Languages with hieroglyphic writing are so different from the usual European languages that even with the presence of dictionaries and the Internet, it is often impossible to read and translate any phrase or word. But it is not necessary to turn to translators-orientalists, it is enough to know a few fairly simple rules for reading and finding hieroglyphs in the dictionary.
It is necessary
- - the Internet;
- - Chinese-Russian dictionary;
- - Japanese-Russian dictionary.
Instructions
Step 1
Consider the hieroglyph. To you, this is an unfamiliar symbol, which seems like a strange picture with dashes and squiggles. The task is to find out how it is read and how it is translated. First of all, you need to decide on the language. Hieroglyphic writing exists in Chinese and Japanese, and is also present in Tangut writing.
Step 2
Determine the language of the hieroglyph. The probability that you got the Tangut hieroglyph is very small, so there are only two options: Chinese or Japanese. Everything is simple here: the Japanese borrowed hieroglyphs from the Chinese language several centuries ago, so they are the same. And even if we take into account the fact that the Chinese, unlike the Japanese, carried out a writing reform and simplified the writing of most hieroglyphs, you can find Japanese hieroglyphs in Chinese dictionaries, which still cite both traditional and simplified spellings. In both languages, one hieroglyph has a meaning and a reading that does not depend on writing. If you need to read a Japanese hieroglyph, you need to refer to Japanese dictionaries, respectively, you will find the reading of the same hieroglyph in Chinese in the Chinese dictionary. Their values will coincide in most cases.
Step 3
Find a Chinese-Russian or Japanese-Russian online translator or dictionary. If your hieroglyph does not exist in the form of a picture, for example, you copied it from a Chinese site, then a google translator will help you translate the hieroglyph, and any online Japanese or Chinese dictionary will help you find out its reading.
Step 4
Look for lists of hieroglyphs if you only have a picture with a hieroglyph (it doesn't matter - on a computer, in a picture, on a Chinese teapot, finally). There are websites offering lists of the most common characters. This will help if your hieroglyph has simple meanings or wishes for happiness, money, prosperity, health - such hieroglyphs are often printed on souvenirs, T-shirts, stickers.
Find a dictionary with a "manual search" like www.cidian.ru if you did not find the hieroglyph in the lists. "Manual search" assumes that you draw this hieroglyph in the window (try to reproduce it as accurately as possible), and a special program recognizes it and displays the reading and translation
Step 5
Determine the meaning and reading of the hieroglyph in a regular paper dictionary if "manual search" did not help. To find a hieroglyph in an ordinary paper dictionary, you need to know into which parts or "keys" the hieroglyph is divided, or how many features it contains, or which feature is written in it first or last. For example, A. V. Kotova has a search by the number of features and the first two features, and a large Chinese-Russian dictionary edited by B. G. Mudrova - according to the last features. After you have found a hieroglyph in the list for these characteristics, go to the indicated page with the meaning and reading of the hieroglyph.
