Japanese Language Pak question.

[Rei-San]

I know a desent amout of japanese, so I want to install a japanese language pak on my computer so it can display japanese characters clearly (and hopefully gives me the abillity to type characters myself somehow). But I can't because my parents are afraid it takes up to much space on the computer. If I can prove to them that it dosen't take up to much space, then they might let me install it, However I can't find out how. I guess to make a long story short, does anyone know the size of the japanese language pak, or at least how to find out myself? http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_confused.gif

[darthsaber9x9]

Jesus, the language pack's are tiny! According to the microsoft website, it's about 2.5 MB for the Language pack. However I suspect you want the Japanese IME, which is here (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=CEED31CD-15A9-4B86-AFE5-E77A095599F3&displaylang=en ). It's 52 MB which still isn't much unless you have a complete dinosaur of a computer.

It says on that site what the size of the file is.

[Blitzkommando]

As for the language packs on Microsoft's website. The 2.5MB language pack is simply the ability to view Japanese characters, nothing more. The IME link is only recommended for systems not running Windows XP or Windows 2000.


"IMPORTANT This download is the Microsoft Office version of the Global IME (Japanese) IME. Microsoft Windows® also contains a version of this IME. If you are running Microsoft Windows® 2000, Microsoft Windows® XP, or Microsoft Windows® Server 2003, you do not need to download the Global IME (Japanese). We recommend that you use the Windows version of this IME instead."

Doing it through Windows as I said allows you to type in any application that supports Japanese to do so. It also does the job of the other two as well, such as enabling the reading of Japanese (And Chinese and Korean) sites as well as typing in Microsoft Office applications.

Installed the East Asian languages take up nearly 200MB. This includes support for Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Korean, and Japanese. It also installs the IME for those languages. It can be done through the Control Panel by selecting Regional and Language Options, and selecting the Language tab and selecting "Install files for East Asian Languages". This will require the original Windows CD as well as a restart of the computer once it is finished.

To enable typing in Japanese click the "Details..." button on the Language tab. Click the "Add..." button and select Japanese IME Standard 2002. To type in Japanese you'll notice the Language Bar down near the clock on the taskbar. Click where it says "EN" (If you have your PC set to English, ES for Spanish, FR for French, DE for German, etc. depending on what language your Windows is installed in changes the default) and a list will come up with Japanese on the list. (Protip: An even easier way is by simply pressing "ALT+SHIFT" to cycle through the languages for input on your computer. In my case pressing it once brings Russian, again brings Japanese, and again sets it back to English.)

Now, after selecting Japanese it will only work in whatever program you changed the input on that was in the foreground. Ergo, if you were using Notepad and minimized it, it would be back to English. To type between Japanese and Roman characters use the combination "ALT+~". There are a number of other settings, such as dictionaries in Windows for autoselecting preferred type of text (Such as bias for names over speech) for Japanese.

Japanese is a completely different method for interfacing with your computer from non-East Asian languages. This is mostly because Japanese has so many characters that all are typed with the same letters. Typing in "a" gets you a huge slew of possible outcomes and you can select through them with the spacebar or arrow keys. The various choices will always have at least the option of "Hiragana" and the "Katakana" versions of the characters to which you typed. Much of the time you will also get "Kanji" as well. Something key about Japanese is that you know exactly how the Kanji is spelled in order to get the correct character. A typo will result in completely different, and completely wrong, results.

I feel I should also mention how to do long vowels in Japanese through typing as it can be a bit complicated if you go by some transliterations (converting from Japanese characters to Latin [Roman] characters).

For example: Long "o" words generally are made by typing in "ou" and not "oo". Long vowels in typing should be done, for doing Kanji, as duplicates. What I mean is instead of "ko-shu-" it should be typed as "koushuu" (beetle if you were wondering). It goes the same for all long vowels for words in Kanji. HOWEVER, for words meant to be typed in Katakana you would use the "-" key for long vowels. Another note on a similar area is when a word has been written as an 'n' followed by an apostrophe it should be typed as two 'n's. (zen'i = zenni)

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Norvekh on 2006-11-18 13:11 ]</font>

[opaopajr]

parents are often afraid of changing things on computers. they're afraid if you hit the wrong button you'll start nuclear winter or, worse yet, blow up the house. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif i'm sure your computer has a few gigs lying empty, which is more than several times enough to install the pak.

[Rei-San]

Thanks everyone, I have it installed. And I got the hang of it, too. I'm still trying to figure out how to type in Kanji without being on the microsoft office program, but i'll get to it eventually.