Hi! Having studied Japanese for over 4 years, the answer to your
question is not completely straightforward, but I'll try to keep it as
concise as possible. One of the best Japanese-English dictionaries
online is http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/jwb/wwwjdic?1C,
but due to the complexities of Japanese grammar, some explanation is
needed. You will have to input "without" by itself and then "Jesus" by
itself to get the two separate words.
First, not all Japanese words or phrases are expressed by a single
kanji or several kanji. Generally, kanji represents either a noun,
verb stem or adjective. The problem with "without Jesus" is that there
is a huge disparity between your tattoo being grammatically correct
and being literally correct.
Also, translation of "without Jesus" will most likely involve hiragana
and katakana, which are the phonetic Japanese alphabets. Because the
word Jesus is not of Japanese (or Chinese) descent, it would be
technically correct to use katakana, although there is an archaic
kanji that was also used to designate Jesus, from the early days of
Christianity in Japan. Note that in my experience, the word "Christ"
was used more frequently than "Jesus" in the Japanese language, but
that does not exclude the use of the word "Jesus."
The word "without" is technically "sezu", but grammatically, it would
rarely be used in a phrase such as "confused without Jesus". Because
"without" is a grammatical construction, it is spelled out in
hiragana.
Frankly, I'm not sure how important it is to you to be completely
grammtically correct, but I would be glad to literally translate it
for you should you request clarification.
In my opinion, however, it would look better aesthetically if you
simply use the direct translation. So, when you go to the URL that I
designated above and you input "without" into the search bar, use the
second result down (which will be in hiragana). When you input "Jesus"
you can choose whether you want the archaic form (which is kanji) or
the modern form (which is katakana).
When showing the images to your tattoo artist, please note that the
hiragana and katakana characters should take up the same amount of
space as the kanji (imagine that each is drawn within identically
sized boxes).
Please feel free to request clarification if you want your tattoo to
be grammatically correct.
Search Strategy:
"Japanese English Dictionary Online"
Hope this helps! This dictionary can be used to find any word you
might want from English to Japanese.
leeann-ga |
Request for Answer Clarification by
fusconed-ga
on
06 Nov 2002 15:24 PST
Thanks for the multitude of information.
To clarify, I'm looking to have the tattoo added to so that it
essentially means "confused without Jesus." I would like to do that
in the best looking way possible, so that seems to me that it would be
best looking by remaining purely with kanji if at all possible. So
something not necessarily translated as "without Jesus," but meaning
that such as "confused lacking Christ" or "confused missing Christ" or
"confused not having Christ" would be sufficient. I would like it to
be gramatically correct, so that if someone fluent in the language
sees it, they understand it and for everyone else, I can just say that
it means "confused without Christ."
So if you could direct me to the kanji symbols for the words I need to
make this all work out, that'd be great.
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Clarification of Answer by
leeann-ga
on
07 Nov 2002 07:07 PST
Okay, I think you are going to have to compromise on the grammatical
side for the aesthetics, simply because Japanese grammatical
constructions tend to be quite lengthy and hiragana-filled; however,
we can do this in such a way that Japanese people would understand
what you mean. I also recommend using the archaic version of Jesus for
the nice kanji. A little bit of hiragana is unavoidable.
There are two ways you can do this depending on how precise you want
the translation that I think will look okay. It also may depend where
exactly you have your "confused" tattoo because Japanese phrases are
written somewhat "backwards" (i.e. they would say "without out god,
confused."
1. Literally means "Instead of Jesus, Confused." This can be done 2
ways, one of which is more grammatically correct. Aesthetically has
the fewest number of non-kanji characters, but the grammar is pretty
shaky.
a. "confused" "without" "Jesus" (not more grammatically correct but
depending on where your tattoo is and how expandable it is, this may
be the only option)
b. "without" "Jesus" "confused" (somwhat more grammatically correct)
2. This is a much more grammatically correct and I suggest doing it
this way if you are willing to have more hiragana. Literally means
"Jesus is not here, confused" but contextually it would translate
"Because Jesus is not here (connotation of without), I am confused."
This leans towards making Jesus a possessive thing rather than simply
saying, "Jesus is not here." Please note that "ga" "nai" and "no" with
be 4 hiragana characters. There are also two ways to do this.
a. "Jesus" "ga" "nai" "no" (insert small space) "confused"
b. "confused" (insert small space) "Jesus" "ga" "nai" "no"
So in order to find all the various words within quotes in Japanese,
go to:
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/jwb/wwwjdic?1C or do a
google search for Jim Breen's WWWDJIC Server and it is the first
result (then click on link for the dictionary).
You will see a search box.
For the word "Jesus," simply type it in and the archaic form is the
first result.
For the word "without," simply type it in and it is the second result.
For the words "ga" "nai" and "no", you will have to check the option
to put in Japanese romanji (VERY important). Input each of these
separately (i.e. do not just type in ga nai no, but rather do a fresh
search for each one). To find the character, look for the Search Key
above the results and the character will be there.
i.e. Search Key: [symbol]
Good luck! I know this is all a bit confusing, but please feel free to
ask for clarification again.
leeann-ga
P.S. Just a thought -- The Japanese and Chinese share many of the same
characters. If you want ALL kanji, you could do it in Chinese (after
all, kanji are really Chinese characters that the Japanese borrowed)
completely, though only older Japanese would know the meaning. Chinese
grammatical constructions are also much more straightforward, but the
Japanese phrase I recommended is much more poetic (albeit more
expensive I imagine...)
|
Request for Answer Clarification by
fusconed-ga
on
07 Nov 2002 09:24 PST
Okay, maybe I should have started out by posting this clarification in
the original answer. I've drawn an image of the current tattoo I
have, which is on the at the top of my right arm. I've drawn this
because using the search engine you gave me, I can't find these
markings searching for anything like "confused" or "confusion" or
anything. So maybe you could tell me if this even means confused and
if it's kanji or hiragana or something else. Then using this, perhaps
you could clarify the most appropriate addition.
Also, in reading your clarification below, it appears as though the
meaning under "2." of "Because Jesus is not here, I am confused" would
lead people to the wrong impression about me. So allow me to clarify
the meaning I want to portray. I want someone fluent in the language
to see my tattoo and read "If I didn't have Jesus, I would be
confused," but hopefully paraphrasing that to as few symbols as
possible.
Thanks again for all of your help so far.
|
Request for Answer Clarification by
fusconed-ga
on
07 Nov 2002 09:25 PST
I forgot to post the image of my current tattoo:
http://www.geocities.com/fusconed/index.html
|
Clarification of Answer by
leeann-ga
on
07 Nov 2002 10:54 PST
Hi again! Okay, the character you posted does not mean confused per
se. It is closer to "wander" or "doubtful." I think it will still work
with what you want to say though. Now, a big problem is the location
of your tattoo because grammatically, your current tattoo should be
the last character. (By the way, your tattoo is Kanji). Another
problem is that to get the nuances of what you want to get across
requires some more complex grammar constructions, which would lengthen
the phrase to such a point that you would have a huge sentence
sprawling down your arm. I am assuming that you don't want that to
happen.
So, given those problems, the full phrase would have to be
constructed:
"wander/doubtful" "ni" "naru" (insert small comma) "Jesus" "ga" "nai"
Which is the simplest way to say it grammatically correct. Because
Japanese does not have as the same tense structure as English, they
use context and grammatical constructions to clarify the tense, so by
using the simplest tense, it can still mean "If there were no Jesus, I
would become doubtful/confused." However, I imagine that this is much
too long as it would be a total of something ridiculous like 10
characters.
Now, we can eliminate the prepositions (which would be like elminating
a, the, etc...) which will make it a little harder for a native
japanese person to translate, but will be clearer than what I had
recommended before. So the sentence would be as follows:
"wander/doubtful" "naru" (insert small comma and space) "Jesus" "nai"
Which is like saying literally "Without having Jesus, I become
wandering/doubtful" Of course, with the way Japanese works, these
tenses are flexible, and this form can take on the future tense (as
there is no formal future tense conjugation of the verbs). So this can
also be translated as "Without having Jesus, I will/would become
wandering/doubtful" which is the closes we are going to get! This
would be an additional 6 characters (if I counted correctly, 2 kanji
and 4 hiragana). This is the shortest I can think of making this.
Please note that hiragana is very simple and would not be as time
consuming or ink consuming as kanji, which are much more detailed.
This construction, however, is open ended enough that a native
Japanese speaker would probably construe what you want to portray.
Just go back to the dictionary site I sent you to and look up "naru"
(remember to check the second box to search for romanji) to find the
images.
Just a reminder that Japanese is written from top to bottom, so all of
these characters will be stacked underneath the first tattoo you have
and work down your arm. The comma should even occuppy its own little
space, but placed towards the right. See example (the box is a
character):
I----I
I I
I----I
,
I hope this solves everything!
leeann-ga
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Clarification of Answer by
leeann-ga
on
07 Nov 2002 11:01 PST
P.S.
The most prolific translations of "Jesus" in modern times are:
"ieyesu"
"kurisuto"
"ieyesu kurisuto"
Look up "Christ" in the dictionary for those options, although it will
extend the number of characters by one or two more. Just wanted to let
you be aware that the archaic spelling is phonetic, not very well
known to native japanese speakers, but is also legitimate. For
aesthetic reasons though, you may want to stick with it.
leeann-ga
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