Translation/fic resource (for 11/28)

[geri_chan]

LJ wouldn't let me post anything last night, so this was actually supposed to be 11/28's entry for National Blog Posting Month. (I did post over on IJ, so it's not like I missed it completely.) Will try to get another entry up later tonight for today's "real" post. Anyway...

If any of you out there are learning to read and write Japanese, The Learner's Kanji Dictionary by Mark Spahn and Wolfgang Hadamitzky is a great resource. I've been using it ever since I decided to teach myself Japanese so that I could translate the Petshop of Horrors manga (before Tokyopop licensed it). It's great for people just learning to read kanji because it has a romanized index, which is a real lifesaver! It also has the added bonus of several appendices that have come in really handy when I need to come up with a name for a Japanese OC, mostly in my Haru fics.

It has a list of the 100 Most Frequent Surnames, so I generally just pick one off the list when I need to name a character. (Incidently, the names Shimizu, Kaneko, and Kikuchi are all on the list!) There are also lists of The 50 Most Frequent Given Names for males and females, so that's also useful for naming characters. If it's a minor character, I'll usually just pick one that sounds nice, while for a more important character, I might take a closer look at the meaning of the kanji and choose something that fits the character. In my Snupin series, for example, the OC crane maiden Chizuru has the kanji for "crane" in her name, while in my Haru series, Kikuchi's younger brother Kojiro has the character "ji" in his name, which means "two" and is therefore often used in the names of second sons. In the Haru manga, I think that Iwaki asks Katou why he was named "Youji" when he was the eldest son, and it's a foreshadowing of the revelation that Katou actually is his parents' second son, since their first son was stillborn. (I also use baby name books and websites to help pick names for OCs, but it is nice to be able to look up the kanji meanings, since most of those books and websites only give the romanized spelling.)

It seems like the hardcover edition that I have might be out of print, but there is a paperback version available under the slightly revised title of The Japanese Learner's Kanji Dictionary.