Translating Japanese Characters

[Iguanaman]

In terms of getting translations of Japanese characters Google and several other places supply somewhat decent methods. How does one get the characters into an electronic format? I can see various symbols on my Pachinko machine and I would like to attempt to get them translated but how do you re-create them on the computer? Is there some software that you can draw the characters and it does optical character reading? Some lookup table with thousands of entries and hope you can locate the correct one?

[arbycoffee]

photos unless you Japanese fonts in your computer.
You can post a piture to see if the board members can translate

[kizu76]

If you can take a picture of the screens you want, or try to draw the characters on a piece of paper, then you can head to the library (or bookstore) and look them up in a kanji dictionary. You'll need to know the root (number of brush strokes in the main character) of each kanji to locate them in the dictionary. It won't be real easy either way. Japanese is not a real simple language...

As far as transferring the info to a computer for translating? I'm afraid the trip to the library will be easier.

[daverob]

If you are using a Windows machine (2000,XP,Vista), you can install the Japanese Input Method Editor (IME), on this you get an IME pad application, that you can draw the character with mouse strokes and get a candidate list to choose from. It's not ideal for beginners as it often requires the strokes to be entered in the correct order (especially for the more complex characters), but it can help.

For some of the more difficult ones to draw, I've used this page it allows you to select the radicals that make up each Kanji, and narrows down the candidate list for each radical selected. You'll also need to learn the Katakana and Hiragana alphabets to read the non-Kanji characters but this is not that hard as there's only around 60 characters in each alphabet, which is considerably easier than learning the several thousand Kanji in common usage in Japan.

But the easiest way is to post a picture here, those of us who can read a bit of Japanese have probably come across these ones before, and should be able to provide quick translations.

[Iguanaman]

Thanks! I am going to try the J IME to see how that works. I've been spending 9 months trying to learn Spanish. Not sure MY head can hold much more!

[sharmoni]

If you have a Mac you can find a Japanese Kana character palette in System Preferences/International/Intput Menu. That will allow you to use TextEdit to input matching characters (Hiragana and Katakana only) and then paste the string of text into Google.

[rubberratt]

I found a book on Amazon called decoding Kanji...again; not for beginners, but it helps you to build skills that help in distinguishing the subtle differences . SO MANY kanji characters look alike, I have found that to be the biggest challenge, while I have been learning over the last 7 years