INTERMISSION!!! (Backstage of "Glimpses of Japan Local - in JEnglish)
<<<<< intermission >>>>>
plenty of time, but not enough money to satisfy
I don't even feel like riding a bicycle in the cold
As I put my feet in the kotatsu, fell asleep before I knew it...
As time goes by, my playful heart came out
When reviewing the archives of my Japanese blog, which I started in 2011 in Nara,
Tracing my fading memories, started reading blogs, and felt somewhat interesting although it was written myself.
Recycle
Era of reuse
Wouldn't it be interesting if being revived these old blogs?
What about recreating it into an English (or another foreign language) blog?
It's the one I wrote myself in Japanese but will feel exhausted in translating it one after another.
Why not try using AI automatic translation.
Google Translate may be one of the good free options
At first, copied the sentences from the Japanese blog one by one and entered them into Google Translate.
It saves the trouble of translating, but the copy-and-paste work every time is troublesome.
I still had the quasi-learning ability
Copying the entire text of the Japanese blog (including photos) into Google Translate and clicking on "Choose a format" and entering with "text" format.
Oh my God!
Only the photo part is displayed in numbers of the image data, and everything including line breaks is entered
On the Google translation screen, the translation result for the full sentence is displayed so that I can compare Japanese (Left) and English (Right).
this is easy
Well, the most important thing is the quality of the translation...
My "Japanese" sentence expression is poor and difficult to read and decipher
As a result of this, imitation English sentences were displayed, which did not fully demonstrate the automatic translation function
When I rewrote the original Japanese text into something close to the standard Japanese expression or wording, on the Google Translate screen, it displayed something that could be read as English.
In other words, to rely on the automatic translation, careful preparation before the input will make it easy - as the wise man says: Know thyself!
With a little time on preprocessing, the overall work becomes much more efficient.
By the way, when writing in Japanese, we normally avoid using the first person "I", but in English where the subject relationship needs to be clarified, the software seems to get lost in choosing the subject.
Also, it seems better to clarify the distinction between singular and plural, for there's no distinct difference in Japanese.
Difficult idiom expressions in my Japanese sentences, special expressions such as haiku and waka poems, dialects, etc. many of them have ambiguity unique to Japanese.
Once again, I realized how sloppy I was using Japanese.
The preprocessing results in Japanese sentences that have been stripped of my personality, but that's one of the prerequisites for smooth automatic translation, so I must admit it.
Based on the translation results (materials) processed by the software, the highlight is how to cook it by adding "seasoning" and "spice" so that my friends feel, "Ha This is Tom's JEnglish."
(Unfortunately, I am not confident that the English sentences through the above pre-processed Japanese and with the final editing processed English would be understood by native speakers (lol))
For the convenience of the work stage and for comparing and contrasting Japanese and English sentences, at first used "Livedoor Blog".
This should be enough, but a bit worried about the CM column being displayed when I forward it to my friends overseas.
Because there is an original blog that was once published as a result
Using the Livedoor English Blog, created a new blog without CM.
Intended to use "Blog" as an external storage memory medium because my own memory was becoming suspicious.
Also, it's simple and quick than sending lots of photos with an explanatory message, just to tell the status quo to my friends.
There's no need to think about the number of readers or responses.
The new blog is on "Blogger" - titled same "Glimpses of Japan Local in JEnglish"
Wonder how my friends view my JEnglish blog being occasionally sent via WhatsApp?
It must be causing headaches
***[Added: 2022.12.13]
It seems my blog is not the typical English for native speakers at a glance on writing expressions and typos.
A friend in Australia kindly advised me to try the Grammarly software.
When posting to Blogger, got a spell check and basic correct instructions, so I thought it too much for my blog - JEnglish is JEnglish.
Became curious, so installed Grammarly and checked the English blog.
To my surprise, so many parts that needed correction were displayed!
Luckily, it rarely asked for spelling corrections.
Punctuation marks, especially the insertion of ",", were unexpectedly requested
Next, was tediously pointed out that the British/English notation that I had been accustomed to for many years was asked to change to American/English notation.
At first, I dismissed it, but the correction display is left on the screen, so in the end, accepted to change to American English notation.
The good thing was Grammarly suggested changing the English sentences into simpler, easier-to-read sentences.
Indeed, the proposed sentence expression makes it easier to understand, so gratefully accepted the replacement.
[original blog: Dec. 2022]
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