Anyone speak japanese?

[EvilChihuahua]

In my comic this monday, my main character will hit on a japanese schoolg1rl. (I'm doing a little bit of a MT parody at the moment) However, he'll find that this schoolgirl can't speak english.This throws him off, and he leaves.

Anyway, when he say's hi, she'll turn and say "nani?" (Which I think means "what?" but I could be wrong.) in a rather unimpressed fashion.

When he runs off, she get's a little ticked off and yells at him. I'll be using subtitles, but I thought it'd be cool if the actual dialogue is authentic.

...So, anyone want to give me a hand and write me some japanese dialogue? I was thinking something along the lines of "Yes, leave us strange one! Go back to your land of poutine and bad music!" But as long as the general gist is the same, feel free to think up your own stuff.

[Black Sparrow]

I only took japanese for one year, so I won't be much help to you. But if you want it REALLY authentic, try to use hiragana and kanji, instead of the romaji spellings. I don't know how you'd pull it off, but I suspect you could ask the same person you get to do your translations.

But I do know that "nani" does in fact mean "what" in a casual scenario!

[EvilChihuahua]

Yeah, I could try just sticking what I want into lfish, but then I'd have to copy out how all the tiny symbols look, 'cause I don't have a japanese font.

[Sincerely]

Put it into the translating program and then take a screencap and you won't have to copy the characters, just stick 'em into a speech bubble in photoshop or whatever program you use.

[Mercury Hat]

There are plenty of free Japanese fonts online, here's a page with some: http://www.wazu.jp/gallery/Fonts_Japanese.html

I use GT2000 to render things properly in Firefox, but there are a few on that page that look more comicky.

However, for anything more than a basic two or three word sentence, online translators suck terribly.

[Above Man]

However, for anything more than a basic two or three word sentence, online translators suck terribly.

Which works. It'll look right to anyone that doesn't read Japanese, and for those that do it'll be funny as hell because it sounds so terrible. Everybody wins.

[Ladycheru]

I've been taking Japanese for 4 years. I'll admit, I'm not great but how many people who can speak Japanese are actually going to be reading it?

What (Nani) would look like this: なに？

"Yes, leave us strange one! Go back to your land of poutine and bad music!"　would look something like this.

去れ、ださお!　君のプーティンとだめな音楽の国へ帰れ! (Very pissed)

去って、変な外人!　あなたのプーティンとだめな音楽の国へ帰って! (A little ticked)

There are a few things about it, however. First of all, I'm not exactly certain how "poutine" is pronounced. (I think it's like poo-teen...) I'm pretty sure that the Japanese don't have a word for it. I don't even think the Japanese would even know what it is. (Though I do think it's a funny line, so in spite of that, I would keep it ^_~) So, pretty much, I just guessed on that word. The other thing it that between the general weirdness and simplicity of the Japanese language and my lack of knowledge about it, it translates roughly into: "Leave, dorky boy! Return to your country of poutine and bad music!" (In the one that's only a little ticked, she calls him a weird foreigner, and not a dorky boy.)

I know, it might not be perfect, but most likely (being that your audience is primarily English-speaking) it will be good enough.

Also if you can't read it, try changing the encoding on your browser to Japanese. If that doesn't work, I could send these phrases to you in an image file. ^^

[EvilChihuahua]

Also if you can't read it, try changing the encoding on your browser to Japanese. If that doesn't work, I could send these phrases to you in an image file. ^^

I can read it, but as soon as I try to copy it into another program it turns into little squares. the image would be much appreciated.

Oh, and I realized this comic isn't going up until next monday, so no rush.

[Ladycheru]

Would you possibly happen to have a rough sketch of the page? It'd just help me, so I know what kind of size I need. Though, I guess if you told me the font size you use, it'd probably fit if I made the text as even as possible... Either is fine.

[EvilChihuahua]

I can just adjust the size in photoshop. But generally, the text bubbles aren't any wider than 200 px.

[Ladycheru]

Enjoy!

[Kirb]

プーティンw

Thank god for katakana.

[EvilChihuahua]

Thanks!