What is the focus of the Honyaku list?

This question is occasionally debated on the list, but hasn't been resolved. Many feel that the list should be kept tightly focused on specific terminology- and translation-related questions; that the list should serve as a tool for getting jobs out the door quickly. Others like to use the list to discuss more peripheral issues, such as getting Japanese-processing capability on one's computer, discussing office set-ups and practices, and general socializing. This difference has occasionally caused members of the list to consider splitting the list into one list for hard-core translation questions, and another for socializing. So far, this hasn't happened, as the list-splitters have not achieved a majority and in any case, it would make more work for Dan, the list administrator. Also, since Honyaku moved to a fairly expensive service that specializes in running mailing lists, it seems very unlikely to happen. To accomodate everyone, a number of tips on posting style have evolved. See the section below, "Is there a preferred format for posts".

Regardless of whether you feel the list should have a tight or loose focus, there are a lot of issues that keep coming up, and many people justifiably feel that rehashing the same problems is a waste of bandwidth on the list. (As previously mentioned, one of these issues is using Japanese on computers, but there are others.) Although this FAQ is nominally the place for the answers for all these questions to be stored, the range of issues is too great for a FAQ to handle properly. One suggestion that we would like to pursue is that people knowledgeable in a specific subject area would write up an informative document on that subject. This would create a standing "knowledge base" for the list members. These documents would be available to Honyaku members the same way the FAQ is, but would address these other issues in more detail than this FAQ can handle. If you would like to contribute an article, mention it on the list. Note: I (Adam Rice), am the person to contact if you want to contribute to this project.

Are there any restrictions on what I can post?

Generally, the only restriction is that your post should pertain to translation between Japanese and English. Please don't cross-post information from other lists or Usenet newsgroups unless it relates directly to discussion on the list. Since the list is concerned with the use of language, we sometimes do discuss crude language, but we still try to be polite about it.

Newcomers to the Internet inevitably get scared by one of the numerous hoax virus warnings on the Internet, like the "Good Times" virus, and pass along the warning to Honyaku. Unless the rumour can be substantiated, don't pass it along.

Whenever you run into a translation-related question, it may be tempting to post that question to the list. But Honyaku is a very busy place, so try to be a good Honyaku "citizen" by keeping traffic down. Stop and try to exhaust your own resources first. If it is not a terminology-related question, it might be answered in this FAQ, or somewhere on the web (the Honyaku home page might help). For terminology questions, you might try searching for the term through one of the web search engines. And if you have a big hard disk and really want to go the extra mile, you can download the entire Honyaku archive to your hard disk and search through that on your computer (a number of Honyakkers do this already). Often your question has been asked before. The same questions do come up now and then. This doesn't mean that it isn't OK to ask them again: the membership of the list changes, and new people can bring new insights. It is possible that there was no satisfactory resolution to the question in the past.

Advertising, commercial postings, or publicity is OK within certain limits. Your product or service should be directly related to translation. Dan recommends that you should limit the post to about a screenful of text and invite people to contact you directly for more information. He also recommends that if you are worried about catching flack for posting an ad, then you should clear it with him first.

Although it is acceptable to recruit translators to do pro-bono work for good causes, it is not acceptable to send out personal requests asking members of the list to do work for free (such as personal letters, homework assignments, etc). This is a list for professional translators doing professional work.

Offering or soliciting translation work is not merely OK, but positively encouraged.

How should I format my posts?

The honyaku list, as you will learn (if you haven't already), is a very active one, and is meant to be a tool for professional translators. As such, we have gradually evolved a bunch of practices to make the list work more efficiently. The list below is admittedly long, and can only be thought of as suggestions, not rules, but I'll go out on a limb here and say that most of these suggestions would be appropriate for just about any mailing list. The guiding principle behind all these suggestions is to make your posts more convenient for everyone else. The extra work you put into writing your message is paid back many times over by the hundreds of people who will have an easier time reading it.

• Use informative subject lines. This will make it easier for people who are interested in your topic to find your message in all the message traffic, and for those who aren't to ignore it. Do not use subject lines that read "Subject: help please" or something vague like that. Instead, use something like "Subject: Manufacturing term--jisshi bairitsu"
• Try to keep the subject line the same when responding to a post. This will help keep message threads together. Your e-mail software will add "Re:" in front, which is OK, but other than that, you shouldn't modify the subject line. It is OK to add [T] (for "thanks") or [wrap-up] when posting a wrap-up of a discussion. It is also OK to add something like [humorous aside] or [comment] when posting something that does not follow the thread directly but is related.
• Again on the subject of subject lines, it is a good idea to change the subject line if you are diverging from the original subject onto a new tangent. In cases like this, it is helpful to indicate what the old subject was, in this fashion:
  Subject: Prefecture names (was: economics language)
• If you are creating a new post (not responding to a previous post), do not create the new message by hitting "reply" to an existing post,as that can mess up the message threading in many mail programs.
• Finally, regarding subject lines: They should be in English. Even some Japanese e-mail software does not decode Japanese in the message header (which includes subject lines, your e-mail address, etc). Also, now that Honyaku is being archived at InReference, it is a good idea to ensure that you have useful keywords in English, either in your subject lines or somewhere in the body of your message, because InReference does not yet support Japanese searches.
• The etiquette of the Honyaku list is slightly more Japanese than other Internet discussion groups. Questioners frequently post thank-you notes after their queries have been answered. Since most of the questions regard the correct English translations of Japanese words, the thank-you note is a useful place to give a synopsis of what you have learned. For instance, if your field is not electrical engineering, you might choose to ignore the discussion on atchaku tanshi until the subject "atchaku tanshi [T]" appears, where a synopsis useful to save and archive appears.
• When posting a reply to a question, include a short synopsis or quotation of the original question. (Many people mark quotations with > or | symbols in the left margin.) Translators are frequently busy with rush jobs which prevent them from reading Honyaku mail every day. The busiest are often the veterans whose replies add greatest value to the discussions on the list. Synopses make it easier for everyone to contribute more easily. Do not, however, quote back the entire original message; only excerpts or summaries, please.
• Also, don't reply to a question unless you are pretty sure you are right, or you have something to add to the conversation. The Honyaku list is big enough that we have experts on a lot of subjects. If you aren't an expert on a given subject, someone else probably is. If a couple days pass without any replies, or the question was very urgent, then it is appropriate to respond even if you are not so sure of yourself. The principle here is to keep traffic low and our signal-to-noise ratio high.
• Keep your posts brief. As mentioned above, the busiest translators may be the ones with the most to offer, so you do yourself a favor by making it easy on them. However,
• Important: Always try to provide sufficient context for your questions. This will make it easier for people to provide good answers, and reduce the number of replies that sound like 'I'd like to help but need more context.'
• In most cases, replies should be posted publicly to the list so that everyone can see the responses and contribute to the synergy of the list. However--
• Sometimes you may see a post on the list that you want to reply to, but that you feel is off-topic for the list. In this case, you might consider replying directly to the sender, rather than posting to the list.
• For English, be sure to use only standard ASCII characters in your posts. The ASCII character list does not include characters with diacritics or left and right quotation marks. If you are using a word processor with "smart" quotation marks, turn off this feature when writing posts.
• Keeping the maximum length of lines to about 72 characters will make your posts easier to read and easier to quote from. Also, ensure that your message has hard line-breaks. Sometimes e-mail software gets set so that it fails to insert them, which can make the message hard to read.
• Do not send HTML-formatted posts. Some mail software (especially from Microsoft) is set to send HTML-formatted posts by default. Turn this feature off.
• Do not send attachments or enclosures to the list. Some mail software seems to automatically generate MIME enclosures when you type in Japanese--I am not sure of the mechanics involved. Others automatically attach "vcard" files. Anyhow, if your e-mail software is doing this, you'll probably get complaints about it, so find a way to turn the feature off.
• Be sure to include your name and e-mail address at the end of your post. This is especially important for people on NiftyServe, because no one else will be able to read your Japanese header. And some systems, such as MCI Mail, strip the headers from the message; if you don't include your name in the body of your message, people on those systems will not know who was writing.
• A wide variety of romanization systems is used by correspondents to the Honyaku list. These systems tend to reflect the needs of data entry via FEPs (front end processors) rather than academic theories about Japanese phonology. Previous discussion of this subject suggests that a unified romanization system will emerge as a result of software developments (FEPs and database exchange protocols) rather than as a result of discussion on the Honyaku list. However, note that "hats on vowels" will turn into garbage on the Internet. You must use one of the "wa-puro" conventions of doubling long Katakana vowels (or using a hyphen) and adding "u" to long Hiragana vowels as in jouhou shori (information processing).
• Posting in Japanese is OK, with some caveats.
  • First, remember that some members of the list may not have Japanese-capable computers, so it is polite to include romaji as well. This may seem mendoukusai, but doing so will cast your net wider, and allow everyone to help out. You never know whether or not the person with just the right answer will be able to read your message in Japanese.
  • The other thing to understand is that, unlike English which always uses ASCII, there are three encoding systems for Japanese: JIS, Shift-JIS, and EUC, as well as various flavors of Unicode. However--this is very important--the only acceptable encoding for Japanese e-mail on the Internet is JIS. Use of anything other than JIS may turn into unreadable junk, and in some cases, will cause the computers of other Honyaku members to crash. Use of Yahoo's web interface for sending list mail is, unfortunately, especially prone to producing 化けた text.

What do all these abbreviations like GG and TIA mean?

Here are some of the abbreviations that crop up in Honyaku posts:

• TIA: thanks in advance
• HTH: hope this helps
• FWIW: for what it's worth
• IADOTC: it all depends on the context
• KKism: company-specific term
• GG: Green Goddess, the nickname for "Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary"
• OED: Oxford English Dictionary
• EB: Encyclopedia Britannica or Electronic Book
• the Lacker: "Dictionary of Computer" published by Nichigai Associates (so named because it lacks the 's' at the end of "Computer")

Some abbreviations common in e-mail in general:

• IMO: in my opinion
• IMHO: in my humble opinion
• BTW: by the way
• <g>: grin
• IANAL: I am not a lawyer
• :) this is an "emoticon" representing a smiling face
• :( ... a frowning face
• ;) ... a smirk. There are a lot of emoticons.