5 ms·

(Disclaimer: IANAL - I am not a linguist) The Japanese language itself has very low "information density" - it takes many more syllables to convey the same thi

by namuol 6y ago

(Disclaimer: IANAL - I am not a linguist) The Japanese language itself has very low "information density" - it takes many more syllables to convey the same thing in Japanese than it does in most languages. This is the result of the language having much tighter phonotactic constraints; literally there are fewer "legal" phonemes (and combinations of them) in Japanese than in most other languages. [1] This isn't a criticism of the language of course - just an interesting tradeoff: A Japanese speaker has fewer sounds to learn, but must learn to speak them faster in order to convey their ideas. As a result, Japanese speakers are some of the fastest speakers in terms of syllables/second, out of necessity. Therefore it's no surprise that the typography is going to appear more "densely packed" on a Japanese website. With the exception of Kanji which is a pictographic (logographic? I'm not really a linguist) writing system consisting of many, many characters (and thus can be quite information-dense) - Japanese's other writing systems are purely phonetic - each character representing a single syllable. Take a look at the front page of a Japanese newspaper and show it to an English speaker, they will think it's "crowded", but I bet if you translated it to English you'd see something that resembles a typical English paper. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonotactics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonotactics

sizt 6y ago
Kanji is efficient precisely because it is dense.
- cambalache 6y ago
  Yeah, what a weird comment.How can you argue that you need more length and characters when comparing 2000-3000 Kanji vs 26 letters (I am ignoring the "kanas" to simplify the argument) It is like saying Hexadecimal is more verbose than binary.
  - japgolly 6y ago
    That's not how Japanese works. Yes Japanese uses Chinese characters that's only a subset of Japanese. Japanese sentences are typically a bit longer than English in terms of syllables and written length - their main reduction technique at the language level is omission, rarely efficiency improvement. - Why's it so hot today? = 6 syllables - Nande konna ni atsui no kyou? = 10 syllables (spoken colloquially) What about written length? You can see the Japanese sentence is a little longer here (when the English uses a non-monospaced font). It's also enough to demonstrates the why using kanji doesn't always provide the huge reduction/compression that you're expecting. - Why's it so hot today? - なんでこんなに暑いの今日？
    - fyolnish 6y ago
      Why’s it so hot today? 何でこんなに暑いの今日？ Where in the US are you from? 出身は米国の何処ですか? Japanese sentences are usually shorter than the english translation.
      - s1300045 6y ago
        I speak Mandarin Chinese. They are kind of similar. 今天怎麼這麼熱？美國那來的？
      - Jach 6y ago
        For paid translations, English likes to charge by the word, whereas Japanese charges by the character. The rule of thumb for conversion is 2 JP characters --> 1 English word i.e. translating a 1000 character JP document you'll expect about 500 EN words at the end.
    - cambalache 6y ago
      > Japanese sentences are typically a bit longer than English in terms of syllables and written length? Do you understand than 1 kana represents 1 syllable? They are BY DEFINITION, more concise than Latin letters.
      - japgolly 6y ago
        Wow thanks! I didn't understand that despite being able to read and write Japanese! Sarcasm aside you don't seem to have a very deep understanding so maybe you should be a bit nicer when expressing your opinion. > 1 kana represents 1 syllable ちゅ <-- 2 kana, 1 syllable > BY DEFINITION, more concise than Latin letters smash <-- 1 syllable, 5 latin letters, ~3 kana in length スマッシュ <-- 5 kana
trotFunky 6y ago
While I do agree with you on the spoken side, there was a comparative study of spoken syllables per language floating around at some point [0], is this really true for written Japanese ? As each kanji is potentially multiple syllables long when spoken but still one character when written, conveying a meaning of itself. (I'm simplifying here obviously, as there are kanji combinations to give a specific meaning, eventually modifying the number of syllables when spoken and others) [0] : https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/9/eaaw2594 https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/9/eaaw2594
shoreofwonder 6y ago
In terms of character count, it takes fewer characters to convey an idea in Japanese than in English. You see this in NES/SNES-era game translations. Both versions of the game had to use the same number of characters. So the level of detail in English is quite low compared to the original. Recently, modders have hacked the English versions of the games to add variable-width fonts to achieve more true translations. Breath of Fire 2 is a good example.
- crazygringo 6y ago
  Both are true. Because each character is equivalent to an entire syllable in English, not a letter.
GloriousKoji 6y ago
The visual density of Japanese characters has more to do with the fact that it's not a requirement to have white space between words so you can line break mid word. The characters also don't change in size (no real upper or lower case) so everything is pretty mono spaced. For example look at the wikipedia article for mother in english vs Japanese https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%AF%8D%E8%A6%AA https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%AF%8D%E8%A6%AA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother In the English sections with pictures there's significantly more white space between the text and pictures than in the Japanese version.
ekianjo 6y ago
> The Japanese language itself has very low "information density" This is just wrong as characters are much more concise than using Alphabet because of use of Kanji and the like.
euske 6y ago
As a Japanese native who's fluent in English, I disagree with this. I regularly translate English (mostly technical) texts to Japanese, and the translation I get is roughly the same size as the original. Its density is certainly not "very low". The reason that you might think that Japanese is more "bloated" is probably because the form of the language you hear most - in TV news and speeches - are in the "polite" form. In that case, they mean to be verbose. But in the casual form, the same thing can be said much shorter. Also, keep in mind that Japanese has a very different phonetic system. Their phonetic intuition is mostly based on "mora" and many find the notion of syllable confusing and inconsistent. I don't think these two are very comparable (at least mentally). It's funny that you mentioned that a Japanese newspaper looks more "crowded" than English one. Japanese people would think the exact opposite. The "information density" is really in the eye of the beholder.
- pcurve 6y ago
  i agree. The length is roughly the same, if not actually shorter in many cases. Syllables per second isn't a good measure of information density.
- 1123581321 6y ago
  I am completely ignorant here--how common is the polite form on websites?
  - euske 6y ago
    Depends on the type of websites. Most corporate websites are polite. In a message board like 2-chan, (unsurprisingly) not at all. Actually, some of the most vulgar Japanese that most people would never speak in real life can be only found on the Internet.
  - csa 6y ago
    > I am completely ignorant here--how common is the polite form on websites? Not op, but I can answer. Not very common (reported speech, simulating speech, etc.).
  - howlgarnish 6y ago
pcurve 6y ago
Japanese is fast for sure, I'm not sure if your theory explain why Spanish is close second behind... (honestly I have no idea either) https://ahtaitay.blogspot.com/2020/07/as-native-speakers-we-all-have.html https://ahtaitay.blogspot.com/2020/07/as-native-speakers-we-...

by namuol 6y ago

sizt 6y ago

Kanji is efficient precisely because it is dense.

cambalache 6y ago
Yeah, what a weird comment.How can you argue that you need more length and characters when comparing 2000-3000 Kanji vs 26 letters (I am ignoring the "kanas" to simplify the argument) It is like saying Hexadecimal is more verbose than binary.
- japgolly 6y ago
  That's not how Japanese works. Yes Japanese uses Chinese characters that's only a subset of Japanese. Japanese sentences are typically a bit longer than English in terms of syllables and written length - their main reduction technique at the language level is omission, rarely efficiency improvement. - Why's it so hot today? = 6 syllables - Nande konna ni atsui no kyou? = 10 syllables (spoken colloquially) What about written length? You can see the Japanese sentence is a little longer here (when the English uses a non-monospaced font). It's also enough to demonstrates the why using kanji doesn't always provide the huge reduction/compression that you're expecting. - Why's it so hot today? - なんでこんなに暑いの今日？
  - fyolnish 6y ago
    Why’s it so hot today? 何でこんなに暑いの今日？ Where in the US are you from? 出身は米国の何処ですか? Japanese sentences are usually shorter than the english translation.
    - s1300045 6y ago
      I speak Mandarin Chinese. They are kind of similar. 今天怎麼這麼熱？美國那來的？
    - Jach 6y ago
      For paid translations, English likes to charge by the word, whereas Japanese charges by the character. The rule of thumb for conversion is 2 JP characters --> 1 English word i.e. translating a 1000 character JP document you'll expect about 500 EN words at the end.
  - cambalache 6y ago
    > Japanese sentences are typically a bit longer than English in terms of syllables and written length? Do you understand than 1 kana represents 1 syllable? They are BY DEFINITION, more concise than Latin letters.
    - japgolly 6y ago
      Wow thanks! I didn't understand that despite being able to read and write Japanese! Sarcasm aside you don't seem to have a very deep understanding so maybe you should be a bit nicer when expressing your opinion. > 1 kana represents 1 syllable ちゅ <-- 2 kana, 1 syllable > BY DEFINITION, more concise than Latin letters smash <-- 1 syllable, 5 latin letters, ~3 kana in length スマッシュ <-- 5 kana

trotFunky 6y ago

While I do agree with you on the spoken side, there was a comparative study of spoken syllables per language floating around at some point [0], is this really true for written Japanese ? As each kanji is potentially multiple syllables long when spoken but still one character when written, conveying a meaning of itself. (I'm simplifying here obviously, as there are kanji combinations to give a specific meaning, eventually modifying the number of syllables when spoken and others) [0] : https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/9/eaaw2594 https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/9/eaaw2594

shoreofwonder 6y ago

In terms of character count, it takes fewer characters to convey an idea in Japanese than in English. You see this in NES/SNES-era game translations. Both versions of the game had to use the same number of characters. So the level of detail in English is quite low compared to the original. Recently, modders have hacked the English versions of the games to add variable-width fonts to achieve more true translations. Breath of Fire 2 is a good example.

crazygringo 6y ago
Both are true. Because each character is equivalent to an entire syllable in English, not a letter.

GloriousKoji 6y ago

The visual density of Japanese characters has more to do with the fact that it's not a requirement to have white space between words so you can line break mid word. The characters also don't change in size (no real upper or lower case) so everything is pretty mono spaced. For example look at the wikipedia article for mother in english vs Japanese https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%AF%8D%E8%A6%AA https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%AF%8D%E8%A6%AA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother In the English sections with pictures there's significantly more white space between the text and pictures than in the Japanese version.

ekianjo 6y ago

> The Japanese language itself has very low "information density" This is just wrong as characters are much more concise than using Alphabet because of use of Kanji and the like.

euske 6y ago

As a Japanese native who's fluent in English, I disagree with this. I regularly translate English (mostly technical) texts to Japanese, and the translation I get is roughly the same size as the original. Its density is certainly not "very low". The reason that you might think that Japanese is more "bloated" is probably because the form of the language you hear most - in TV news and speeches - are in the "polite" form. In that case, they mean to be verbose. But in the casual form, the same thing can be said much shorter. Also, keep in mind that Japanese has a very different phonetic system. Their phonetic intuition is mostly based on "mora" and many find the notion of syllable confusing and inconsistent. I don't think these two are very comparable (at least mentally). It's funny that you mentioned that a Japanese newspaper looks more "crowded" than English one. Japanese people would think the exact opposite. The "information density" is really in the eye of the beholder.

pcurve 6y ago
i agree. The length is roughly the same, if not actually shorter in many cases. Syllables per second isn't a good measure of information density.
1123581321 6y ago
I am completely ignorant here--how common is the polite form on websites?
- euske 6y ago
  Depends on the type of websites. Most corporate websites are polite. In a message board like 2-chan, (unsurprisingly) not at all. Actually, some of the most vulgar Japanese that most people would never speak in real life can be only found on the Internet.
- csa 6y ago
  > I am completely ignorant here--how common is the polite form on websites? Not op, but I can answer. Not very common (reported speech, simulating speech, etc.).
- howlgarnish 6y ago

pcurve 6y ago

Japanese is fast for sure, I'm not sure if your theory explain why Spanish is close second behind... (honestly I have no idea either) https://ahtaitay.blogspot.com/2020/07/as-native-speakers-we-all-have.html https://ahtaitay.blogspot.com/2020/07/as-native-speakers-we-...