Japanese (readingwithphilology.wordpress.com)
• Five Facts About The Japanese Language (socyberty.com)
• "Fuckin-sale":  https://nyuwa.wordpress.com/2012/02/24/fuckin-sale/
• Computer technology and rendering my name (in Japanese):  https://nyuwa.wordpress.com/2012/04/05/%E3%82%B3%E3%83%B3%E3%83%94%E3%83%A5%E3%83%BC%E3%82%BF%E6%8A%80%E8%A1%93%E3%81%8C%E7%99%BA%E9%81%94/
• Rendering my name by NHK (in Japanese):  http://transcurio.blogspot.jp/2012/03/nhk.html