Translating Japanese Place Names

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Soc it!

Posted by Deas 445 days ago in Teaching English

Former CIR Aaron wrote a very nice post about the problems one faces when translating place names in Japan into English. Even Google is doing it wrong! His suggestions for knocking off the extra "city" or "town" make a lot of sense to me, and so does his reasoning about tautological place names and their aesthetic optimums.

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4 comments

Written by Nick, 445 days ago.

Good points he's raised there. Let me ask you though, when you write your address in romaji (e.g. for an online shopping site), do you add -shi, -ken, etc. or leave theme off? Personally, I've started leaving them off.

Written by Deas, 445 days ago.

I am really inconsistent in this, honestly. It bugs me - but I tend to include the suffixes when giving my address to people, and to exclude the suffixes when using an online shopping site. I don't know why. I'm a freak, what can I say? :-)