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Reading What You Cannot Read
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Imagine for a moment that I handed you a piece of paper with the following kanji (Chinese characters used in Japanese writing) on it: 砂 (soo-na, sand). If I hadn’t just told you what it means, how would you know the definition and pronunciation? How would you look it up? You can’t just phone a friend; you have no clue how to read the symbol out loud, much less the others around it, although you could describe what it looks like, perhaps. If you are reading this electronically, you could copy it into a search tool and use the internet to help you. Of course, with today’s technology, you could easily send a picture to someone else who could help you.
OK, great — you found the answer for one kanji. But if you had a physical, paper page in front of you with over a hundred kanji characters on it forming sentences along with hiragana and katakana, Japanese’s two syllabaries, how long would it take you to find all of the kanji in a dictionary and learn their pronunciation? Oh, and here’s the extra challenge — just because you encounter the same kanji more than once doesn’t mean you pronounce it the same way each time. Kanji and other characters can appear with one another in ways that can change both meaning and way of reading! Context matters.
This is the type of challenge that we encountered when we moved to Yamaguchi Prefecture. After language school, we could utilize a fair number of kanji. Was it enough? Well, there are 2,136 kanji in the jōyō kanji list. This list contains the kanji a Japanese student will learn by the end of 9th grade, the end of compulsory education. We still haven’t managed to learn all of those yet, and there are more beyond that list!
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Here is a portion of one page of the latest Sabbath School Quarterly.
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So, when we were handed a Sabbath School quarterly, filled with many pages containing many unknown kanji characters, what were we to do? We tried using a digital version of the quarterly, looking up unknown words and symbols one at a time, but this was a dreadfully slow process. We needed to understand what we were reading and learn vocabulary, so just using the English version was not an option. In addition, the local Adventist believers were gathering to read Ellen White’s books once a week, and we wanted to participate. How could we participate without knowing how to pronounce the words on the printed page?
As many of you may know, Michael is a computer programmer. And, where there is a will, there is a way! Michael scoured the internet and found a system that allows a person to plug in Japanese text and have it broken up into words, kanji meanings, and so on. However, this system often returned many mistakes, and using it was still a bit slow. So, Michael began building something new, utilizing existing systems where possible, in the hope that the time invested now would save hours upon hours of work down the road.
The result? A website that we, along with other AFM missionaries, can use to greatly simplify the understanding and consumption of otherwise confusing Japanese text. For example, reading — and understanding — a single page of the Japanese Sabbath School lesson has gone from over an hour to only twenty or thirty minutes. To see what a word means, instead of switching context to a separate dictionary application, we can hover over the word with our mouse and see the dictionary meaning in a split second. We can now sit down and read Ellen White materials out loud, as the system automatically adds pronunciation guides for kanji characters. (Well, it tries its best – right now, the success rate seems to be above 90 percent, which is fairly good, all told.) Michael has also built a parallel English-Japanese Bible into the system, which has proven extremely useful for sermons and research as we continue to learn spiritual vocabulary. The eventual goal is for a user to be able to load any arbitrary Japanese text into the system and parse it into words and vocabulary for learning. This should prove very useful for AFM missionaries as we seek to learn a complex language and read existing materials, ensuring we do not duplicate existing work.
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Michael recently connected with some other expats and Japanese locals by teaching a classic game: Dutch Blitz!
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More than that, we believe this system may ultimately prove beneficial to the broader Christian community in Japan. Right now, our focus as missionaries is not on evangelism or long-term projects. Our focus remains on culture study and language learning, and we will not be focusing on projects for some time. However, we have been thinking about how this system could be tweaked to be useful for more than just foreigners. For example, we have not found an adequate way to search the Japanese Bible or Ellen White’s text, nor a reliable, thorough concordance that is freely and widely available. With a bit of work, Michael was able to build a simple Bible search engine that features Bible search capabilities he has not yet found elsewhere. When you can search text for words, you can create an automated concordance fairly easily.
We have asked some Adventist members about their thoughts on this system, and the feedback thus far has been positive. We are excited to see where this system will go over the following months and years as it is further developed. We hope this tool will be utilized to delve deeper into the Word and create a better understanding of its contents, enabling more people to learn the message that God has for them at this time.
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Praises & Prayer Requests
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- Michael was recently able to share a little bit about the Sabbath in an evening Japanese class!
- Please pray for our connections in the local community, that they may strengthen and lead to people genuinely interested in seeking to know Christ.
- We’re still so very thankful for our project car! It has proved very helpful so far.
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We would love to hear back from you. You can email us at adventure@shoesatthedoor.net. We are happy to pray for any prayer requests you might have, so please feel free to send them our way.
Thank you so much for your support!
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