Blog in English

Do you care for breakfast or afternoon tea?

The word “breakfast” popped into my mind while interpreting the #idiom “It’s a piece of cake” during a business meeting. We say “[something can be done] even before breakfast (Asameshi mae/朝飯前)” to describe something very easy. I was happy

Watch Your Tongue!

💥 Wars, famine, fatal infections … we are witnessing obnoxiously grotesque happenings every day. Human suffering is everywhere. In the media, you tend to hear stale expressions such as ✳ (something) is beyond description, beyond words, ind

A “Big Care” Can Be a Nuisance

Do you know the term “double duty carer“? This term refers to those who care for their aged parents while raising their own children. Child care + nursing care = double duty care In Japanese, we have two different terms for these types of

Lady Murasaki Speaking Mandarin and the Language of the Wild East

As a literary enthusiast, I’m somewhat hooked by this year’s Taiga drama by NHK 📺, “Hikaru no Kimi he (#光の君へ / Dear Radiance)” featuring Murasaki Shikbu (紫式部). She wrote the Tale of Genji (源氏物語, Genji Monogatari), the epic 11th-century roma

The Right Footware for Interperters

Following my New Year’s resolution to hit the road more often as an #interpreter, I bought a new pair of shoes for #business #travel. The picture here shows my purchase – what I call “hybrid” shoes - hybrid because they suit both business

Deciphering Archaic Texts Full of Katakana

Japanese schoolkids can be envious of European ones when it comes to one thing. Instead of learning only 26 (30 in German) letters of the alphabet, they need to learn three different sets of characters. First they learn Hiragana ひらがな and t

Names are people’s identity

Encouraged by the positive feedback on my recent post in an SNS about hard-to-decipher Japanese names, I would like to explore this subject further. In actual fact, Japanese names aren’t the only ones that are difficult to translate. German

Annoying Homonyms!

Let me write about how annoying #homonyms in the #Japanese language can be. ✅ Case Study The story comes back to my recent interpreting assignment in an industrial context. After weeks of hard work installing and commissioning a machine,

2024 - The Year of Affluence

Today is the fifth (!) Thursday of the month. The calendar seems to be pretty full for February. Yes, 2024 is a #leap #year. It’s called “# Schaltjahr ” in German and “ #閏年 Uru-u-doshi” in Japanese. 閏 consists of Chinese characters for a

The Difficulty of Translating YES and NO into Japanese

Imagine you are translating specification tables containing YES and NO by the dozen. But all you have is an excel file with random entries of terms without any context. 🤷‍♀ Obviously, their straight translations, #はい and #いいえ do not work h

Pillar - The 1,300 Year-Old Counter Word

A pair of glasses, pants, trousers and scissors… In this context, the word “pair” is a sort of counter word in English. Do you know the counter word for these nouns in Japanese? Answer => They are counted with the word 本 (hon) [although 挺

(Belated) New Year's Resolution

I spent the holidays at the end of the year in Japan. It was a time for a happy family reunion, rest and recouperation. But it also gave me the opportunity to reflect on myself. Last year marked a big change in my family life. My child mov

International Day of Libraries!

On 24 October many countries, including Germany, celebrate public libraries as social assets. To mark the occasion, I would like to share a picture of the Ishikawa Prefectural Library (石川県立図書館) from a photo collection from my last visit to

A Metaphor-Ridden Use of Brushes

Brushes were the main writing instrument in Japan for over 1,000 years. Only in last 120 years or so did brushes give way to fountain pens and other Western writing tools, before being taken over by so-called “word processors (ワープロ)” and PC

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