romaji translation site?

[aichain]

Hi,
I'm trying to find an online site that translates japanese to english and vice versa for romaji. I read the sticky at the top of this forum and checked out Jim Breen's site but it seems its strength is in it's help with kanji translations. It'll translate a single romanji word into english, but that's all I could get it to do. I can't type in an english word and have it give me the romaji translation and when I do translate from romaji to english I can only do one word, not phrases or complete sentences.
I'm not trying to learn Japanese symbols, I just care about learning the Romaji. I've tried doing google searches for online translation sites but everything I've come across has dealt with symbols rather than romaji. The one site I found that will translate single words into romaji is freedict.com but I'm still hoping there's a site that will translate phrases and entire sentences. I know there are plenty of sites that do entire sentences for other languages (like english-spanish translations). Can someone help?

 

[JimmySeal]

If you're trying to learn Japanese, a romaji translation site is not likely to help you. In any case, I doubt such a thing exists, at least not a good one.

 

[aichain]

I don't get it...most of what I've seen on the web is geared towards learning kanji, but isn't romaji the type of writing that is used the majority of the time when Japan communicates with other countries? Like technical manuals, movies, media, video games, anime, etc. I would've thought that in today's world where people travel a lot more and globalization is occurring that romaji would be the most popular type of Japanese to learn. Aren't there a lot of non-Japanese speaking people that just want to learn romaji and not worry about the kanji or am I in the minority?

 

[nice gaijin]

I don't get it...most of what I've seen on the web is geared towards learning kanji, but isn't romaji the type of writing that is used the majority of the time when Japan communicates with other countries? Like technical manuals, movies, media, video games, anime, etc. I would've thought that in today's world where people travel a lot more and globalization is occurring that romaji would be the most popular type of Japanese to learn. Aren't there a lot of non-Japanese speaking people that just want to learn romaji and not worry about the kanji or am I in the minority?

I'm afraid you're in the minority here. Romaji is the first stepping stone towards literacy in Japanese, and it's one that should be passed as quickly as possible. Almost all communication in Japanese is a combination of the two "syllabaries" of hiragana and katakana, and kanji. In most cases, romaji is only used when there is no other option.

 

[JimmySeal]

I don't get it...most of what I've seen on the web is geared towards learning kanji, but isn't romaji the type of writing that is used the majority of the time when Japan communicates with other countries? Like technical manuals, movies, media, video games, anime, etc.

When Japan wants to communicate with other countries, they use English.

 

[aichain]

Bah. Well, if it's the first stepping stone to learning the language I guess I'll keep plodding along at it. I'm really more concerned with being able to understand something that is spoken in Japanese rather than written, and it just seemed that romaji was more intuitive for a beginner than the symbols.

 

[nice gaijin]

You'd be surprised at how much learning to read will help you learn to speak and listen.

 

[Arukugatari]

I sincerely agree with you aichain. I don't know if you'll see my comment after 7 years, but I've had this problem ever since I started looking in to the Japanese language, both written and spoken. I learned basic katakana and hiragana, and saw how kanji interchanges, and how despite the vast majority and complexities of it, it can still help.
But, plain and simple romaji is the easiest most natural translation. When Japan wants to speak to other countries, they use English--but when someone wants to translate Japanese, or understand Japanese itself, it seems there's no where to translate whole sentences, phrases or even beyond that like Google translate allows, for romaji!! It can be downright frustrating, this 1 sided street of communication within the exchange: it should be English in to Japanese through their spelling (be it katakana or another way for complete English sounds) and Japanese in to English ( be it in romaji, katakana if understood, etc.).

But instead Japan( or Japanese as it's conventionally shared and practiced, it seems) just listens to others, speaks like others, but speaks it's way only how it wants >:/. That's not actually sharing to me, like a fingers-clenched handshake =_=