Writing Description In Japanese

[Nightingale]

Hi all.

 

I am a Japanese geocacher.

It is sad to see low profile of Geocaching activity in Japan.

I suppose one reason, language barrier for non English speaker in Japan to joining Geocaching.

A potential way to boost the participation is for Groundspeak.com to allow use of local languages in description of logs and caches along with English version. I know that some cache pages are writtten in both local language and English. But I don't think that writing in Japanese characters does work in Geocaching.com site. I tested this with no success.

 

I suppose that Japanese characters are represented in two byte in computer world. I hope Geocaching.com can help in this issue.

 

Thanks.

 

[+Jamie Z]

Nightingale,

 

It's good to see foreign cachers.

 

Recently, another non-US cacher posted a similar request that cache pages be posted in the native language as well as English.

 

The topic is here.

 

Jeremy said he was looking into it, and I think it would be a good addition to the site.

 

Jamie

[+Cornix]

It should work with all modern browsers if UTF-8 encoding is used for the input page.

 

Here in the forums it's already supported:

 

日本国内地域情報ポータルサイ

 

Don't know what that means, just did a copy & paste.

 

Cornix

[+yumitori]

Unfortunately you still need the appropriate plug-in. Though I could read the characters if this machine allowed, all I can see in Cornix's post are little boxes.

 

One work-around, though not the most elegant, would be to include an image of the Nihongo in your cache descrition. If you do this, be sure to also include an English translation so that the approvers can read your submission.

[AC Student]

日本国内地域情報ポータルサイ

 

Don't know what that means, just did a copy & paste.

 

According to babelfish.altavista.com, it means

"The Japanese Zone of Interior information portal rhinoceros"

 

Hmm, I still don't know what it means.

[Nightingale]

Thank you for all responses,

 

I appreciate that multi language issue has been already discussed and considered for future develpment project.

 

I can see Cornix's Japanese post correctly.

It means "Japan local information site" But the last one character of the posted message is missing when it was copied and pasted here. I can still easily guess the missing character

[Nightingale]

More correclty this should mean "Japan local information portal site".

As the last character is missing, machine traslation did his job very honestly.

The last two characters read "Sai", It should have been "Saito" meaning "site".

Once the last character "to" is missing, the word "Sai" happens to mean "rhinoceros", an animal.

Funny enough!

[groundhog123]

Konichi wa nightingale,

 

What part of Japan are you from? I spent 1 month in Iwate Prefecture. Wow, what a beautiful country with wonderful people and culture. I sure hope to return someday as I made so many friends, spending most nights with Japanese families. A wonderful experience indeed!

[+Cornix]

Unfortunately you still need the appropriate plug-in. Though I could read the characters if this machine allowed, all I can see in Cornix's post are little boxes.

Under Windows all you need is the font "Arial Unicode MS". It comes with Microsoft Office.

 

Cornix

[+yumitori]

Sure, but if I'm reading at work I can't just choose to install additional software. The sysadmin kind of frowns on that... I understand that options exist. They just aren't always available.

 

But we're drifting from the topic. What options exist for posting Japanese characters on webpages? Are there options so that folks without the necessary plug-ins can still read the information there? Would providing Nihongo for those who can read it, and English for those who cannot, be acceptable?

 

How can we encourage more Japanese (or whatever) users within the limits currently available on geocaching.com?