Japanese Braille
Feb. 23rd, 2013 04:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khiemtranSo, I was flicking through one of Liem's Pokémon manga one night (as one does), and I started thinking about the little pattern of dots that appeared at the foot of the page of each new chapter. It looked to me like Braille, but I started to wonder why, when I compared the dots from chapter to chapter, there wasn't any obvious connection between the chapter name (or number) and the pattern of dots...
The first clue was that the dots for the chapters "Lucky Lucario I" and "Lucky Lucario II" looked completely different, except for the dots on the second line. Okay, so it didn't seem to be related to the name or the number (42 and 43 respectively). Next I wondered if maybe it might be something about the Pokémon or the characters involved, but there didn't seem to be any obvious pattern either.
Having failed to solve the problem simply by staring at it (an otherwise highly admirable methodology), I now needed to do some research. First of all, wikipedia revealed that while the dots fitted the pattern of six positions per character as in Braille, there were some combinations which had no mapping to English letters (even when read right-to-left, which was another possibility).
This then raised the possibility that the dots were actually Japanese Braille, where instead of Roman letters, the pattern of dots map to Japanese syllables. It's a bit harder to read than English Braille, because there are a number of symbols which modify the sounds of the preceding or following symbols, but these are all analogous to the way pronunciation changes when reading hiragana or katakana, so it's not that if you can read those already.
There was also the trick of working out whether it was read right-to-left or left-to-right (the manga itself is read form right to left pagewise), but this was easy enough to solve once I found the character ん on the right-hand side of a word (in Japanese, it represents a trailing "-n" sound, so it can't actually begin a word).
Here's the same text above decoded using the chart available on wikipedia...
GENTO KOUTETSUJIMA
NOMAKI
Which means... um... good question. To get further, we need a bit more context.
First of all, the action in this chapter takes place on an island known in English as "Iron Island" and "Tetsujima" is an obvious Japanese version of the name. I'm not sure how to translate the "kou" in front. It could mean "This", but there are also a number of other possible translations. Any help here?
Next, there is no "Gento" anywhere in the English version of the book, but I do know that the Japanese names of the characters are often quite different. My next stop was Bulbapedia, the number one Pokémon wiki on the web, which revealed that the Japanese name of one of the main characters in the chapter, Riley, was "Gen".
Knowing this, and the fact that TO can also mean "and", we get "Riley and the Iron Island".
Now there's the question of the NOMAKI at the end. It appears at the end of the pattern of dots of each chapter, so I'm guessing it means something like "the chapter of". (NO can mean "of" and I'm familiar with MAKI meaning "roll" as in "sushi roll" due to eating thousands of the things.) Google translate doesn't help, so I have to do things the old fashioned way and consult my Kodansha. It reveals that MAKI can mean scroll, book or volume, which is good enough for me.
Now, that I've got my dictionary open, I check to see how what characters can be read as KOU, but there are too many for me to narrow down at my limited level of Japanese.
So, there you have it. "The Chapter of Riley and the Iron Island" (at my best guess, at least).
The first clue was that the dots for the chapters "Lucky Lucario I" and "Lucky Lucario II" looked completely different, except for the dots on the second line. Okay, so it didn't seem to be related to the name or the number (42 and 43 respectively). Next I wondered if maybe it might be something about the Pokémon or the characters involved, but there didn't seem to be any obvious pattern either.
Having failed to solve the problem simply by staring at it (an otherwise highly admirable methodology), I now needed to do some research. First of all, wikipedia revealed that while the dots fitted the pattern of six positions per character as in Braille, there were some combinations which had no mapping to English letters (even when read right-to-left, which was another possibility).
This then raised the possibility that the dots were actually Japanese Braille, where instead of Roman letters, the pattern of dots map to Japanese syllables. It's a bit harder to read than English Braille, because there are a number of symbols which modify the sounds of the preceding or following symbols, but these are all analogous to the way pronunciation changes when reading hiragana or katakana, so it's not that if you can read those already.
There was also the trick of working out whether it was read right-to-left or left-to-right (the manga itself is read form right to left pagewise), but this was easy enough to solve once I found the character ん on the right-hand side of a word (in Japanese, it represents a trailing "-n" sound, so it can't actually begin a word).
Here's the same text above decoded using the chart available on wikipedia...
GENTO KOUTETSUJIMA
NOMAKI
Which means... um... good question. To get further, we need a bit more context.
First of all, the action in this chapter takes place on an island known in English as "Iron Island" and "Tetsujima" is an obvious Japanese version of the name. I'm not sure how to translate the "kou" in front. It could mean "This", but there are also a number of other possible translations. Any help here?
Next, there is no "Gento" anywhere in the English version of the book, but I do know that the Japanese names of the characters are often quite different. My next stop was Bulbapedia, the number one Pokémon wiki on the web, which revealed that the Japanese name of one of the main characters in the chapter, Riley, was "Gen".
Knowing this, and the fact that TO can also mean "and", we get "Riley and the Iron Island".
Now there's the question of the NOMAKI at the end. It appears at the end of the pattern of dots of each chapter, so I'm guessing it means something like "the chapter of". (NO can mean "of" and I'm familiar with MAKI meaning "roll" as in "sushi roll" due to eating thousands of the things.) Google translate doesn't help, so I have to do things the old fashioned way and consult my Kodansha. It reveals that MAKI can mean scroll, book or volume, which is good enough for me.
Now, that I've got my dictionary open, I check to see how what characters can be read as KOU, but there are too many for me to narrow down at my limited level of Japanese.
So, there you have it. "The Chapter of Riley and the Iron Island" (at my best guess, at least).
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Date: 2013-02-23 11:16 pm (UTC)Also, on Braille, there are actually Braille labels on the traffic lights on some of the major pedestrian crossings in the Sydney CBD. I thought I had a photo, but I can't find an example. Unfortunately, many of them have started to wear out and peel off after years and years. Funnily enough, not many people even know they're there, but once you know about them, you see them every time.