"Jamie Jones" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Only if an adequate
English version was available [1], pruning the Japanese docs would be
an option IMO (and only because ~99.9% of Japanese people have good
command of English).
You must have a very different experience of Japanese people then I do.
If we talk percentages using my immediate family as an example, only 33%
of them speak any English, and of that, only 16% would speak what is
considered good English. Far less then the ~99.9% you quote.
In short dropping the Japanese docs should not be an option even if an
English version is available.
Well, remember that there are four distinct parts to language comprehension.
Reading, writing, listening, and speaking.
Reading is easier than writing, and listening is easier than speaking.
When reading or listening a complete understanding of the language's syntax
is not
necessary. Also understanding subtle nuances of the language are usually far
more important
for writing and speaking than for reading and listening.
I suspect that some of your family can understand English far better than
they can produce it.
Japanese's relationship with English is complicated. There is regular
English, transliterated English,
and several transliterated English words have been adopted by the Japanese
language.
I have heard of some Japanese product manuals written entirely in
transliterated English! (Using kana. This is a bit annoying to
US importers of the product, who would prefer real English, or at the very
least, transliterated English written in romaji. [Normal English speakers
could probably guess the original English word often enough to understand
the sentences.])
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