An update to my Japanese rendering of "Irate Scotsman". Many thanks
to Chris Long for the corrections.
As you may recall, my <a href="http://mattgemmell.com/index.php/personal/anyone_handy_with_japanese.html">original version</a> looked like this:
I explained its formation in my previous post, linked above.
It turns out I'd made a small error in the katakana which phonetically spell
out "Scotsman" (the lower row of symbols); I'd typed a large <em>tsu</em> when in
fact the "tt" sound in the Japanese pronunciation of "Scotsman" requires a
small <em>tsu</em>. The corrected version is below; notice how the third symbol in
the lower row is now in its smaller form. Note also the correction of my
other mistake: the fourth symbol is now <em>tsu</em>, instead of <em>shi</em>.
You'll also notice that the first of the two kanji symbols in the upper
row has been changed. Previously, the two kanji were "<a href="http://www.nuthatch.com/kanji/demo/8d6b.html">suddenly</a>" and
"<a href="http://www.nuthatch.com/kanji/demo/6012.html">angry</a>", forming "furious". Now, the first kanji is "<a href="http://www.nuthatch.com/kanji/demo/6fc0.html">violent</a>", giving an
overall meaning of "rage", more or less. This is a more appropriate
translation of "irate", and is read as <em>gekido</em> in Japanese.
But the story doesn't quite end there! Whilst the above corrected version
will make sense to a Japanese person, it's not quite precisely correct.
In order to actually be "enraged" or "in a state of rage", we
also require <em>shiteru</em> (analogous to the modification provided by
our "-ing" suffix in English). This causes the top line to not be
representable entirely in kanji, and so the representation becomes as shown
below.
The second version looks a bit cooler, but the third version is more
technically correct.
Once again, many thanks to Chris Long and his wife Ami for the corrections and
discussion. Utterly fascinating stuff!