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Is there a way of typing Japanese characters when you have no knowledge of the
language? I've cut and pasted from Japanese websites before and used
translation websites from English to Japanese with no trouble. I'm just
wondering how I can search for what the text is from a t-shirt I have.

I've had this t-shirt for a while now and wear it a fair bit. I'm just
wondering what I'm saying to people who can read it as I go about my business.
If you can answer my above question or simply translate it for me that would
be great - I understand it may mean I'll never wear it again, however!

![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/L9bJx.jpg)
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-05-11T15:51:17.367
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2022-02-14T18:35:04.493
question
words translation computing
Typing Japanese text from images or clothing
From what I [can
gather](http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/shinsuke2512rock/27672469.html), this shirt
appears to be made somewhere other than in Japan, as the top and bottom line
of characters mean nothing intelligible _(unless you start making up your own
meanings for each section of the random list of characters.)_

The middle line is closer to something that makes sense, and it almost reads:
Sapporo Beer. _(But the characters are slightly out of order, and there is a
random period next to one of the characters.)_

This might be a parody T-shirt... where the characters are switched just
enough in order to avoid legal problems from an actual brand _(Sapporo Beer
mixed with Heineken, in this case.)_ It would be interesting to know where
this shirt was found... _(perhaps Thailand?)_
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-05-11T15:59:38.150
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2013-05-12T02:24:50.163
2013-05-12T02:24:50.163
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![Google Translate](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DcBgT.png)

I would just use Google Translate on a smartphone with a touch screen. It's
pretty accurate.

Edit: Guys, I don't get the downvotes. The question was

_Is there a way of typing Japanese characters when you have no knowledge of
the language?_

And I say: Yes indeed, you can just draw whatever character(s) you see in the
drawing box. サッポロ is just an example to show that you can draw multiple
characters next to each other and it will be recognized. Besides, the
characters for サッポロ show up on the T-shirt.

I could have drawn anything, for example 鬱. The correct stroke order is not
important either.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-04-24T22:01:37.520
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2014-04-25T03:33:40.827
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I've actually got two methods I use, depending on if I'm using my phone or
laptop.

* * *

**Radical Lookup**

This method is used in several places—the most notable ones I've seen it in
include NJStar's built-in kanji dictionary and Jim Breen's KANJIDIC search on
the Monash University website. I primarily use it for looking up characters I
don't know when I'm on my phone, using an app formerly called Kotoba! (which,
for some stupid reason, later decided to change its name to "i-mi-wa?").

As the name implies, this method is pretty straightforward. You're presented a
table with the 214 Kang Xi radicals (and, often, several variants of certain
ones). Whereas a traditional dictionary would require you to look up by the
official radical for a character, these dictionaries have indexed all the
kanji so that any radical that appears as a component in the character can be
selected; hence you can build the character from the elements you can identify
and then select from there. More advanced implementations even let you filter
by the stroke count of the character you're searching for to help eliminate
junk results.

* * *

**Searching Related Characters Using Kotoeri**

On my laptop, Apple's Kotoeri IME has an awesome feature built in where you
can type a character and then find similar ones from there by selecting it and
hitting either Ctrl+1 ("Convert to Related Character") or Ctrl+2 ("Search
Similar Kanji").

So, for example, if I type in 照 and hit Ctrl+1 (Related Characters), it offers
me the following:

> 瞾

In this case, a very obscure character which, according to EDICT, is an 異体字
for 照, and therefore has all the same readings.

If we try 人, we get something else rather interesting:

> 亻㆟

Instead of variant characters, per se, it produces the standalone radical
forms (にんべん, ひとやね, etc.). This combines with the next trick (Ctrl+2 = "Search
Similar Kanji") to make looking up obscure characters a breeze at times.

The great thing about the Search Similar Kanji function is that it doesn't
have to search based on just one character at a time—you can select several at
once and it will attempt to find a character that combines them.

So, let's say that I'm a beginning Japanese student, and saw the character 他,
but didn't know how to write it. I do know 地, however. What I can do then is
do a search similar on 地, which offers the following:

> 垣 垤 坦 **也** 蟯 基 培 場 涅 蛙 澆 曉 (and so on—about 40-50 characters total are
> suggested)

Fourth character in the list I spot 也, which happens to be the element I'm
looking for. Using the trick above to get 亻, I then select both and have it do
a search based on 亻也, which produces:

> **他** 但 侄 估 倛 倍 俍 位 蓓 (and so on again, for about 40 options or so)

As you can see, the obvious option came out on top, and then it tries other
less-obvious ones from there. Also of note is that it does allow you to use
katakana as part of a search (e.g. リ instead of 刂).

Admittedly, at times it can feel like it gets hooked on the part you're not
interested in (it tends to prioritize variants based on the same radical first
before offering the other parts of a character separately), however with a
little bit of patience it's very rare to find a character that this system
won't handle.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-04-25T04:21:56.710
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In addition to what other people have mentioned, there is another technique
that can sometimes be useful for this sort of thing, if you have an Android
device which supports it.

The Google Lens application will allow you to point your camera at anything
with written text (in all kinds of languages), and will attempt to identify
and isolate the pieces of text in the image, and allow you to select them by
tapping on them. The idea is that you could then use Google Translate on them
(which is not always going to give you the best results, IMHO), but you don't
have to do that. You can also just copy it to your clipboard and then paste it
into other things as well.

Obviously, how well this works can depend on a lot of factors, such as the
quality of the image (there might be some issues with this shirt considering
how worn some parts of it are, for example), the font used, and so forth. If I
remember correctly, Google Lens is not supported on all devices either (it
requires some particular hardware acceleration features, I believe). If it
does work, it may still not actually get everything, and it might get some
characters wrong, but if nothing else it can give you a good start to work
with which can then be filled in or fixed up by some of the other methods
people have mentioned.
CC BY-SA 4.0
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