The transcription of English to Japanese has been done since the earliest cultural contacts between English speakers and Japanese. During the Edo period, kanji were used phonetically to write English and other foreign words, but in the modern period katakana have become the principal target script. Unlike the systems for romaji, there is no standard for transcribing into katakana, and methods vary. However, generally all methods attempt to preserve the pronunciation of English, not the spelling. That is, transcription not transliteration is done.

This article deals with transcription of English words into the nearest phonetic equivalent in Japanese.

Reasons for transcribing

The purpose of the transcription partly determines how it is done. There are reasons why one would want to transcribe an English word to Japanese: Many legal documents, such as company registrations, require that only Japanese script is used. A computer database may need entry in Japanese script for the purpose of sorting and collation. Educators want to explain the pronunciation of English words by transcribing. Loan words from English are usually written in a transcribed form. Or one may simply be interested in how one's name looks in Japanese.

Accordingly, there are different priorities for the transcriber. The educator might want to indicate many of the subtleties of English pronunciation whereas a person naming a new product might be more concerned with the ease of pronunciation for native speakers of Japanese.

Difficulties

Japanese distinguishes fewer sounds than English. For example, Japanese does not distinguish the vowel sound of "run" and "ran", or the consonant sound of "row" and "low". Moreover the rules by which sounds can be combined in Japanese are generally more restrictive than the English rules. As a result, the pronunciation of the transcribed word can differ quite considerably from the original word in English.

If writing for a Japanese audience, it is worth checking whether there is already an accepted transcription into Japanese, and whether the meaning of the new word has changed in Japanese. The word mishin illustrates both pitfalls: not only is this an unexpected rendering of the English word "machine", but the Japanese word's meaning is limited to sewing machines. It is also worth noting that some terms which may at first glance appear to be mangled English loanwords are, in fact, loans from other languages: koppu (drinking glass) is not a version of the English "cup" but a loan of Dutch kop, and tabako is from Portuguese tabaco, not from "tobacco".

Procedure for transcription

Most Japanese people do not use a systematic procedure for transcription; instead they transcribe according to their perception of the English pronunciation, albeit significantly influenced by the spelling. However, the process can be represented formally as a set of transformations, which is presented in one possible order below. Proficient Japanese speakers internalize the transformations and perform them all simultaneously when inserting English words into written or spoken Japanese.

Examples

Inconsistencies

Though commonly used katakana spellings tend to be consistent with the above system of transcription, there are also many exceptions. Some transcriptions are apparently based on misinterpretations of the word's pronunciation based on its spelling. For example, the "u" in "studio" seems to have been interpreted as if it were /ʌ/ (as in the word "study"), not /uː/, resulting in the transcription "スタジオ" (sutajio).

Though the basis for English to Japanese transcription is usually British Received Pronunciation, with its different short "o" sound and unpronounced rhotic "r"s, there are also exceptions. The words "cocktail" and "soccer" are transcribed as "カクテル" (kakuteru) and "サッカー" (sakkaa), and the Japanese name of the English letter "r" is "アール" (aaru), which corresponds more closely to a rhotic accent.

The final t sound in English words is usually transcribed as "ト" (to), but it in some words such as "fruit" and "suit" it is transcribed as "ツ" (tsu), making the pronunciation of some singular nouns sound more like their plural forms, even though plural "s"s tend to be ignored when transcribing English nouns into Japanese.

Transcribing using the steps outlined above results in the English short "i" sound becoming the Japanese i sound, but there are also cases in which it becomes the Japanese e sound. Examples include "digital" and "sticker" becoming "デジタル" (dejitaru) and "ステッカー" (sutekkaa). Also, the "re" in the English words "report" and "reporter", which is pronounced as /rɪ/ in Received Pronunciation, becomes re in "レポート" (repooto) and "レポーター" (repootaa), though they are sometimes alternately transcribed as "リポート" (ripooto) and "リポーター" (ripootaa)

Even within the common system of transcriptions, there are multiple possible ways in which a certain sound can be transcribed. This can result in multiple transcriptions of a single word, such as the name "David", which is written a number of ways in Japanese. Different pronunciations of the same word are sometimes used to show what meaning of the word is being used. For example, "ストライク" (sutoraiku) refers to a strike in baseball or bowling, while "ストライキ" (sutoraiki) refers to a workers' strike. Also, "ポンチ" (poNchi) refers to fruit punch while "パンチ" (paNchi) is used for other meanings of the word.

As mentioned above, many transcriptions (particularly those involving a non-final schwa) are non-fixed and are often based more on spelling than actual pronunciation. This often leads to words which sound similar to each other in English sounding radically different from each other in their Japanese pronunciations. While the pronunciations of the English words "pirate" and "pilot" differ only in the "l" and "r", the two words are transcribed respectively into Japanese as "パイレーツ" (paireetsu) and "パイロット" (pairotto), with the only difference between the original pronunciations disappearing and some new differences appearing in other places.

There are also some inconsistencies in Japanese between the way English words are transcribed, and the way words from some other languages containing the same sounds are transcribed. A final velar nasal consonant in an English word (spelled "ng") is usually transcribed as "ング" (Ngu), but the same sound in Korean and Chinese words is transcribed as "ン" (N). For example "Hong Kong" and "Kung-Fu" become "ホンコン" (hoNkoN) and "カンフー" (kaNfuu) respectively, and the "Yong" in Korean actor Bae Yong Joon's name becomes "ヨン" (yoN).

Transcribing multiple words

In some instances, such as language textbooks or song lyrics, phrases or entire sentences may be transcribed into Japanese.

Multiple word transcription is typically done on a word-by-word basis, with no account being taken of word linking. For example, "an engineer" would most commonly be transcribed into Japanese as "a.N.e.N.ji.ni.a" rather than "a.ne.N.ji.ni.a", with the linking between the "n" and "e" represented by the Japanese mora "ne". In some set phrases, such as "kaman" for "come on", this general trend is broken.