Japanese translation

[Ich]

I've been assigned (for Eastern Cultures class by a Japanese illiterate teacher) to write a haiku in English and then write it out in Japanese, with the characters and pronunciation. This is difficult for me, because the only language I know anything about is German. Does anyone know of a website where I could translate something into Japanese? Altavista gave me Spam and a bunch of little boxes.

Haiku:

Spam, a wonderful
thing. It is good on crackers.
Taste its goodness.

[satanman]

thats 5 syllables, 7 syllables, 6 syllables for haiku isn't it?

three things are certain;
death, taxes and lost data
guess which one (just) occured
^ some BSOD thread here

tell me, why are you
reading this haiku, i wrote?
it's a waste of time
^ the zen bastard's sig

Masamune will
shizniggle in your pants if,
you do not stop him soon
^ would that work?

and what kind of school is that that tries to get a lover of germanic languages to translate to japanese?
Eastern cultures class? where did that come from?
Sorry, I don't think there is one, just make it up, if (s)he is jap illiterate :p

[Paradox]

if you try that AV search after you download a japanese font, then the boxes woulnd't show up.

[Ich]

Yeah, but where do I get the font? I'll try a Google search.

And, in Eastern Cultures, we're learning about Japan. And everyone has to do it.

[Paradox]

there's some links here: http://docs.yahoo.com/docs/info/bridge.html

[obi]

We have these great Jap dictionaries - they have words like 'Carrierbaglady' (yes, it was one whole word) and many others that don't make any sense as well as every cus word under the sun. My next Jap lesson is monday, if no-one has translated it by then, I could do it, roughly....

[KingArthur]

To get the font get the Japanese IME from Microsoft, it SHOULD let you type Japanese in Word... Or you could look for JWP (papanese word proscessor) its out there somewhere, dunno exactly where though. In onder to make good use of Bablefish, you need the IME though.

[obi]

Well, fonts? If you want Jap fonts then I might be able to save you the trouble -

My Jap Font Archive in ZIP format (http://obi.gaming-honor.com/misc/japfont.zip)

Those are the jap fonts I use....

[inori]

I'm confused... do they actually want you to translate it into Japanese, or just write it in English but using Japanese characters?

[mrz84]

actually haikus have 5,7, then 5 again.

[Ich]

He told us to come up with the English, and he wants the "Kanji" and then the "Romanji." Also, according to him, roughly 5, 7, and 5 syllables is good enough.

EDIT: Problem solved, thank you Obi. I copied some characters that looked pretty good from one of the font files you linked to. Okay, here comes Mr. Shelley, everyone act casual ;).

[inori]

Your instructor has little to no understanding of the Japanese language. Asking someone to write a haiku in Kanji essentially requires that someone to know Japanese. (Kanji represent actual Japanese words, not just sounds as do English letters.) I think he really wanted you to write the haiku in Kana (the Japanese alphabet). Even that doesn't work so well, because syllables don't correspond one-to-one between Japanese and English.

Romaji (no "n") is essentially using English letters to represent kana.

[inori feels sorry for Mr. Walrus]

Glad you got it solved, though.