Hello everyone,

I am having some difficulty trying to translate (Kanji) written Japanese names into English, because it could be any number of combinations. Does anyone know of any online tool where you can type in the Kanji of a Japanese name and it will give you the English (romaji)? How do any of you go about translating Japanese names when you may haave to? The name I’m having trouble translating is 大西信三, so if anybody does know what the accurate name would be in English (well, romaji) then it would be a great help if you could tell me….

You read it “Ohnishi Shinzou”(or Onishi Shinzo). Names are tough, because as long as the kanji is one of the jinmei you kanji (人名用漢字） or kanjis you can use for names (#3 is the whole list of kanjis you can use if you’re interested), you can pretty much read it the way you want it to, regardless of how it is read in a dictionary. I would think the easiest would be a Google advanced search, limiting the pages to Japanese. I recommend to learn at least how to read hiragana, though. Rarely would you find Japanese names written in romaji unless there’s a non-Japanese fan base/anticipated audience.

One possible resource is Jim Breen’s excellent dictionary site, WWWJDIC. If you put names through the “Translate Words” section, it will give you some of the most common readings for many names. For example, I put your search through and this is what it came up with:

大西信三。
* 大西 【おおにし】 Oonishi (p,s) 【おうにし】 Ounishi (s) 【おにし】 Onishi (s) 【だいさい】 Daisai (p) 【だいせい】 Daisei (p) NA
* 信三 【しんぞう】 Shinzou (g) 【のぶぞう】 Nobuzou (g) 【のぶみつ】 Nobumitsu (u) NA

BUT…. I would second what Wren has to say about both hiragana and the baffling variety of readings available for names. You’ll want to try to confirm that the reading you chose is correct, especially if you’re using this for a translation that will be read by other people. One way to check is to put the kanji and the hiragana reading into Google together. Since names are so difficult (even for Japanese!), you will often find people listed with their name’s readings right next to or after their name in kanji. So if you come across a result like the following on Google, and it sounds like your guy, then you probably picked the right name:

大西 信三（おおにし・しんぞう）さん （東京都から参加、63歳）: 大西信三さん 船に乗る前は？： OPCW（化学兵器禁止機関）という国際機関の元査察官です。 ….
www.peaceboat.org/cruise/64th/int/01.html – Cached – Similar -

The address for the “Translate Words” section on Jim Breen’s site is Here

Good luck!

Wren, thanks for the translation of that name. That is a large list of Kanji for names but I think I’ll just take your google advanced search tip as most of the time Japanese names don’t crop up too much. With the Romaji, I just meant like how you would write it in Romaji, as if your translating something into English and there are Japanese names, you’re going to need to write them in Romaji. Thanks for your advice.

Jill, Yeah Jim Breen’s dictionary is great but I didn’t realise that it could be used to translate names as I use the Densha Jisho dictionary (which is based on Jim’s dictionary) but it doesn’t translate names. I didn’t think of writing the possible hiragana combo next to the Kanji (though I should have as the Japanese Wikapedia lists the hirgana next to the Kanji if it’s the name of someone) so thanks for that tip too.

Just to mention, speaking as a professional translator…. if there’s no source for kana for a name, you just can’t know. You make your best guess, you can use the most common readings and trust it to fate, but you can’t really know, and that’s the word I’ve received back from pros in the field much longer than I’ve been.

I’ve been asked for help with say, the kanji name credits for various anime, by amateur translators, but if you don’t have a source for the pronunciation, it’s always a best guess situation. Until you know for sure, you don’t.

A lot of irregular pronounciations are used for Japanese person and place names. おおにし・しんぞう(Ohnishi Shinzou) is the most common pronunciation for this name. However it can be pronounced as たいせい　しんぞう(Taisei Shinzou) smetimes.

Hey Jeremiah, I suppose that most translations will be proofread by somebody else who may be aware if you’ve made an error with the name. There usually is a source where it comes from, so whoever you’re doing the translation for will recognise an error. Anime credits would be very tricky though and it would seem like a gaunlet to try and wade through all the names; but even official anime/asian film DVDs sometimes don’t get the sub translations correct, so there’s a decent margin of interpretation allowed….

Ken, thanks, oddly enough Taisei is what I originally thought it would be as ‘tai’ and ‘sei’ are the most common ON readings of those kanjis for ‘big’ and ‘west’.

Well I like to distinguish between a creative interpretation and something that is obviously wrong. I’ve seen plenty of both in my time as a translator.

For names, though, the degree to which they’re correct or not is directly proportional to how much support the company that created the show provides. It’s as simple as that.

And Ken’s totally right, I learned that for place names, you have to find a location through a postal code finder or something like that and read the pronunciation: you CANNOT rely on instinct. You’d wish they’d just pick one reading for the kanji for ‘county’ or ‘district’ but… they don’t. So you have to have a reference.

to be honest…. most japanese people will confirm names when they read them (by asking the person or someone who knows the person) or there will be a reading written the first time the character shows up in the book (for books and manga and stuff)

Because sometimes there are people with weird names….

Recently, there have been people who have names like 愛(らぶ)…. yes…. there is some little kid (it was registered a few years back) whose name is rabu…. (japanese pronunciation of english “love”) and the writing of her name is 愛 which anyone in their right mind would read as “ai” but that would be “incorrect” in her case, as her registered name is rabu….

sometimes I think these parents want to torture their kids….

I have a friend whose name is 米人 maito…. if you go to okinawa or hokkaido sometimes you find some weird last names especially….

the best way is to ask, to search, to utilize google….

(I always copy names into google and usually some famous person with the same last name will pop up on a Japanese wikipedia article (they always write pronunciations of the famous peoples names at the beginning)

but that COULD still be wrong….

I mean…. in olden days there were people like 小野妹子 (ono no imoko) where the no in between was put between anyone’s last and first names….

nowadays it would be read Ono imoko…. but if you read it like that and you weren’t talking about some girl that was born recently, then everyone would laugh at you and how you don’t know Japanese history.

Japanese is a crazy language…. just ask the person, or check their business card, or search the net…. after a while of meeting many japanese people, you’ll start learning the more common names/kanji….

The problem is when you can’t ask the person. I mean, there are plenty of instances in translation where if you are the translator, the client won’t allow you to contact the people involved (or do it for you). That’s when everyone has to accept some inaccuracy. Because the choices made by the client require it.