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You may have heard that we recently localized the Stack Exchange engine to Portuguese and the site has been doing quite well! We're now starting the work for a few other target languages, and one of them is Japanese.

Sidenote: this doesn't mean that this site will be localized to Japanese (unless the community wants it) -- we're just asking for help since you're our resident Japanese-language experts.

What we need your help with:

We're working with professional translators who are great at what they do, but don't necessarily know all the quirks of Stack Exchange. They've taken a stab at translating all of the Stack Exchange special terms (like "reputation" or "bounty") but want us to look over it and see if they got the sense right. That's where you come in: we'd like you (if you can) to look over their translations of these ~30 terms and tell us if they got them right.

So, I've appended the full list to the bottom here. If you see something that looks wrong, please post one suggested correction per answer. If others agree, they can vote up your answer or comment on it -- not the best system, but we'll see how it goes.

badge              バッジ           Besides gaining reputation with your questions and answers, you receive badges for being especially helpful. Badges appear on your profile page, flair, and your posts.
bounty             報酬             A bounty is a reputation reward you can put on a question to get it more attention for exactly one week. 
Bronze Badge       ブロンズ バッジ   These badges are awarded for participating in **non community-wiki questions** with particular tags.
candidate          候補者
community          コミュニティ
community moderator            コミュニティ モデレーター      Please participate in the moderator elections by voting, and perhaps even by nominating yourself to be a community moderator!
community moderator election   コミュニティ モデレーター選挙   There are no active community moderator elections at the moment.
excerpt            抜粋
favicon            ファビコン
flag               フラグを設定する       Casting any vote type or flagging these posts will cause them to be removed from the list.
Gold Tag Badge     ゴールド タグ バッジ   Gold badges recognize important contributions from members of the community. They are rarely awarded.
Help Center        ヘルプ センター
nomination         推薦                  The primary is not binding; nominees may withdraw at their discretion at any point during the nomination phase.
peer review        ピア レビュー          Note that if you have less than $rep$ reputation, your tag wiki will be peer reviewed before it is published.
pin                ピン留めする           Pinning a post will move it to the top of the questions. To move an already pinned item to the top, remove the pin and then add it again.
post               投稿                  Find links or images in posts
privilege          特権 
reputation         評判                  Gain more privileges by increasing your reputation (points you receive from your fellow users for posting helpful questions and answers)
review             レビュー              recent reviews
review badge       レビュー バッジ       Review badges are awarded once per review queue.
revision           リビジョン            show/hide this revision's text
score              スコア                You must have a total score of 100 in at least 20 non-community wiki answers to achieve this badge.
Silver Tag Badge   シルバー タグ バッジ   Silver badges are less common than bronze ones. You'll need to plan your strategy to get one of these.
stats              統計                  stats for the top 50 site users
tag                タグ                  A tag is a keyword or label that categorizes your question with other, similar questions
user flair         ユーザー フレア        It's a piece of valuable flairtm you can place on any website to show off your user profile!
vote down          反対投票する          vote down this synonym
vote up            賛成投票する          The best answers are voted up and rise to the top

Thank you so much for your help!

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  • 2
    Just for reference: cypher's existing localization script and a related post: meta.japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/625/…
    – user1478
    Apr 25, 2014 at 16:28
  • @snailboat Hey great, I hadn't seen that! I'll take a look and see how much of this is already done. Apr 25, 2014 at 16:36
  • 4
    It'd be nice to have some more context for some of these words. Maybe add some usage examples? If "candidate" is meant in the sense of "candidate for moderator position", then "候補者" may indeed be the right word. But if it's meant in the sense of "this question is a candidate for deletion", I think you want a different word. Apr 25, 2014 at 17:08
  • @joshua I added the context they gave us. "Candidate" doesn't seem to have any given. Apr 25, 2014 at 17:27
  • 2
    Side question: this doesn't mean that this site will be localized to Japanese (unless the community wants it) >> can we just say "we want it" and get a bilingual site? I personally think this would be very much desirable. (Primarily to make this site more accessible to native speakers, which would greatly help in making JLSE a true site for experts.)
    – Earthliŋ Mod
    Apr 25, 2014 at 20:35
  • @Earthliŋ I'm not sure exactly what you have in mind, but right now a site only ever exists in a single language, so Japanese Language would either be entirely English UI or entirely Japanese UI. If you think it makes sense to switch to Japanese, open a new discussion for the community. Apr 25, 2014 at 20:48
  • 4
    I see. By "bilingual" I had in mind a way of switching between UI languages, depending on the user's preference. I think our policy is to accept questions in Japanese or English. We have a few (very few) questions, which are written entirely in Japanese, but probably more users (at the moment), who would feel uncomfortable with a Japanese UI than users who would feel more comfortable with a Japanese UI.
    – Earthliŋ Mod
    Apr 25, 2014 at 20:59
  • Wow, it's great this is going ahead! I think I should say though @snailboat, ento went through and fixed a lot of the translations to that script, so a lions share of the thanks actually should go to her. Of course, any errors that remain are my sole responsibility :)
    – cypher
    Apr 25, 2014 at 23:01
  • 4
    I agree with Earthling. While putting the whole site in Japanese would be off-putting to people just starting to learn the language, having an option to use the site in Japanese would make it easier for native speakers to get accustomed to the site and feel at ease using it.
    – Kaji
    Apr 25, 2014 at 23:20
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    One thing I've neglected to fix in the script is the term I translated for "My Logins": "ログイン連携" or similar is more appropriate.
    – ento
    Apr 27, 2014 at 3:45
  • 2
    As an aside, are you licensing some sort of Japanese-aware search for the Japanese StackOverflow? The search used here isn't aware of Japanese and isn't really up to the task.
    – user1478
    May 5, 2014 at 19:23

15 Answers 15

8

The spaces in various terms seem unusual to me. Middle dots (or nothing) could work instead.

Instead of ヘルプ センター, you could write ヘルプセンター with nothing in between.

(That's how it's written on Twitter, Excite, Facebook, PayPal, and Yahoo! Japan.)

7

For "flag", the translators gave "フラグを設定する" but this meta post gives "通報". Vote up if 通報 is a better translation, or suggest your own.

7

flair / バナー

I think バナー is the widely accepted term for a block of screen space to show off your identity.

Example: Facebook uses バナー for embeddable "badges":

バナーは、他のウェブサイトでFacebookタイムライン、写真、またはFacebookページをシェアするために作成するボックスです。 [source]

Example: pixiv's プロフィールバナー:

pixiv

[source]

4

As per @Yang Muye's comment, 知恵袋 uses "お礼" instead of "報酬" or "賞金" to pretty much mean "bounty".

I think a more literal translation might be "reward given in thanks for something" in this context, and it isn't restricted to money or goods and can be as a spoken "thanks" etc for something as well, which may make it more appropriate.

Please upvote if you'd prefer it to the other terms for "bounty".

1
  • I don't think お礼 applies in the context of setting a bounty. Awarding one, yes, and especially after the fact - as in you can award someone a bounty even on someone else's question if it was extremely useful. But when putting your question up for bounty I'm not sure if the word fits.
    – lc.
    May 18, 2014 at 15:18
4

For "gold" "silver" "bronze", I think "金" "銀" "銅" are concise.

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  • 1
    BTW, most of Japanese won't get what "moderator - モデレーター" means.
    – knjname
    Apr 30, 2014 at 19:18
  • Do you have a suggestion to replace モデレーター?
    – user1478
    May 1, 2014 at 5:37
  • Yes. "仲裁者" is a directly translated word for "moderator", but this is over formal.
    – knjname
    May 1, 2014 at 6:34
  • 管理人 comes to mind, but I'm guessing that's a bit broader than just moderation (e.g. someone who runs the whole site, as opposed to just managing parts of it)
    – Kaji
    May 1, 2014 at 10:14
  • @Kaji could you post another answer with suggestions for how to translate moderator? Perhaps there are other Japanese sites which have a concept of moderation that you could look at? May 1, 2014 at 15:28
  • 番人? Although that is more like a guard. 見張り But that's also guard. 司会者? But there are more than one moderator.
    – Joel Rees
    Jun 29, 2017 at 18:19
3

For "badge", 章 seems like it would be a little less clunky than バッジ, especially in compounds such as ゴールド章, シルバー章, and ブロンズ章.

3
  • 1
    I guess you mean "賞"?
    – ento
    Apr 27, 2014 at 6:19
  • 2
    No, I meant 章, to be in keeping with the English "badge". 賞 is more along the lines of "award".
    – Kaji
    Apr 27, 2014 at 6:22
  • 2
    Ah, as in 記章、襟章、腕章. I could only come up with the sense of "chapter".
    – ento
    Apr 27, 2014 at 15:31
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For reputation, I used "信用度" for "amount of trust" in the localization script. I thought this could be a good translation, as quoting https://japanese.stackexchange.com/help/whats-reputation:

Reputation is a rough measurement of how much the community trusts you...

2

How about 経験値 for reputation? While I realize "experience points" may not be a 1-1 correspondence, in a sense it's actually not that far off when you think about it.

2
2

The spaces in various terms seem unusual to me. Middle dots (or nothing) could work instead.

Instead of コミュニティ モデレーター, you could write コミュニティ・モデレーター.

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  • 2
    But see knjname's comment about using モデレーター at all.
    – user1478
    May 1, 2014 at 1:45
2

reputation / 徳ポイント

I have self-doubts about this translation — too cutesy, but posting nevertheless to put forth all thinkable options. UO and Ryuu ga gotoku ishin uses "徳" as the name of a karma system.

--

I think it's important to get this translation right: it's going to define the world view of SE network. The translation should:

  • be immediately apparent that it's a currency within the site: earned and spent through your actions
    → use ~値, ~ポイント, ~コイン, ~スタンプ
  • be natural within the contexts it's going to be used
    → translate the help text first and try to fit the candidate terms
  • preferably, versatile enough to be able to generate various compound forms
    → if there are equally fine alternatives, this can be (one of) the deciding factor(s)
0
2

I'm not so sure it fits the bill, but David asked me to post my thought of 管理人 for moderator as a formal suggestion. Personally I think that implies someone with much more authority than a standard moderator (more along the lines of an administrator).

0

For "reputation", the translators gave "評判" but this meta post gives "名声". Vote up if 名声 is a better translation, or suggest your own.

1
  • I think I'm the one who gave 名声 for reputation, and I admit it's a bit stilted.
    – ento
    Apr 27, 2014 at 3:06
0
vote down          反対投票する          vote down this synonym
vote up            賛成投票する          The best answers are voted up and rise to the top

Are up votes and down votes supposed to be used for showing agreement and disagreement?

If we want to keep them as neutral as possible, we can use katakana

vote up            ボート・アップ
vote down          ボート・ダウン

useful             役に立った(と評価する)
useless            役に立たない(と評価する)
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  • You don't give an alternative. Do you mean something like "useful/correct" vs. "misleading/incorrect" rather than "agree" vs. "disagree"?
    – Earthliŋ Mod
    Apr 25, 2014 at 19:52
  • I don't speak Japanese, but voting means different things in different places on the site so it'd be best if it were as neutral as possible. If that's not possible, our tooltip guides for upvote / downvote say "useful" / "not useful" so that'd probably be the closest. Apr 25, 2014 at 20:46
0

For "flair", I thought "フレア" in Japanese was typically used like "solar flare"/"lens flare" etc when I wrote my translation script.

In the script, I wasn't totally sure what "flair" meant in English, but assuming it meant "something that shows your (Stack Exchange) achievements" I went with "自己宣伝" ("self-advertisement"/"self-publicity").

(p.s. there might be a better term for this, so if you know one please downvote this and write your own suggestion as a separate answer.)

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  • there's also a discussion about some Stack Exchange terms including this one on a Japanese blog post: blog.zaq.ne.jp/cazz/article/7
    – cypher
    Apr 26, 2014 at 1:15
  • I was going to stick a reference in to the appropriate scene from Office Space, but apparently YouTube actually doesn't have it...amazing...
    – Kaji
    Apr 26, 2014 at 18:43
-2

For "bounty", the translators gave "報酬" but this meta post gives "賞金". Vote up if 賞金 is a better translation, or suggest your own.

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  • 3
    "賞金" implies a monetary bounty specifically, whereas "報酬" is more like "reward", in a general sense. I don't think SE wants to imply they're paying out money. Apr 25, 2014 at 18:55
  • 3
    知恵袋 uses お礼....
    – Yang Muye
    Apr 25, 2014 at 19:38

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