Transliterating English Text into Japanese Katakana with Microsoft Windows XP

A User’s Manual

Introduction

This user’s manual is designed to help you to produce an English text using the Japanese syllabic characters known as Katakana. The manual will show you how to use your keyboard to input Japanese characters, and how to transliterate English words into the syllables available in Japanese. The computer tools used are provided by Windows XP and Microsoft Word 2002.

Why Transliterate?

When languages do not use the same alphabet, it becomes necessary to approximate foreign words with the available characters of your own language. For example, the word for “thank you” in Japanese is transliterated to “arigato” in English text, while this form of writing is not used in Japan.

A transliteration of English words to Japanese characters will be useful to Japanese speakers who do not know English and the Roman alphabet.

Japanese Syllables and English Text

The Japanese use a syllabic character set which imposes serious constraints on the pronunciation of English words, because most of the combinations of consonants that we are familiar with do not exist. For example, native Japanese will have difficulty pronouncing the word “tree” without inserting a vowel between the consonants T and R. This is reflected in the syllabic character set, where the single T and the single R do not exist without a vowel: the best approximation of “tree” then becomes “tori.” The vowel sounds also sometimes do not match well, and many combinations of a consonant with a vowel do not exist.

Other difficulties include the inexistence of the letter L in Japanese. In fact, the Japanese R is somewhere in between the English R and L (it is in fact common for English speakers to be unable to pronounce the Japanese R).

Our methodology will be to represent English text with the available Japanese syllables but using Roman letters, and then to transform those syllables to Japanese characters. Someone fluent in Japanese would be able to combine the two steps and write the Japanese characters directly.

Using the Japanese Keyboard in Windows XP

Setting Up the Keyboard in Windows XP

In order to input Japanese characters, you need to install the Japanese keyboard model in addition to the standard keyboard you use. Windows does not require any special hardware for this function: you will be able to input Japanese characters directly from your English keyboard, each key corresponding to a Katakana or Hiragana character.

Click on Start to open the Start Menu

In the Start Menu, click on Settings

In the Settings Menu, click on Control Panel. The Control Panel window opens.

In the Control Panel window, double-click on Regional and Language Options. The Regional and Language Options dialog opens.

In the Regional and Language Options dialog, click on the Languages tab (see fig. 1).

Figure 1: Regional and Language Options Dialog

Click on Details... The Text Services and Input Languages dialog opens. In this dialog, click on Add... The Add input Language dialog opens. Under Input Language, select Japanese. This will automatically select Japanese Input System (MS-IME-2002) under Keyboard Layout / IME. Click on OK to confirm this selection.

Click on OK to close the Text Services and Input Languages dialog. Your keyboard can now input Japanese text.

Switching Keyboard Model

After installing the Japanese keyboard model, it will be necessary to set it up so that it accepts Katakana characters without transformation. It will also be necessary to switch between English and Japanese keyboard models according to your needs.

After installing the Japanese keyboard model, Windows displays a small icon in the lower-right corner of your screen. It should read EN to indicate that the current keyboard language is English. To switch keyboard model, press the left-side Alt key and the left-side Shift key together. The small icon should change to JP. Press the Alt and Shift keys again to switch back to EN.

Setting the Japanese Input Method

The Japanese keyboard model supports several Japanese input modes which may transform the characters into more complex ones, namely Kanji characters. For the purpose of entering English text transliterated into Japanese characters, it will be necessary to switch the input mode to Katakana.

Locate the keyboard model icon in the lower-right corner of your screen (it should display EN or JP). If it displays EN, switch to JP by pressing the Alt and Shift keys.

Click on the icon. A menu appears.

Click on Show the Language Bar. The Language Bar will now appear in the upper-right corner of your screen, showing several controls.

Click on the Input Mode button. A menu appears.

Click on Full Width Katakana.

Entering Katakana Characters in Microsoft Word

You can enter both English and Japanese characters in a Word document. Once the keyboard model has been switched to JP (Japanese) and the Input Mode is Full Width Katakana, the keys on the keyboard can be used to input Katakana characters instead of English. See fig. 2 for the keyboard layout, and check that the characters appearing in your Word document correspond to the keys you have pressed. Remember that you can switch to entering English characters by pressing the left-side Alt and Shift keys together.

ﾛ

ﾇ

ﾌ

ｱ

ｳ

ｴ

ｵ

ﾔ

ﾕ

ﾖ

ﾜ

ﾎ

ﾍ

ﾑ

[

]

ﾀ

ﾃ

ｲ

ｽ

ｶ

ﾝ

ﾅ

ﾆ

ﾗ

ｾ

ﾞ

ﾟ

voiced

(p)

;

‘

ﾁ

ﾄ

ｼ

ﾊ

ｷ

ｸ

ﾏ

ﾉ

ﾘ

ﾚ

ｹ

chi

shi

kesu

ﾂ

ｻ

ｿ

ﾋ

ｺ

ﾐ

ﾓ

ﾈ

ﾙ

ﾒ

tsu

､

｡

･

Figure 2: Japanese Keyboard Model. There are three rows for each keyboard row: the first row shows the English key, the second row the Katakana character, and the third row shows the corresponding syllable.

Original character	Key	ﾞAccent (key: [ )	ﾟAccent (key: ] )
HA ( ハ )	F	BA ( バ )	PA ( パ )
HI ( ヒ )	V	BI ( ビ )	PI ( ピ )
FU ( フ )	2	BU ( ブ )	PU ( プ )
HE ( ヘ )	=	BE ( ベ )	PE ( ペ )
HO ( ホ )	-	BO ( ボ )	PO ( ポ )
TA ( タ )	Q	DA ( ダ )
TE ( テ )	W	DE ( デ )
TO ( ト )	S	DO ( ド )
SA ( サ )	X	ZA ( ザ )
SHI ( シ )	D	JI ( ジ )
SU ( ス )	R	ZU ( ズ )
SE ( ヤ )	7	ZE ( ヤ゛ )
SO ( ソ )	C	ZO ( ゾ )
KA ( カ )	T	GA ( ガ )
KI ( キ )	G	GI ( ギ )
KU ( ワ )	0	GU ( ワ゛ )
KE ( ケ )	‘	GE ( ゲ )
KO ( コ )	B	GO ( ゴ )

Figure 3: Accented Characters

Syllabifying the English Text

In order to represent English text so that it can be read by a native Japanese speaker who does not know English, you need to find the appropriate syllables (and the limited number of single vowels and consonants) available in Japanese that can correspond to the English pronunciation of the words. This can be difficult, as several of the English phonemes simply do not exist in Japanese. For example, the “L” “TH” and “W” present interesting challenges to the Japanese speaker, whom we are trying to help in this transliteration. There are generally no combinations of consonants in Japanese and vowels will be inserted between them. Some of the choices in this document are arbitrary and may need fine tuning with the help of native speakers.

Referring to Table 1, write the syllables approximating the English words of your text. Notice that in many cases a straightforward equivalent to the English pronunciation does not exist and must be approximated. Of particular importance is the fact that most of the Japanese syllables have one consonant and one vowel, whereas there are many more combinations in English, where two consonants can be combined without a vowel in-between. It is important to separate each syllable from the others with a space to avoid confusion in the generation of the actual Japanese characters. Table 2 contains some examples taken from the transliteration of “The Great American Oral Epic, Green Eggs and Ham” by Dr. Seuss.

Rolled R

As in yahoo

As in mama

As in papa

As in bar

As in hat

As in banana

As in dart

As in task

As in sack

As in gasp

As in cart

As in at

As in real

As in me

As in pee

As in bee

As in he

As in neat

CHI

As in cheap

As in jeep

SHI

As in sheep

As in geek

As in keep

As in eel

As in rude

As in you

As in moot

As in pooh

As in boot

As in food

As in canoe

TSU

As in zoot

As in super

As in goo

As in cool

As in ooze

As in ray

As in may

As in pay

As in bay

As in hate

As in nay

As in day

As in taste

As in say

As in gay

As in quay

As in acorn

As in row

As in yoghurt

As in motel

As in polar

As in bowling

As in host

As in no

As in doe

As in toe

As in zodiac

As in so

As in go

As in cohort

As in oh

As in men

Table 1: Japanese Syllables and Approximate Pronunciation

Original Line	Transliterated Line	Comments
I am Sam	A I A MU SA MU	MU was the closest to a final M
I do not like that	A I DO U NO TO RA I KU DA TO	“that” could also be replaced by the ZA syllable. TO was the closest to a final T.
I do not like green eggs and ham	A I DO U NO TO RA I KU GU RI N E GU ZU E N DO HA MU	“green” became GU RI N and “eggs” became E GU ZU. “And” could also be E N DA given that it is followed by another A sound.
Not in a box	NO TA I NA BO KU SU
Would you? Could you?	U DO YU? KU DO YU?	The “w” in “would” was made silent: another approximation would have been to use the FU syllable.
Not in a car! You let me be	NO TA I NA KA RU! YU RE TO MI BI	NA was used to combine the N from “in” with the following “a”. Notice the use of RE for the L sound.
Not on a train! Not in a tree!	NO TO NE TO RE N! NO TE I NA TA RI!	TE was used in the second “Not” because of the following I sound. Another version of “Not in a tree” could be “NO TE N A TA RI”
I will not eat them anywhere	A I HI RO NO TO I TO DE MA NI U HE RU	These are examples of difficulties with “w”
And I would eat them with a goat	A NU DA I FU DA I TO DE MU HI ZA GO TA.	More difficulties with “w” which could be muted, replaced by H or F if the syllable exists. HI ZA seemed far from “with a” but worked in the context of the preceding U and the following G sounds.

Table 2: Examples from the Dr. Seuss Poem

Revising Your Syllabification

Take some time to read your new words. Do they sound close to the original English? Could you use different syllables, possibly combining sounds from neighboring words?

Replacing the Syllables with Katakana Characters

Once you have the syllables written down in a Word document, you can use the Replace command to obtain the equivalent Katakana characters. This should be faster than retyping the entire document using the Japanese keyboard. There is no need to replace syllables that you have not used in the document, but start by replacing the 3-letter syllables, then the 2-letter syllables, and finally the vowels and consonant.

In Word, click on the Edit menu, and then click on Replace. The Find and Replace dialog appears (Fig. 2).

Figure 2: Word's Find and Replace Dialog

In the Find what box, enter the syllable to replace.

Click in the Replace with box to set the text cursor into it.

Switch the keyboard to Japanese by pressing the left-side Alt and Shift keys.

Enter the Katakana character, referring to the keyboard map in Fig. 2. Use accents as indicated in Fig. 3.

Click on Replace All.

Repeat for every syllable present in the document.