![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Translation of Google's April Fools joke for Japan.
Because I was trying to translate something else* and getting all annoyed.
An Announcement from the Google Japanese Input Team
Have you been using Google's Japanese input system? In addition to its support of an abundant vocabulary and a powerful suggestion feature that makes entering Japanese terms easy, we have a new feature to announce today.
We of the Google Japanese input development team spend every day researching faster and more efficient methods of user input. We've received a lot of good feedback since our February 17th release. [?]
But there is one barrier we haven't been able to get past. That barrier is the keyboard. There's a theory out there that the QWERTY keyboard that we all use is an "optimized for slow" keyboard. According to this theory, when the typewriter was invented, it was prone to a lot of mechanical problems like breakdowns and jams. To prevent these, the keyboard was deliberately designed to make frequently used keys, like "a" and "enter," difficult to hit, putting them in places where you tend to hit them with your pinky or middle finger. There are a lot of objections to this theory, but we did think that the QWERTY keyboard was not the pinnacle of human engineering.
[1st one: "Code Name: Corn"
2nd one: an Inner Tube concept
3rd one: a Disco Ball concept]
The Google Japanese Input team started out with two conditions for our new keyboard: 1) Input should feel natural, and 2) The change shouldn't be distracting to users. With these principles in mind, we finally came up with the following design.
[]
With this keyboard, all of the most common standard JIS kanji can be entered using only one keystroke. In short, if you wanted to input "subarashii" (wonderful) - which in romaji input would have taken eleven keystrokes ("s-u-b-a-r-a-s-h-i-i," plus the convert key) and in kana input six ("su-ba-ra-shi-i," plus the convert key) it would only take five. And with our keyboard there's no need to search through a list of conversion options - you always get the kanji you want the first time.
[]
We've also added emoticon support. When you need to express emotion, it's easy to find the one you need.
[]
Our developers tried them out immediately.
[]
Komatsu's comments:
My first thought was, "Enter's too big!" But when I thought about it, I realized it was the other keys that were too small. I'm thinking drumsticks may be the way to go here. I'll see what happens if I play around with it.
[]
Mukai's comments:
I spend all day sitting at my computer, but using this keyboard is so enjoyable that I never get tired of it. I expect my work to go a lot faster from now on.
The Japanese Input team doesn't have any experienced drummers, so we asked Fujii from the Search Quality team to come over and give it a try.
[]
Fujii's comments:
If you use a double-stroke* technique, you can type really quickly. I also like how it feels like a fill-in** when you enter punctuation or an emoticon - it's very moving.
* Hitting two keys with a single stroke.
** Something you put into a tune to indicate a change of scene. [Note: I don't know the actual English equivalents for these terms.]
While it may seem a bit confusing at first, once you get used to this keyboard you can enter Japanese words quicker than ever before. We're already looking at expanding the keyboards' vocabulary even further, to include less common kanji, and an extension to allow you to convert to recently-coined words in one click.
We're accepting reservations for testers in Japan. If you're interested, reserve your spot as soon as possible!
[]
We've also got a lot of developers doing beta testing. Please visit our Picasa album for some photos of the process.
Google's mission is to make all the world's information accessible to all the world's people. The faster we can all type, the faster this mission will go.
FAQ
Q. How much will the drums cost?
A. We're still in discussions with our manufacturers about costs. We have high hopes for being able to offer our products at a reasonable price.
Q. Where can I buy them?
A. Google will be selling them directly. When they're ready to go to market, we'll send out alerts to everyone who signed up for a test drive.
Q. How do you input in a language other than Japanese?
A. You can use Google Translation services after you've input your words in Japanese.
Q. Will there be support for emoji?
A. The present keyboard only supports basic emoticons, but we hope to support emoji in the future. (Support will be via extension pieces sold separately.)
-
* Imuri, you are not allowed to make up so many words you've got to spend pages explaining them and have a glossary in the back. Only English-language books by either Anne McCaffrey or Marion Zimmer Bradley are permitted to do this to me.
There's also a dramatis personae, a diagram of the fictional planet's complicated caste system, and a little inset card with the diagram on it again, which I nearly tossed because I thought it was an ad. Why is it there? So you can, like, pin it up on the wall in case you ever need to refer to it? Is it to put in your wallet? I feel like every book I ever read in middle-school just got together and mugged me.
...my life is such a cesspool of deceit that I feel the need to stress that this description is not an April Fool's joke. This is something that the manga actually did.
An Announcement from the Google Japanese Input Team
Have you been using Google's Japanese input system? In addition to its support of an abundant vocabulary and a powerful suggestion feature that makes entering Japanese terms easy, we have a new feature to announce today.
We of the Google Japanese input development team spend every day researching faster and more efficient methods of user input. We've received a lot of good feedback since our February 17th release. [?]
But there is one barrier we haven't been able to get past. That barrier is the keyboard. There's a theory out there that the QWERTY keyboard that we all use is an "optimized for slow" keyboard. According to this theory, when the typewriter was invented, it was prone to a lot of mechanical problems like breakdowns and jams. To prevent these, the keyboard was deliberately designed to make frequently used keys, like "a" and "enter," difficult to hit, putting them in places where you tend to hit them with your pinky or middle finger. There are a lot of objections to this theory, but we did think that the QWERTY keyboard was not the pinnacle of human engineering.
[1st one: "Code Name: Corn"
2nd one: an Inner Tube concept
3rd one: a Disco Ball concept]
The Google Japanese Input team started out with two conditions for our new keyboard: 1) Input should feel natural, and 2) The change shouldn't be distracting to users. With these principles in mind, we finally came up with the following design.
[]
With this keyboard, all of the most common standard JIS kanji can be entered using only one keystroke. In short, if you wanted to input "subarashii" (wonderful) - which in romaji input would have taken eleven keystrokes ("s-u-b-a-r-a-s-h-i-i," plus the convert key) and in kana input six ("su-ba-ra-shi-i," plus the convert key) it would only take five. And with our keyboard there's no need to search through a list of conversion options - you always get the kanji you want the first time.
[]
We've also added emoticon support. When you need to express emotion, it's easy to find the one you need.
[]
Our developers tried them out immediately.
[]
Komatsu's comments:
My first thought was, "Enter's too big!" But when I thought about it, I realized it was the other keys that were too small. I'm thinking drumsticks may be the way to go here. I'll see what happens if I play around with it.
[]
Mukai's comments:
I spend all day sitting at my computer, but using this keyboard is so enjoyable that I never get tired of it. I expect my work to go a lot faster from now on.
The Japanese Input team doesn't have any experienced drummers, so we asked Fujii from the Search Quality team to come over and give it a try.
[]
Fujii's comments:
If you use a double-stroke* technique, you can type really quickly. I also like how it feels like a fill-in** when you enter punctuation or an emoticon - it's very moving.
* Hitting two keys with a single stroke.
** Something you put into a tune to indicate a change of scene. [Note: I don't know the actual English equivalents for these terms.]
While it may seem a bit confusing at first, once you get used to this keyboard you can enter Japanese words quicker than ever before. We're already looking at expanding the keyboards' vocabulary even further, to include less common kanji, and an extension to allow you to convert to recently-coined words in one click.
We're accepting reservations for testers in Japan. If you're interested, reserve your spot as soon as possible!
[]
We've also got a lot of developers doing beta testing. Please visit our Picasa album for some photos of the process.
Google's mission is to make all the world's information accessible to all the world's people. The faster we can all type, the faster this mission will go.
FAQ
Q. How much will the drums cost?
A. We're still in discussions with our manufacturers about costs. We have high hopes for being able to offer our products at a reasonable price.
Q. Where can I buy them?
A. Google will be selling them directly. When they're ready to go to market, we'll send out alerts to everyone who signed up for a test drive.
Q. How do you input in a language other than Japanese?
A. You can use Google Translation services after you've input your words in Japanese.
Q. Will there be support for emoji?
A. The present keyboard only supports basic emoticons, but we hope to support emoji in the future. (Support will be via extension pieces sold separately.)
-
* Imuri, you are not allowed to make up so many words you've got to spend pages explaining them and have a glossary in the back. Only English-language books by either Anne McCaffrey or Marion Zimmer Bradley are permitted to do this to me.
There's also a dramatis personae, a diagram of the fictional planet's complicated caste system, and a little inset card with the diagram on it again, which I nearly tossed because I thought it was an ad. Why is it there? So you can, like, pin it up on the wall in case you ever need to refer to it? Is it to put in your wallet? I feel like every book I ever read in middle-school just got together and mugged me.
...my life is such a cesspool of deceit that I feel the need to stress that this description is not an April Fool's joke. This is something that the manga actually did.
no subject
no subject
no subject