Checking your Japanese-English Translations with Google Fight

November 27, 2007 on 9:38 am | In Language | | Email This Post

Daily J is making great efforts to bring together the Japan blogger community.

（いや、ほんまに努力してんで〜）

Recently, nihonhacks.com picked up on and added to, the Learning with Google Images post we had a while back after hearing that Daily J had mentioned a NihonHacks and JapanNewbie connection. So I’m going to take the double-bait and respond to the NihonHacks post based on the JapanNewbie post that we were both made aware of via Daily J which interviewed nihonhacks recently and… – enough.

Google Fight is a website that will allow you to enter two search strings, and get back a comparison of the total number of Google search results from those searches.

Unfortunately, it apparently doesn’t work with Japanese text… But say you are translating something into English from Japanese, and are not sure of the proper way something should be said.

For example… is 遠赤外線カメラ “far infrared ray camera” or “far infrared camera?”

知るか！ That was not on JLPT 1.

You can enter these terms into Google Fight to see which one appears more frequently in a Google search result (i.e. in the universe). Be sure to link words together with hyphens, not within quotes as is one on Google. (far-infrared-ray-camera and far-infrared-camera)

Of course, you could do all this manually just by searching twice in Google, but why? Plus, you get to watch a cool animated stick figure fight if you do it with Google Fight!

Anyone got any more language related Google tips?

- Harvey

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6 Comments »

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  1. Gravatar

    Cool find! I’m going to have to dig deep to find a new trick to respond with. In a few months time we’ll end up with the ultimate Japanese google tricks list. :)

    Btw, your link to me in the article has an extra “http//” and doesn’t work.

    Comment by Thomas (nihonhacks.com) — November 27, 2007 #

  2. Gravatar

    Thanks! Fixed the link.

    Comment by harvey — November 27, 2007 #

  3. Gravatar

    Good idea!

    It would be really cool if there was a Japanese version of Google Fight. they have french and Romanian(?).

    Comment by Tori — November 28, 2007 #

  4. Gravatar

    Hey hey hey.

    I emailed one of the guys over at Mozbot (they are mentionedo on the google fight page) and asked about the possibility of a Japanese version. (I also offered that we might be of help if they needed language help. nudge nudge.)

    I just got a reply and the guy said that he would talk about it with the other creators of the tool. And he used an exclamation point! (good sign)

    Here’s hoping

    Comment by Tori — November 29, 2007 #

  5. Gravatar

    Ultimate Google translation hack (if you’re not in a hurry):

    1) Start a blog in Japanese, preferably on a Japanese site (eg. Goo, FC2, etc.) –
    2) Post some stuff, even if it’s really broken Japanese —
    3) Google: site:.jp “english diary” –
    4) Pick several from the many English blogs being written by Japanese people –
    5) Leave helpful comments on those blogs, being sure to include your blog address when asked for the URL of your own site –
    6) Chances are that some of those people will visit your blog and correct your Japanese. If so, be a nice friend and repeat from Step 5. If not, go back to Step 3 and find some more blogs.

    Comment by Michael — December 3, 2007 #

  6. Gravatar

    Sorry for how mechanical and spammy that sounds, but basically what I mean is find people who are studying English and do a language exchange. There are so many Japanese studying English by themselves who have no native English speakers to help. Likewise, many English speakers studying Japanese are likewise without support from native speakers. So if we can all get together and help each other, things are better for everyone.

    I literally have dozens of blogs I make the rounds of, helping people with their English. So many that I ran out of time to keep writing the Japanese blog I started! So if some of you will pick up the English tutoring a bit, maybe I’ll actually get back to my Japanese blog someday. :P

    Comment by Michael — December 3, 2007 #

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