From: Josef 'Jupp' Schugt <jupp@...>
Date: 2003-02-27T08:37:29+09:00
Subject: Re: Internationalization (Re: embedded docs)

On Mon, 24 Feb 2003 03:52:43 +0900,
   Brian Wisti <brian@coolnamehere.com> wrote:

> On Sunday 23 February 2003 10:06 am, Seth Kurtzberg wrote:
> Of course, I'm still working on learning Japanese anyhow.  It's
> just so cool-looking ;-)

And as far as reading written language is concerned, Japanese is the
most complicated language I know of. It has three alphabets: Hira-
gana, Katakana, and Kanji.

If your goal is not to learn Japanese but only to be able to
understand documentation written in Japanese, KAKASI may help you:

KAKASI - Kanji Kana Simple Inverter  Version 2.3.4
Copyright (C) 1992-1999 Hironobu Takahashi. All rights reserved.

Usage: kakasi -a[jE] -j[aE] -g[ajE] -k[ajKH] -E[aj] -K[ajkH] -H[ajkK]
              -J[ajkKH] -i{oldjis,newjis,dec,euc,sjis}
              -o{oldjis,newjis,dec,euc,sjis} -r{hepburn,kunrei} -p -s
              -f -c"chars"  [jisyo1, jisyo2,,,]

      Character Sets:
       a: ascii  j: jisroman
       g: graphic  k: kana (j,k     defined in jisx0201)
       E: kigou  K: katakana
       H: hiragana J: kanji(E,K,H,J defined in jisx0208)

      Options:
      -i: input coding system    -o: output coding system
      -r: romaji conversion system
      -p: list all readings (with -J option)
      -s: insert separate characters (with -J option)
      -f: furigana mode (with -J option)
      -c: skip chars within jukugo (with -J option:
          default TAB CR LF BLANK)
      -C: romaji Capitalize (with -Ja or -Jj option)
      -U: romaji Upcase     (with -Ja or -Jj option)
      -u: call fflush() after 1 character output
      -w: wakatigaki mode

Kakasi relies on the libkakasi library; a libkakasi binding for Perl
does exist and IIRC I recently came across a Ruby binding.

As far as information on the web is concerned there is a
Japanese-rewriting Proxy called 'japana' written in Perl that makes
use of libkakasi to convert Japanese Web pages to Roma-ji (latin
transliteration). Warning: That does not solve all problems; any
graphical elements (that may show Japanese text) are of course left
untranslated.

HTH

Josef 'Jupp' Schugt