Nihongojouzu

Google Docs, rikaichan and translating anywhere

I have been playing around with Google Docs and I am impressed. No longer do I have to email myself files or carry around a USB drive if I am going to be working on multiple computers - Google Docs lets me access a translation from wherever I am. I can even let clients review documents online. Normally if I had to translate a document on some anonymous Windows box I would have to download the Word file and then go through the rigmarole of cutting and pasting any unknown terms into ALC or GLOVA - time-consuming and frustrating. Uploading a document to Google Docs means that you are working within the browser, so browser tools like rikaichan and Moji are available. Well, at least rikaichan works  - Google Docs takes command of the mouse right-click commands, so the function "LookUp Word in Moji"  is no longer available, and for Moji you are reduced to cutting and pasting. However the rikaichan mouseover function (see image) works normally, and if you select a word or character it is still possible to search using the rikaichan toolbar. Naturally this will never replace my beloved combination of Mac PowerBook and JEDict, but it is a nifty hack for those times when you find yourself without your familiar translating toolkit.

Office Japanese - the Telephone: Part Four

Answering the phone and transferring a call is straightforward, but when you have to take a message it becomes a little trickier. Here are the basics.

Part Four    Answering the Phone and Taking a Message

１。名乗る

はい、XXでございます。

２。相手を確認する、あいさつをする

YYのZZでいらっしゃいますね。
いつもお世話になっております。

-Same as the beginning of Part Three

３。名指人を確認、おわび

AAでございますね。
申し訳ございません、あいにくAAは…[and continue in 4.]

４。情報提供する、理由・予定

出かけておりますが４時頃には戻る予定でございます。

Or:

出張しておりますが、木曜日には出社いたします。

-Don’t just say “She’s out at the moment” – provide the caller with additional information before they ask for it
-Don’t however say WHERE the person is (they might be at a competitor’s office!)
-And then immediately make a suggestion for a course of action, as per 5.

５。意向を伺う

（戻りましたら）お電話を差し上げるようにいたしましょうか。

Is the person in a hurry?

お急ぎでいらっしゃいますか。

Perhaps you, or someone else, can deal with it:

よろしければ用件を承りますが。

-Volunteer to call the person back – don’t wait for them to ask
-Don’t forget to get the caller’s phone number:

念のためお電話番号をお願いします。

６。復唱確認する

復唱させていただきます。
（電話番号）、YYのZZでいらっしゃいますね。

-Repeat the message to make sure you have the details correct, and to reassure the caller of the same (Name, Phone Number, Concerning What?)

７。名前を告げる

かしこまりました。私BBと申します。

-Let the caller know who they are talking to so they have the information for future reference

８。処置について確認する

AAが戻りましたらお電話を差し上げるよう申し伝えます。

AAが戻りましたらYYのZZ様からお電話いただきましたことを申し伝えます。

９。終わりのあいさつをする

失礼いたします。

ありがとうございました。

Part Five will feature a whole bunch of set phrases not covered in Part One, Part Two, Part Three or Part Four.

Office Japanese - the Telephone: Part Three

Part One and Part Two dealt with making a call. Today we deal with handling an incoming call, or you can think of it as what the person at the other end of the line was saying in Part One.

Part Three    Answering the Phone and Transferring the Call

１.名乗る

(phone rings - pick it up within 3 rings)

お電話ありがとうございます。XXでございます。

-Before 10am you can start with:

おはようございます。XXでございます。

-If the phone rings more than 3 times you should say:

お待たせいたしました。XXでございます。

-Saying thank you at the beginning has two purposes: (1) if you dive into announcing your company/division etc the caller may not be ready, and miss what you say; (2) saying thank you acts as a buffer and starts proceedings on a friendly note.
-Answer the phone as quickly as possible - within 3 rings is OK, but 2 is better.
-Always have pen and paper ready to take a message. Don't just have them sitting on your desk somewhere, when you pick up the phone you should also grab a pen and be ready to write.
-Speak cheerfully and clearly

2. 相手を確認する

(the caller gives their name and company)

YYのZZ様でいらっしゃいますね。

-If the caller doesn't announce themselves:

恐れ入れますが、どちら様でいらっしゃいますか？

-Make sure you confirm whom the caller is - it is sloppy if you just put the call through and say "It's someone from Toyota"  and means that the next person has to ask again.
-You already have a pen in your hand - use it.  Get into the habit of writing down the caller's name and company every time

３．あいさつをする

いつもお世話になっております。

-Say it with feeling!
-It doesn't matter if you have never done business with this company before - just use the set phrase! (you don't actually mean "God be with you" when you say goodbye in English - same principle)

４．名指人*を確認

AAでございますね。かしこまりました、少々お待ちくださいませ。

-If there are two people in your company with the same name, confirm which of them its is by offering the personal name of the most likely candidate:

鈴木由香でございますね。

５．取次ぎ

AAさん、YYのZZ様からお電話です。

-Hit the 保留　button
-Stay in polite mode when transferring - the last thing you want is to screw up the transfer and have the caller hear you say "鈴木さん、NTTのやつだよ“

Tomorrow - Part Four -  dealing with the caller when the person requested isn't  available.

*名指人 (なざしにん)

Office Japanese - the Telephone: Part Two

Yesterday I posted an introductory piece on the fine art of placing a business phone call in Japanese.

As you will recall, we left proceedings at the point where you, the caller, had just given your name and company name and had asked to be put through to someone.

Part Two    Being Put Through to the Other Party

１．相手を確認する

XX様でいらっしゃいますね。

-Necessary if the person coming to the phone simply says "はい”, or if you don't catch what they say, but not required if they announce themselves clearly.

 

２．名乗る

私、YY社のZZでございます。

-note that 私 in this context has the super formal reading わたくし

３．あいさつをする

先日お忙しいところありがとうございました。

If you don’t have a specific event to refer to (for example, when you last met) you can offer a more generic greeting:

いつもお世話になっております。

およびたてして、申し訳ございません。

-Obviously if you have had some interaction with the other party it is a good idea to mention it and give the call some context. Other possible greetings:

この度は、弊社の○○をご購入いただき、誠にありがとうございます
先ほどはお問い合わせありがとうございました

-Politeness and brevity are key
-呼び立てる　means to ask a person to come, or in this case, to call someone to the phone

４．用件を伝える

今、お時間をいただいてよろしいでしょうか。

早速ですが＿＿＿＿の件につきましてご連絡いたしました。

If you think the matter will take a while, forewarn the other person and give them the option of dealing with it later:

お時間長くなりますが、ただ今よろしいでしょうか？

What follows is the meat of the phone call and while equally polite it won’t necessarily be as formulaic. I’ll keep things simple for the moment, skip to the end of the call, and provide some useful phrases in a later article.

５．相手の理解を確認する

以上、＿＿＿＿＿で、よろしいでしょうか。

Equally you could say:

もう一度、要点だけ、繰り返させていただきます。

(and then summarise the details)

Two examples:

では、来週の金曜日にお見積もりを提出させていただきます

 

以上、予定していた打合せですが今回はキャンセル、後日ご連絡ということで、よろしいでしょうか？

６．終わりのあいさつをする

どうぞ、よろしくお願いいたします。

 Just before hanging up: 失礼いたしました. And it wouldn't be out of place to have ありがとうございました in there too.

-Pause a moment before gently replacing the receiver – don’t just clunk it back into place.

OK - you know what to say when placing a call - what about when the phone rings? We'll look at that next week in Part Three - Receiving Calls.

Office Japanese - the Telephone: Part One

Good phone manner is an essential part of working in a Japanese office, and handling phone calls is one of the testing grounds of your Japanese skills – you can no longer rely on the gestures and facial expressions you may use in face-to-face interactions, and your listening skills are paramount because you don’t have the luxury of visual context. On the flip side, work phone calls usually fall into patterns which you can practice (though you obviously can’t meet every contingency) and unlike in-person conversation, you can write out what you want to say in advance.

Today’s post is the first in a series of articles on practical office Japanese based around language samples taken from an actual office etiquette　manual (yes, I have one in my possession, and you too can learn the secret rituals of the Japanese office!).  Even Japanese people can have trouble adjusting to the change in politeness required for office phone calls, but remember, it is just a matter of practice, so find a Japanese speaking friend and practice! (But you’ll have to wait for Part Three of the series or the call will be very one-sided…..)

Part One    Calling and asking for someone

１．自分の名前を名乗る

XX社のYYと申します。

-Speak slowly and clearly
-Put a smile in your voice
-Be prepared to spell out your name slowly , e.g. 「ジャ・ス・プ・リ・ザ」
-Just as Japanese people “spell” their names by reference to other kanji, e.g. for the name 加地　（かじ）：　「加えるの加に地方のち」, there may be occasions when you need to do the same, for example when the connection is bad. When required, I say the following: 「忍者のジャ、寿司のス、プリンのプ、理解のリ、正座のザ」. Be careful which kanji you choose – when spelling out the name Banner for example, 「馬鹿のバ」would not be a wise choice.

２．あいさつをする

いつもお世話になっております。

-Use a sincere tone - don't jut throw it out
-If it is before 10am you can throw in おはようございます before いつもお世話になっております。

３．名指人の取次ぎを依頼する

恐れ入れますが、ZZ課のBB様をお願いいたします

When you don’t know the name of the person you are after, state your business and ask for the person in charge:

恐れ入れますが、XXについてお聞きしたいのですが、係の方お願いいたします。

Just a short lesson today – Part Two will cover calling a person directly, Part Three will be receiving and forwarding a call and Part Four will deal with explaining that the person asked for is not available.

Easy-peasey, Japanesey

I have been going though my file of "things to post to Nihongojouzu" and I had a moment of nostalgia when I hit Easy-peasey, Japanesey, a page of advice on learning Japanese written by Edmund Edgar, the man behind the Three Wise Monkeys language resource page. I had the pleasure of meeting Ed way back in 2000 when he was kind enough to put me up for the night when I was passing through Saitama (you can read about that meeting in the Genki English Tour Diary). Not only a lovely chap, Ed makes good use of his grey cells and he has put together a vocabulary learner tool called Japanese Wordinator ("...because you're too lazy to write vocabulary down in a little notebook...")  which you can even use from your mobile phone. However, the best part of Ed's site is his collection of mnemonics, and his advice on how to use them:

....the more bizarre and twisted the better. And under no circumstances should you throw them away. (I made this mistake.) Or file them, which comes to the same thing. (I made this one too.) Pin them up on your walls. Sellotape them to your friends. Get drunk and hide them from yourself. (That way you will be reminded of them every time you open a book, move a cushion or try to figure out why your cornflakes aren't pouring out of the box in the usual way.)

He even has a page on Tochigi-ben.

Reading on the toilet

Another hint from the "a little bit every day adds up" school of language learning. In the same way as I have a book for the train, I have a book for the toilet. It shares the top of the cistern with a fern called Shida-kun and only gets read when I go to the toilet, or more specifically, when I go 大きい方.  Now some people frown on the idea of reading material in the toilet area - the Seinfeldian concept of contamination springs to mind - but I adopt a more pragmatic approach: being a biological entity with a large appetite I am obliged to evacuate my bowels on a daily basis, and in the 5, 10 or 15 minutes this takes I read a few pages of my toilet book. For those few minutes my eyes and brain are prisoners of my alimentary canal and otherwise unoccupied, so I might as well give them something to do. Five minutes a day = 35 minutes a week = 1820 minutes a year = 30 hours of reading. Eat a lot of curry and you could be looking at 60 or 90 hours a year. (You could also be in danger of varicose veins so make sure the book isn't a cliffhanger)

My toilet book is easy to read - deliberately so. I want to be able to get through at least a page a sitting (がじゃん！） I am currently reading いじわるペニス by 内藤　みか. I have only just started, but I can tell you it is kind-of-love story centering on a rent-boy and the woman who buys him. Not exactly Harry Potter, but the lovers' dialogue and earthy expressions were precisely the reasons I selected it - there are some expressions even good friends may feel shy about teaching you. A bit of research reveals that you can download the book onto your mobile phone, or at the very least read the first 5 chapters. Here's a sample from the opening chapter:

由紀哉は今夜も、イかなかった。

（ちょっと、またなの!?　カラダ売ってんだから、ちゃんと最後までセックスするのが、当たり前でしょ!?）

ぽろんとヴァギナから外れてしまった、情けないくらいに縮んだペニスが、どうしようもなく悔しかった。

（なんで勃たないの？　私ってそんなに魅力ない？

Easy to read? Tick.
Everyday expressions I can use? Tick. (Well maybe not everyday)
Interesting subject matter? Tick.

Right - I'm off to the bog.

Remembering the Kanji Flashcards

On Polarcloud, the site behind the wonderful rikaichan plugin, you can download printable kanji flashcards for use with James Heisig's Remembering the Kanji (Books 1, 2 and 3). The cards come in two zip files and are in PDF format. Cross off "can't afford flashcards" and "don't have time to make flashcards" from your list of excuses for not studying.

Speaking Girly Japanese

Courtesy of JapanProbe, an article in the Christian Science Monitor about the perils of Western men sounding like a girl when they speak Japanese. The article suffers from an Amy Chavez style of writing - throwing in Japanese words at random and then offering translations - and some of the examples are simply common sense (yes, referring to yourself in the third person is not a good idea), but at least the issue is flagged and the warning given: guys - when learning how to speak Japanese don't confine yourself to imitating 20-something Japanese women. 

A little bit every day: reading while commuting

Based on a post on Naruhodo! I picked up a copy of 日本語のカタチとココロ a few weeks ago and threw it in my bag. It lives in the bag and only gets read when I ride the train. This means that although sometimes I don't read it for a day or two it is always with me when I commute and depending on how crowded the train is I can normally extract it from my bag and read a few pages. I don't carry any other books with me (a gripping novel is too great a temptation) and the only other material I read on the train is the content of the ad posters (and occasionally phone emails). After a busy week with lots of train travel I realised I have nearly finished the book. Considering that most of my train journeys were short, that there were times I was nodding off and couldn't concentrate, and that I have been distracted by the more amusing posters, I have probably not read more than two or three pages per journey. Completing a slim (136 pages) volume like this is no big achievement in itself - the point is this - by making this book my train book I defined the time when I would read it, and made progress by nibbling away, rather than trying to devour chunks at a time. Meanwhile my Death Note manga, which sit in my living room, have been neglected for weeks - I haven't set aside time to read them.

Years ago, when I lived in Sydney and before I had ever contemplated studying Japanese, I used to have a hour long commute each way to university. Ideal study time, but often given over to dirty great Stephen King novels. Still, at 2 hours a day, 5 days a week and 36 weeks of term that worked out at 360 hours of reading a year -  I got through a lot of books (even factoring in those times I fell asleep and had to be woken at the terminus by the driver). When I started work 36 weeks became 48 weeks (4 weeks holidays per year in Australia - thank you!) and I had 480 hours of reading built in to my schedule.

So Grasshopper, the lesson to be extracted from today's post and applied to J-learning:
1. ALWAYS carry a Japanese book (beginners - use a kindergarten picture book!) when you commute.
2. DON'T carry an English language book - when you are tired you will default to it.
3. LEAVE the book in your bag/jacket - when you get home don't take it into the toilet to read it - you'll forget it.
4. Pick a book you can read easily - you don't want to have to be looking up kanji.
5. Try not to fall asleep on the bus/train.