English to Eastern Language Translations

[Fry Daddy]

Does anyone have a resource to translate english phrases into Chinese/Japanese/Korean, etc. phonetic language (i.e. not written character translations)?)

For example, if I have a Chinese character named "Speed Shadow" in English, what would be the Chinese pronunciation of that name? How would you spell it out with the english alphabet?

Thanks.

[ShinDangaioh]

Speed Shadow in Mandarin Chinese - Su du Ying ji
Speed Shadow in Cantonese Chinese-Chuk douh Ying zi
Speed Shadow in Japanese-Sokudo Kage

[Tim]

Here's one for you.

How Would you say "Pretty Quick" in Japanese? I have a teen heroine by that name, and I'd like to be able to keep the double meaning if possible.

ie: Cute and Fast

TimS.

[Lord Liaden]

Originally posted by Tim
Here's one for you.

How Would you say "Pretty Quick" in Japanese? I have a teen heroine by that name, and I'd like to be able to keep the double meaning if possible.

ie: Cute and Fast

TimS.

I know almost no Japanese, but I'm going to take on the challenge of figuring it out using deductive reasoning. :cool:

I know that "kawaii" means "cute" in Japanese - there was a Champions villain by that name in Villainy Unbound. And since "kage" means "shadow" (I know that from the great Kurosawa film Kagemusha), I'm guessing that "sokudo" from ShinDangaioh's example of "Sokudo Kage" above is the "speed" part of "Speed Shadow."

So, I'm going to take a guess that "Pretty Quick" would translate as "Kawaii Sokudo." Anyone care to tell me how far off I am? :rolleyes:

[Lightray]

Googling for online translators is one of my hobbies. I usually go to these sites for:

Japanese
http://linear.mv.com/cgi-bin/j-e/dict

Chinese (Pinyin, really)
http://www.mandarintools.com/chardict.html

[Insaniac99]

this is a good free multilingual translation site:

http://babelfish.altavista.com/

[Captain Obvious]

Your double meaning won't remain, Tim. English is unusual in that "attractive" and "relatively" can both be expressed in one word.

I've found that most online translators are fairly good for western European languages, and fairly bad for eastern Asian languages. Some people at work were bored one day and used babelfish to come up with their own answers to engrish.com by translating from English to Japanese and back again....

[Tim]

I didn't expect it to really. :(

I think Japanese would be one that would appreciate the double meaning though.

TimS.

[altamaros]

Originally posted by Fry Daddy
For example, if I have a Chinese character named "Speed Shadow" in English, what would be the Chinese pronunciation of that name? How would you spell it out with the english alphabet?

Thanks.
For chinese at least, i rely solely on this one : http://www.zhongwen.com/
hope this helps

[Fry Daddy]

Thanks, everyone. This really helps me a lot. I appreciate the feedback.