Changing the size of numbers: 全数字 to 半数字 Thread poster: Allyson Sigman
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Allyson Sigman
United States
Local time: 20:10
Member (2018)
Japanese to English
+ ...
I have a question about whether or not one should change numbers when translating documents. What I mean is as follows:
I do translation mostly from Japanese to English. On technical documents I will often have a chart with lots of numbers in it. When you are using a Japanese IME, the numbers generally come out in full-width alphanumeric characters 全数字(８) as opposed to half-width 半数字(8). When the whole document is translated into English, the full-width characters tha... See more I have a question about whether or not one should change numbers when translating documents. What I mean is as follows:
I do translation mostly from Japanese to English. On technical documents I will often have a chart with lots of numbers in it. When you are using a Japanese IME, the numbers generally come out in full-width alphanumeric characters 全数字(８) as opposed to half-width 半数字(8). When the whole document is translated into English, the full-width characters that were inputed with the Japanese IME look a little out of place. Is it my responsibility to go through and change them all? ▲ Collapse
| | | | English2Korean 
United Kingdom
Local time: 01:10
Member (2008)
English to Korean
+ ...
In case of CJK(Chnise, Japanese and Korean), the characters of their own are full-size(全数字). In this context, they have other full-size charactes found in the Roman alphabet system, such as punctuation marks, Arabic numbers and Roman alphabets themselves!!!
As you don't use the full-size Roman alphabets in English, I don't think you can use the full-size marks or Arabic numbers in English.
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English2Korean wrote:
In case of CJK(Chnise, Japanese and Korean), the characters of their own are full-size(全数字). In this context, they have other full-size charactes found in the Roman alphabet system, such as punctuation marks, Arabic numbers and Roman alphabets themselves!!!
As you don't use the full-size Roman alphabets in English, I don't think you can use the full-size marks or Arabic numbers in English.
Like English2Korean wrote above, full size （全角文字）cannot be used on English and other western language documents where the characters are all 半角文字. If I'm not mistaken, they would be garbled （文字化け）, unless the other user has a Japanese OS installed. This generally applies to Word and Excel format, but if you are delivering a PDF file, that's an exception.
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I remember facing big troubles when I forget to change some 全角 into 半角.
If you are using some TM like trados and you forget some signs or digit, you may face some errors during the cleaning of the documents.
As Yasumoto Kanazawa wrote too, European word and excel (especially the old version) will not even recognize thee 全角.
I hope this will help
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Allyson Sigman
United States
Local time: 20:10
Member (2018)
Japanese to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
This makes a lot of sense, thank you. I have had the Japanese language pack on my computer for so long I forgot that not everyone does.
One related question, if you don't mind. Is it the same for letters? If I have some words that are written in English like 「ＳＰＥＣ」should I change it to "SPEC"? Will this also get messed up if the person doesn't have the language pack?
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allysonroad wrote:
This makes a lot of sense, thank you. I have had the Japanese language pack on my computer for so long I forgot that not everyone does.
One related question, if you don't mind. Is it the same for letters? If I have some words that are written in English like 「ＳＰＥＣ」should I change it to "SPEC"? Will this also get messed up if the person doesn't have the language pack?
I’d say you definitely need to change these as well.
Actually you never actually needed the full language pack to display full-width characters; you just need the right fonts. So they shouldn’t actually look garbled; but they either will look unprofessional (since the spacing will be completely wrong) or they will show up as blanks or some other placeholder character.
| | | | | Definitely: YES | Jul 29, 2011 |
YES, most definitely you need to change all 全角 characters to 半角.
That being said, if you are using Word (i.e. TRADOS 2007(or some other CAT tool) and producing bilingual MSWord (.doc) documents), then I have created a Word macro that goes through the document and identifies/highlights all 全角文字. I created for precisely this situation, because I always find stray numbers or punctuation that is 全角, and it was a pain trying to find them in large documents!
... See more YES, most definitely you need to change all 全角 characters to 半角.
That being said, if you are using Word (i.e. TRADOS 2007(or some other CAT tool) and producing bilingual MSWord (.doc) documents), then I have created a Word macro that goes through the document and identifies/highlights all 全角文字. I created for precisely this situation, because I always find stray numbers or punctuation that is 全角, and it was a pain trying to find them in large documents!
If you like I can give you the macro as an Add-in for Word so you can use it...? Right now, it only finds and highlights 全角文字, and then I have to change them manually...however, I think I can modify the macro to substitute the equivalent 半角文字 for each character...(that's an excellent idea). It would take a few days/maybe a week to code and debug, but let me know if you think it is something you want to use!
You can see the code for this macro on the new Web site I am building, here:
http://transl8tools.mlgrant.com/index.php/vba-code-category/44-finddbcs
By the way, don't forget that there are 半角 forms of Hiragana/Katakana also! The macro can identify these as well!
MGrant
[Edited at 2011-07-29 05:39 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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