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I work in IT in Tokyo, so most of what I do doesn't require interaction with
our Japanese customers, but every so often we get that one phone call where
someone wants something explained, and I can always make it through, but never
at the level that I want to. The problem usually comes in with regards to
computer terminology. For example, when I'm on the spot and don't have any
time to look things up, if I want to say, "if you hover over the icon, a
tooltip will pop up," I just toss out something simple
like「アイコンの上にマウスを動かして、クリックせずに１～２秒程待ってください。そうしますと、ツールチップが表示されます。」. And it works
and gets the point across as expected. But I'm consistently wanting to improve
upon sentences like that, to something more natural in Japanese --- in this
particular example, what I want to know is, what is the most common and most
natural way to say "hover the mouse over..."? Problem is I don't have time to
do language research at work, and by the time I get home my brain is either
fried or I just forget.

I'm aware of stuff like <http://e-words.jp/> for pure dictionary lookups, but
really what I'm looking for is like a book that I can read during my train
commute, written for native English speakers learning Japanese, and focusing
exclusively on technology/Windows/programming terminology.

Thanks!
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nuances words
Any books or websites dedicated to Japanese tech/IT language?
I work at a Japanese software company, and when I started there, I experienced
much of the same feeling that you did--I knew all of these technical terms in
English, and I _thought_ that I spoke Japanese fluently, but I didn't know any
of these terms in Japanese, so I felt very much at a loss when communicating
about technical topics.

A lot of it I've just picked up as I've gotten more experienced, so I can't
really recommend any good books for non-native speakers; I read lots of
resources written in Japanese for Japanese people, but very few if any helpful
resources written in English. I think you may have to stick to native language
resources for the majority of your learning. (Hopefully you've reached the
point in your Japanese where this isn't a problem for you to do.) Also, you
should know that while technical people in Japanese have a firm grasp of this
sort of vocabulary, your average, non-technical speaker of Japanese might be a
lot more comfortable with your roundabout rephrasings than they would be with
the more technical and efficient ways of stating things.

Don't know if it helps, but a while back I made a short vocabulary list for a
friend of mine who was studying for a Japanese-speaking programming job. It's
not very complete, but if you'd like some vocabulary to study, here it is. The
words are pretty programming-specific.

```

    引数{ひきすう}: argument (i.e., to a function)
    返り値{かえりち}: return value
    関数{かんすう}: function
    構造体{こうぞうたい}: data structure
    保存{ほぞん}する： to save, to store
    割り込み{わりこみ}: interrupt
    状態{じょうたい}: status
    画像{がぞう}: image
    復元{ふくげん}する： to restore
    アルゴリズム： algorithm
    処理{しょり}: processing (very common word)
    終了{しゅうりょう}する: to end; to be finalized
    書き換える{かきかえる}: to overwrite
    呼び出す{よびだす}: to call (as in, calling a function)
    実装{じっそう}する： to implement
    自動的{じどうてき}: automatically
    プログラムを組む{くむ}: to write a program
    明示的{めいじてき}に： explicitly
    黙示的{もくしてき}に: implicitly
    ポインタ： pointer
    テーブル： table
    変換{へんかん}する： to convert
    割り込み{わりこみ}禁止{きんし}: interrupts prohibited
    対応{たいおう}する： to support (as in "this language supports dynamic memory allocation") 
    概要{がいよう}: overview
    値{あたい}: value
    固定{こてい}: static, fixed
    動的{どうてき}: dynamic
    同期{どうき}関数{かんすう}: synchronous function
    非同期{ひどうき}関数{かんすう}: asynchronous function
    調節{ちょうせつ}する： to adjust
    計算{けいさん}結果{けっか}: result of calculation 
    割り当て{わりあて}: allocation
    設定{せってい}: settings
    設定{せってい}する： to set, to configure
    配列{はいれつ}: array
    登録{とうろく}する： to register
    
```

For reading, I recommend reading programming books directed towards Japanese
people, or if those are too tough, just introductory books and articles for
Japanese people. There are so many older people in Japan who are still just
now getting into computers that there should be no end of introductory books
at your local library or Book-Off.
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This might not be exactly what you're looking for, but I'll post it for what
it's worth. I picked this one up at a second hand book store a couple of years
ago:

Encyclopedic Dictionary of Computer Science:
<http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E5%B2%A9%E6%B3%A2%E6%83%85%E5%A0%B1%E7%A7%91%E5%AD%A6%E8%BE%9E%E5%85%B8-%E9%95%B7%E5%B0%BE-%E7%9C%9F/dp/4000800744>

It has both English-Japanese and Japanese-English and has entries (including
small articles in Japanese) for a lot of stuff from programming terminology to
theoretical computer science stuff. I looked up 'hover' and 'tooltip' and
neither was there, though, so it might be a bit more scientifically oriented.
(For example, it lists several different kinds of garbage collection.)
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answer