As more foreigners come to Japan, opportunities for communication and for misunderstandings increase. However, as technology advances, it becomes possible to quickly translate something for a sign or notice. However, computer translation often results in mistakes like the ones below.
- example 1
- example 2
However, with a little adjustment to your Japanese (and maybe a little adjustment to your way of thinking), you can avoid these mistakes and we have created a website, Higosign, which combines several online translation services along with a workflow that will help you with this. This guide is designed to accompany the site and help your staff communicate to your customers in English, Korean and/or Chinese.
This book is divided into 9 chapters. In the first chapter, we will ask you to think about what signs are and what they do. In the second chapter, we will present a typology of signage, so you can consider what type of sign you need to make and how your communication needs will effect the translation. In the third chapter, we will talk about how online translation works so you can better understand how to change your Japanese to get a good foreign language translation. In the fifth chapter, we will introduce Higosign, a portal sight designed to help your small business with sign translation. In chapters four to seven, we will discuss the PLAN, DO, CHECK and ACT (PDCA) cycle, which gives you a way to organize your efforts to translate signs. In chapter eight, we will talk about options for making your sign and in Chapter 10, we will give some examples of use of Higosign.
We hope this guide can help you quickly make signs as well as understand why it is not just the language, but the information and intention that are important in making signs.
Judy Yoneoka, Chie Saito, Joe Tomei Kumamoto and Tokyo, Aug 2017