Comments on Japanese Name Translation Article
By Dennis Nance
The article's description of translation of Western names
(i.e. David) is not correct. Western names are usually only translated into
katakana, since appropriating various kanji for a name would have no meaning
to a Japanese speaker. With katakana, the phonetic pronunciation of the name
is clear. Since kanji have many pronunciations in Japanese, it is impossible
to pronounce a Western name translated into Japanese (unless it happens to
be a name that is a commonly used Japanese word, like "Hana" or "Ken"). It
is possible to find kanji with similar sounds in a Western name, but as you
mentioned, this is mainly used because kanji is so popular amoung
Westerners.
I see that this information is taken from a site external to Takanori
Tomita's homepage. Mr. Tomita explains how this type of translation is not
common in his main page:
"The purely denotative translation method focus solely on preserving the
meaning of the original English name, but it is NOT appropriate to use this
method for writing names in Japanese symbols."
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