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This is a follow-up of Should tag descriptions be prefixed with their kanji/kana equivalent?.

For accessibility for native Japanese speakers (as well as for learners), I think it would be nice to provide a Japanese translation of our tags, for example right at the beginning of the "tag excerpt".

tag excerpt

The (first few words of the) tag excerpt appear next to the tag when adding the tag to a question (picture above). If the tag excerpt starts with a Japanese translation of the tag, it will be seen by anyone adding the tag, or hovering over the tag (picture below), or doing anything else with the tag.

tag excerpt hover

For tags that are already a romanized Japanese word (like or ), this is a no-brainer, but other tags (like or ) need to be translated properly, preferably by native speakers.

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  • Another option is to add tag synonyms, right?
    – Darius Jahandarie
    Jun 12, 2015 at 0:29
  • I guess so. I don't know what would be the better option. We can have kanji tags, but I don't think we do. I like that the tag excerpt appears right under the tag itself, the tag synonyms appear below the tag excerpt. Hovering over tags on the main site also don't show the tag synonyms, so I think the translation should appear in the tag excerpt.
    – Earthliŋ Mod
    Jun 12, 2015 at 0:59
  • We don't have Japanese tags AFAIK, but we do have a bunch of Japanese tag synonyms: japanese.stackexchange.com/tags/synonyms -- I think you're right about just including the translations in the tag excerpt itself though.
    – Darius Jahandarie
    Jun 12, 2015 at 1:23
  • Doing both might make it easier to search. The excerpts only show up if you visit the tags page (not highly trafficked) or if you start typing the first few letters of the english word (assuming you're searching/asking a question). Once you get the master english tag to show, having a translation in the excerpt can clarify why it showed up.
    – Troyen
    Jul 16, 2015 at 7:09

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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(Currently favoured translation in bold.)

  • words 言葉 or 語?
  • phrase 句
  • usage 使い方 or 用語
  • politeness 礼儀
  • synonyms 同義語
  • homophonic-kanji 同音異字
  • orthography 正書法 or 綴り or 仮名遣い
  • slang スラング or 俗語
  • colloquial 口語
  • spoken-language 口語 or 話し言葉
  • learning 学習?
  • nominalisation 準体 or 準体法
  • conditionals 条件文 or 条件表現

Already updated: word-choice 使い分け — translation 翻訳 — pronunciation 発音 — syntax 統語論 — expression 表現? — definitions 定義 — te-form テ形 — vocabulary 語彙 — adjectives 形容詞・形容動詞 — questions 疑問文 — set-phrases 成句

Update. This was implemented a while ago.

enter image description here

To see all tags, head over to https://japanese.stackexchange.com/tags

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    Nice. While スラング is fine, I think 俗語 is more common. "phrase" is unfortunate in that the English is ambiguous (between 句 and 表現/成句).
    – Darius Jahandarie
    Jun 12, 2015 at 0:26
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    I made tentative translations for a reasonable number of tags in the localization script (github.com/cyphr/Stack-Exchange-Japanese-Localization/blob/…) a fair while ago - there are probably lots of errors but could be a place to start from
    – cypher
    Jun 12, 2015 at 11:45
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    I think we should add 語彙 as a candidate for vocabulary.
    – Yosh
    Jun 16, 2015 at 8:11
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    spoken language 「話し言葉」 、colloquial 「口語」 、とかかな、と・・・。（でも「話し言葉」と「口語」ってどう違うの？）　slang はスラングでもいいけど「俗語」でもいいのでは・・・。　usage って「使い方」でもいいのでしょうけど、よく「用法」っていいますよね。あと、phrase を「句」とするなら word(s) は「語」にならないのでしょうか・・（複数形であることに意味の違いがあるとか？）
    – chocolate Mod
    Jun 17, 2015 at 6:53
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    口語 and 文語 were traditionally "spoken language" and "written language", where 文語 referred to the classical or literary language (which was written but not spoken) and 口語 referred to a more modern form of Japanese. But after the 言文一致, these labels became somewhat misleading; people started writing down the modern language (口語), and most written language is no longer the classical literary language (文語). For that reason, the labels 話し言葉 and 書き言葉 are preferred for "spoken language" and "written language" today.
    – user1478
    Jun 27, 2015 at 5:01
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    I think 統語論 is the more basic term for 'syntax', while 構文 is more closely related with 'construction' (as in 構文文法 'construction grammar' or 結果構文 'resultative construction').
    – user1478
    Jun 27, 2015 at 5:09
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    How about 疑問文 for 'questions'?
    – user1478
    Jun 27, 2015 at 5:14
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    Questions tagged with 'adjectives' often discuss both イ形容詞 and ナ形容詞, and occasionally ノ形容詞 as well. In the terminology of 日本語教育, these can all be called 形容詞. But native speakers are taught 学校文法 in school, and they're more likely to call these things 形容詞 and 形容動詞 (and 名詞 in the case of ノ形容詞, since this category is traditionally not acknowledged). Learners will eventually have to learn the traditional terms as well because they're used by most monolingual dictionaries, so my feeling is that 形容詞・形容動詞 is a better choice for 'adjectives' than simply 形容詞 alone.
    – user1478
    Jun 28, 2015 at 3:01
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    I like テ形 better than て形, personally. I think using katakana helps make the use-mention distinction clearer. I think both are used, so the choice isn't a big deal, but in the materials I have テ形 is commonly used.
    – user1478
    Jun 28, 2015 at 3:20
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    I agree with 語彙 for 'vocabulary'. I think 'vocabulary' encompasses more than just 単語.
    – user1478
    Jun 28, 2015 at 3:21
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    I wonder if we could create a tag for 連体詞 and add it to questions. It seems like learners tend not to be familiar with categories like 連体詞 and 助動詞 for whatever reason. This makes coming up with an English name for a 連体詞 tag somewhat challenging. Martin calls these 'adnouns', but this term isn't widely known among learners. I would support an 'adnoun' tag translated 連体詞, but I'm not sure about the rest of the community.
    – user1478
    Jun 28, 2015 at 3:39
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    @snailboat There are about 20 questions that mention 連体詞 explicitly and probably many more that ask about them. I think it would be a good idea to have a tag for them. WWWJDIC calls them pre-noun adjectival or adnominal adjective, so of course I agree with calling them adnouns.
    – Earthliŋ Mod
    Jun 28, 2015 at 10:52
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    What should we use for the 'conditionals' tag? 条件文 'conditional sentence' and 条件表現 'conditional expression' are both in use. I think the latter is a good choice.
    – user1478
    Jun 28, 2015 at 13:53
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    I think for 'nominalisation' we can go with 準体 or 準体法 (compare 準体助詞 'nominalising particle'.) The term 名詞化 is also relevant, but I think it has a slightly different range of uses, for example things like a lexical noun being derived from the 連用形 of a verb.
    – user1478
    Jun 28, 2015 at 14:06
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    Rather than leave a million more comments, I went through and added translations to some of the tags you didn't mention in cases where I felt discussion wasn't really necessary. I've been trying to work on the tag wikis more generally this morning, but they need a lot of work. (I'm not sure what to do with this 'formation' tag...)
    – user1478
    Jun 28, 2015 at 15:19

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