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
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.