Message-Id: <9306161925.AA16787@thor.INS.CWRU.Edu>
Date: Wed, 16 Jun 93 15:25:47 -0400
From: smg6@po.CWRU.Edu (S. Max Golem)
To: smg6@thor.INS.CWRU.Edu
Subject: RE: Discussion 1.
Reply-To: smg6@po.CWRU.Edu (S. Max Golem)


Hi again --

Andrew Lewis asked a question about translating Japanese to
English that may be of general interest.


>BTW, how much of the Japanese Go literature is specialist language?
>Can you get far with the standard ~700 kanji? With the extended
>set? (No, I *cannot* read Japanese but maybe would be willing to
>learn to get at this stuff when/if I exhaust English language
>sources. Mind you, I still have a lot of those that I have not
>scratched the surface of.)
>
>Andrew

OK, first I have to admit that I'm not a professional translator,
never was.  I had to be able to follow the drift of the Japanese
original when I was editing translations, but this is a far cry
from being a *real* translator.  And I've _always_ had Nelson's
_Kanji Dictionary_ and a Japanese grammar book at my side when
trying to read Japanese Go books carefully.

With these reservations, I can say that learning to read Japanese
Go books is relatively simple.  The vocabulary is extremely
specialized and the grammar is usually pretty simple.  A lot of
the kanji are in the basic set, but there are a few that are just
not seen often in everyday life.

I'd say that reading Japanese Go books is necessary to gaining a
strong foundation in the basics of Go (i.e., becoming really
strong eventually).  The Ishi Press material is quite good, but
it is only a small subset of a huge body of literature.

For example, I have a three-volume set of _Utilizing Modern
Joseki_ which gives followup moves for the main josekis.  Great
stuff!  And then there's the "Go Weekly" newspaper that has had
many interesting series of articles, such as "Joseki That
Amateurs Don't Know."

Somewhere I have a two- or three-page list of translations of
Japanese Go terms, and I can recommend several good books.  If
anyone is interested, please send me your mailing address and
I'll see what I can do.

Bye,
Max.