The Origami Forum

I would like to know how many of you would like it if the Origami Tanteidan Magazines were in English? What do you think it will take to convince them to have english translated or bilingual text? Would it be higher cost or more subsribers....?? I would personally love to read the articles and see what the hell I'm missing there too.

An English or Bilingual version sure would be nice. I guess the main problem is that someone would have to make the translation. Automated translations from Japanese to English are completely useless, so a real person would have to do them.

I am sure they would argue for a higher cost or the need for more subscribers, but that is exactly what I would like to know. What is it that is keeping them from making the magazine more "friendly" so to speak? Would it be an extra 5$ or twice as many subscribers?

In the most recent issue (120) they state that membership is approaching 450 people. They did not give a number on subscribers (those that don't get the special edition). I would love to see a breakdown of membership by country. I'm curious if at this point the majority is outside of Japan and what the predominant languages are. In addition to a bilingual magazine, letting the members have maybe a vote for the special edition would be nice as has been mentioned in another post.

Well I guess the only way to find out about these things is contacting them and asking. It won't have any effect if we make polls on this Forum and they don't even know about that.

Well I am all for contact, but the question then becomes...what will they listen to? One email with lots of names? Important people in the origami world sending an email? Or just starting a discussion with them about what they thought and what would it take to change? Maybe that is the way to go? What do you think?

This sounds like a good idea. If we sent them a preliminary email suggesting that they consider the idea, and at least poll their subscribers to see what their customers think, that would be a good starting place. I think our best shot is to come up with reasons that providing a bilingual magazine would benefit them, an then present these ideas to them.

I personally think that their membership would really increase.

Yes, how will it be beneficial to them. If that message can be effectively pitched to them, then this may produce results. The first thing that comes to my mind, which may or may not be helpful, is free advertisement. We have this forum that has tons of international people speaking so many languages...english, polish, spanish, german, french, vietnamese, russian,...all of which know their own people/forums. They could potentially carry the message to their friends and their forums that the OTM would be in English.

This was just the first idea that came to mind about something that could be included as a "benefit". Whether or not it would go in a first or second email...i dunno.

What do you guys think?

Some time ago, I got hold of issues of a short-lived Japanese dinosaur magazine called "Dino Frontline" -- like OTM, the text was in Japanese, but the publisher also included (as an option) translations of the major articles from the magazine on separate pieces of paper. Certainly that's a cheaper way of approaching things than publishing an entire, separate issue, but in terms of cost, it might be an option, at least initially...

I like that idea! It is an additional idea to submit...The more the better. We would probably also have to brainstorm the best way to ask as well as the best person/people...

The online translators, though awful and awkward, work well enough to convey the idea of the articles in OTM.

I usually type-in the text of the articles and just run them through the translator. If the output of the sentence is okay, I leave it be. If the output is wrong, then I look up my Japanese grammar book and try to decipher.

All in all, the bulk of the work (~75%) still involves being able to transform the articles into electronic text format so you can use the translator.

I would love it if Tanteidan would make available just the text of their articles (.txt format). Maybe they can have some kind of verification functions to check if you're a paying subscriber before you're given access to the text files.

This should save them the trouble of hiring a translator, and using up extra paper to accommodate the extra english text.

But I'd still prefer bilingual if they're willing to go that route.

Yeah I don't know about typing in the articles considering the need of a special, non-QWERTY, keyboard, which I doubt many people have.

I want to work on a draft of a letter that I will post on this topic soon to see what people think and to eventually send to JOAS. Or someone else could do the same, whichever comes first. Then just go from there. I would just want to give it a shot and try and maybe we could get somewhere.

rdrutel wrote:Yeah I don't know about typing in the articles considering the need of a special, non-QWERTY, keyboard, which I doubt many people have.

You don't need a non-QWERTY keyboard to type in Kanji. Input is phonetic-based. So, if you were to type in the kanji characters for ORIGAMI, just type it as you would spell it. But that's the problem. If you do not know the phonetic spelling of a particular kanji character, then you'll have to look it up in a kanji dictionary before you can type it in. This is very tedious, and takes up a lot of time.

rdrutel wrote:I want to work on a draft of a letter that I will post on this topic soon to see what people think and to eventually send to JOAS. Or someone else could do the same, whichever comes first. Then just go from there. I would just want to give it a shot and try and maybe we could get somewhere.

That would be great! I hope Tanteidan responds favorably.

I am the person who does translation of the OTM headlines and titles. We, i.e. Hatori Koshiro-san and me, are doing most of the translation work, but Hatori-san has his own professional business as a translator and I do have my own job to do teach English and Linguistics to college students, that is, we do NOT have TIME to do the work of translating everything. Being bilingual is very nice, true, but, as the budgetary foundation of JOAS is based only on contributions from subscribers and members, we do not have any money to hire anyone　(the Yoshino-fund is for other purposes and it is on the decline). Please understand the current way of publishing it is the best we could do.

Another thing is, the OTM is published in Japan, though it is also sent abroad. Because I am a linguist and in the English Department, I do not contribute to any sort of anti-English-piracy argument, but, given that Japanese is among the top 10 of the world's most populous languages, I feel it only natural something published IN Japan using Japanese as its primary language. Origami House only manages the independent budget of the JOAS magagine, so they are just volunteering everything about the OTM, and they cannot do more about it, and we cannot use their money (which often causes confusion among people; JOAS is not managed by Yamaguchi-san or the Gallery Origami House which he owns).

That's all I could say about this.

Most of the subscribers and members are Japanese, I hear. The ratio will decrease among the purely subscribing persons, so far as I infer from the last year's General Meeting's report.

pharmjod wrote:In the most recent issue (120) they state that membership is approaching 450 people. They did not give a number on subscribers (those that don't get the special edition). I would love to see a breakdown of membership by country. I'm curious if at this point the majority is outside of Japan and what the predominant languages are. In addition to a bilingual magazine, letting the members have maybe a vote for the special edition would be nice as has been mentioned in another post.